KYIV — Americans unhappy with their choices in Tuesday’s presidential election should spend some time in Ukraine, where an anxious nation doesn’t even get a vote between a continuation of the Biden-Harris administration that has been a source of mounting frustration and a prospective Trump administration which promises perhaps even more ominous policy shifts in the future.
With battlefield losses mounting and Russia grinding away at Ukraine’s defenses in Donbas, Ukrainians are looking on anxiously at the vote in its most critical ally, a vote which could very well decide the course of the country’s 2½-year war with Russia and seal the country’s fate as an independent nation.
Ukrainians here say overwhelmingly that they will spend their Tuesday glued to a TV screen or to their phone, waiting with bated breath for the results of a U.S. election that will have a major say in the fate of their besieged country — and of the security architecture of Europe for decades to come.
And yet, the inability to affect the outcome leaves many Ukrainians fatalistic, despite the keen interest in the result.
“I honestly have no opinion,” said 28-year-old Yevhen, an officer who was until recently positioned in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. “I feel like everything is lost. I don’t care much about American politics and I have the feeling that, no matter who wins, there won’t be any difference.”
Two radically different visions of the United States’ role in international — and, by extension, in Ukraine — are on offer. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022, former President Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, has repeatedly criticized the tens of billions of dollars in economic and military aid supplied to Kyiv and publicly castigated the Ukrainian government for not “giving up a little bit” to appease Moscow.
At one point, Mr. Trump said the government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy bore the blame for instigating the war, which he claims “didn’t need to happen.”
“Ukraine is gone, it’s not Ukraine anymore. You can never replace those cities and towns and you can never replace the dead people, so many dead people”, Mr. Trump said at a campaign event in late September. “If we made a bad deal, it would have been much better. [Ukraine] would have given up a little bit and everybody would be living.”
If elected, the Republican candidate has sworn to end the war before he even takes office in January — without explaining how he intends to do that.
Republican running mate Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance is seen here as even more of a danger, voting against the major U.S. aid package this year and remarking in one interview that he “doesn’t really care what happens to Ukraine, one way or the other.” Mr. Vance has put forward a plan to end the war that would roughly amount to what many here see as capitulation and a Russian victory: Moscow would retain control over the territory it has seized, while Ukraine would be kept out of NATO and be left vulnerable to a future Russian attack.
At the time, the chairman of the Ukrainian parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Oleksandr Merezhko, had called the proposal “election rhetoric which will hardly stand the test of political reality.”
Neutrality and the ‘least bad’ option
The Ukrainian government has steered clear from any public endorsement, with Mr. Zelenskyy meeting both candidates during his September trip to the U.S. and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha recently stating that Kyiv was confident of continued American support regardless of the results of the elections.
Still, despite the rising frustration with Washington’s approach to the war, the majority of Ukrainians see a victory of Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris as the “least bad” option, in large part because of the unpredictability of her rival and Mr. Trump’s self-proclaimed fondness for authoritarian leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Even so, many fear that Mrs. Harris’ foreign policy will likely dovetail with the one pursued so far by the Biden administration — seen by many here as slow, ineffectual and hamstrung by fear of escalation and a deep misunderstanding of Russia and of Mr. Putin’s regime.
“At least in my household, neither of us really has any faith in either American political party,” said “Matthew,” a Canadian volunteer and long-time Kyiv resident married to a Ukrainian woman, who did not want to be quoted by name. “Yes, the Democrats have lots and lots of nice rhetoric and a lot of their supporters do care about Ukraine, but that second part is the same with a lot of Republicans.
“There’s tons of Republicans out here, for example. But when it comes down to the candidates themselves, Trump avoids going into detail on anything regarding Ukraine, and really, so does Harris.”
‘Terrible’ track record
The painfully incremental and limited supply of military aid, as well as the restrictions set by the White House on the use of U.S.-made weapons to strike targets within Russia, have infuriated many in Ukraine.
“We’ve seen the Harris-Biden track record, which is pretty terrible, with that six months of just no aid whatsoever,” recalled Kevin. “Then recently we found out that, out of the aid promised once things resumed, only 10% of it has actually been delivered.”
During a press conference held on October 30, Mr. Zelenskyy himself indeed pointed out that only a meager fraction of the American military aid approved by Congress earlier this year had so far been sent to Ukraine, even as Kyiv faced an increasingly difficult situation on the battlefield in eastern and southern Ukraine.
The following day, Mr. Zelenskyy called out the lack of response from Washington and Ukraine’s European allies to the deployment of thousands of troops by North Korea to support Russia’s invasion of its neighbor, a stunning escalation that has been met so far with a surprisingly muted response from the West.
“And if there is nothing – and I think that the reaction to this is nothing, it has been zero – then the number of North Korean troops on our border will be increased,” the Ukrainian president declared.
“The support is mostly theoretical and rhetorical and that really is not helpful in any way,” said Kevin. “To put it shortly, we’re not hopeful about the election and we doubt the outcomes are going to be helpful for us. Neither side seems to have a realistic idea of how to approach things here, which is bizarre because it’s pretty simple to figure out.”
Some say the vote will only put more pressure on Ukraine to fight its own fight against its bigger neighbor, no matter who wins.
“It’s obvious to everyone that the West has already given up on helping us, they’re too busy with their own problems. Our fate depends only on ourselves,” said 47-year-old Vitaliy, an employee of the Ministry of Defense, who also believes that the Biden administration has already “abandoned” Ukraine.
“We just don’t have enough men to hold the defense, and now we’ll have to fight the North Koreans alone,” he sighs. “There won’t be much difference between Harris and Biden if she wins. And if it’s Trump, it’s even worse – he’s buddies with Putin.”
• Guillaume Ptak can be reached at gptak@washingtontimes.com.