Donald Trump’s victory has plunged Ukraine into uncertainty and sadness. With the Kremlin saying the goal of subjugating its neighbor hasn’t changed, Trump should likely end U.S. military aid.
Volodymyr Zelensky congratulated Trump on his “impressive election victory.” “I appreciate President Trump’s commitment to the idea of ’peace through strength’ in world affairs,” the Ukrainian president’s message said.
Zelensky recalled “big meeting” he and Trump held in September in New York and said they spoke about “mechanisms aimed at ending Russian aggression in Ukraine.” He praised Trump’s “decisive leadership” and recalled the “strong bipartisan support for Ukraine” in the United States.
But a second Trump presidency will most likely have complicated consequences for Ukraine, at a time when Russia is advancing on the battlefield at the fastest pace since 2022.
Without U.S. military aid, Ukraine could lose further ground in Donetsk province, where fighting has raged since Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of the country nearly three years ago, as well as on many other front lines.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said that Moscow would try to work with the incoming Trump administration, but that its goal remained “to achieve all the objectives set for the special military operation”, the term with which the Kremlin refers to the war. “Our conditions have not changed and are well known in Washington,” the text states.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said he was not aware of any plans by Putin to call Trump and congratulate him on his victory. Any possible realignment of politics between Russia and the United States will take time, he added.
“We have repeatedly said that the United States can help end this conflict. This cannot be done overnight, but…the United States has the power to change the trajectory of its foreign policy,” Peskov said at his daily press conference.
Trump once said he could end the decade-long Russian-Ukrainian war in “24 hours.” JD Vance, his vice president, is an outspoken skeptic of kyiv and has said he is not “really concerned about what happens to Ukraine, one way or another.” .
But it is also true that Zelensky is increasingly fed up with the Biden administration. The outgoing US president did not authorize Ukraine to use long-range Western weapons against military targets in Russia.
According to Orysia Lutsevych, director of the Ukraine forum at the British think tank Chatham House, if Zelensky cannot convince Trump to see things his way, the result of the US presidential election could be “a gift to the Kremlin “.
Despite this, Lutsevych also highlighted considerable frustration in kyiv with Biden’s “incremental” approach and the hope that “things can change in Ukraine’s favor” if Trump suddenly decides to adopt a more interventionist policy .
In central kyiv, there is no common opinion on the outcome of the American elections. Combat engineer Andriy, 30, says he’s not sure a Trump presidency will change things much. “Our brigade has not seen American weapons,” says Andriy, who spent time on the front near the town of Niu-York and is now in kyiv on training leave.
Ukraine has no choice but to continue the fight, with or without American help, he said. “If we don’t do this, we will be destroyed, literally erased” by the Russian invaders, he adds.
Oksana, a 53-year-old woman, is calling for increased aid from Europe to compensate. “They could tell their readers,” he said. Also, that several of his friends had died during the fighting.
But Vasyl, 63, is satisfied with the Republican tycoon’s victory. “He promised that the war would end,” says Vasyl, on the street with his grandson Nikita. At 13, Nikita is an ice hockey player and has just spent a season in Colorado, with a family of Trump supporters.
Vasyl says he hopes Trump will reach a peace deal with Putin and that Russia should have control of the occupied territories in exchange for peace. “The best of our people die,” he said. Furthermore, Russia “had the strength” to prevent any effective counterattack.
Where grandfather and grandson disagreed was on the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO. The teenager categorically says yes, but Vasyl maintains a more ambiguous position, saying that the most important thing is economic recovery.
Neither Trump nor the defeated Kamala Harris “represented a clear victory for Ukraine,” writes Zelensky’s former press secretary, Iuliia Mendel, in the Kyiv Post. The war “constantly erodes the very foundations of the Ukrainian nation,” he writes. He said a ceasefire giving Ukraine a chance to recover “might be the best we can hope for in the short term.”
Trump’s advisers had already outlined a possible “peace agreement”: it would consist of ceding to Russia the Crimean peninsula, seized by Moscow in 2014, as well as the eastern regions of Ukraine under Russian occupation, thus freezing the line current front. Russia currently controls around 20% of Ukraine’s territory.
During an interview in May with the British newspaper The Guardian, Zelensky made it clear that this solution was unacceptable. He was also unwilling to accept an “ultimatum” from Russia that would force Ukraine to abandon its European integration and future NATO membership.
Zelensky then acknowledged that, if Trump were re-elected, he could impose a military defeat on his country. “Ukraine, with bare hands, without weapons, will not be able to fight against an army [ruso] billionaire,” he said.
” Wanna [Trump] become a losing president? Do you understand what can happen? said Zelensky, referring to the serious consequences that a Putin victory in Ukraine would have for the United States’ standing in the world, as well as for Trump himself.
According to Matthew Savill, director of military science at the Rusi think tank, Russia is now likely to “enforce its numerical advantage” on the battlefield. “Trump’s willingness to reach a deal, and probably quickly, does not bode well for sustained U.S. support, especially with the current pressure on Ukraine,” he said.
Moscow will likely have its own demands in any possible negotiations brokered by Trump.
In 2022, Russia officially “annexed” the four Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Although it controls almost the entire Luhansk province, Moscow’s domination over the other three is only partial. Putin will probably demand his surrender. For Ukraine, this would mean giving up key cities like Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Other likely demands include the creation of a buffer zone, the demand for “reparations” for damage caused in Russian-occupied Donbass and a guarantee of “neutrality” keeping Ukraine out of NATO. These are unacceptable conditions for Kyiv and for the majority of Ukrainians.
Translated by Francisco de Zárate
