Ukraine is preparing for the worst. Donald Trump promised that he would “end the war within 24 hours” if re-elected—and within two weeks of his victory, the president-elect had held phone calls with Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin. He has since appointed both Kremlin critics and Moscow sympathisers to his foreign policy team. The day after the US election, an official conveyed the mood in Kyiv: “Anxiety is felt before things happen. After, you just roll up your sleeves and work.”
Since then, numerous engagements have taken place. The head of Ukraine’s presidential office Andriy Yermak met with JD Vance in Washington DC on 4th December. The following week, the Ukrainian president and Trump met in Paris, where world leaders had gathered for the reopening of Notre Dame. Afterwards, Trump urged Putin to immediately end the war. “I know Vladimir well. This is his time to act!” he said.
The idea that Trump’s relationship with Putin will help him end the conflict appears naive to people in Kyiv. If America reduces its support for Ukraine—as is expected—the war will continue and Ukraine will defend itself, just with fewer weapons and higher losses. Without a security guarantee that America or its western partners will defend it if Moscow invades again in future, fighting on gives Ukraine a better chance of survival than an occupation brokered by Trump. But Kyiv still hopes to change American minds.
After initially being critical of Trump’s plans, Zelensky responded to Trump’s victory by tweeting that he had “an excellent call” with the president-elect and had congratulated him on his historic victory. “We agreed to maintain close dialogue and advance our cooperation. Strong and unwavering US leadership is vital for the world and for a just peace,” he said. Since then, the Ukrainian government has been trying to explain to the incoming US administration the complexity of dealing with Moscow. After all, it has good reason to worry that when Trump fails to persuade Putin to agree to his plan, he will blame Ukrainians for being too stubborn before he admits that he might have been wrong.
If Kyiv is to change American minds, the only pragmatic choice is to try to appeal to Republicans. This will not be easy. Conservative Americans were once suspicious of Moscow, but in recent years the Kremlin has found common ground with Trump supporters.
Last Christmas, a Ukrainian man who survived torture and imprisonment during the Russian occupation asked me for an urgent meeting. Maksym Maksymov is a psychologist I first met in autumn 2022 when Izyum, Kharkiv region, was liberated by the Ukrainian army. He was interested in Russian propaganda, drawing my attention to the pro-Russian government YouTube channels that were translating and promoting Tucker Carlson programmes. Maksymov was appalled that Carlson had repeated allegations of the Ukrainian state persecuting religious groups, when evangelicals and Baptists in Ukraine had been abducted and, like him, tortured during the Russian occupation. Carlson went to Russia to interview Putin in February this year; he asked no critical questions and nodded along to the president’s version of Ukrainian history. Carlson returned to Moscow in December to interview Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister.
Maksymov asked me how Ukrainians could explain to religious Trump voters who the real villain was, and how they could speak to the conservative American YouTubers, bloggers and podcasters who shared conspiratorial and anti-Ukrainian content that originated on Russian propaganda networks. There was little I could do to help—but for a year he would send me links to remarks spread by Maga followers that were reminiscent of Moscow’s view of the war.
Having reported on US elections since 2008, I have seen how Republican views on Ukraine have changed. In 2012, analysts at the Heritage Foundation thinktank told me that the Republicans were the only genuine allies of eastern Europeans. At Trump rallies in 2016, a group of Vietnam war veterans were happy to be interviewed by Ukrainian television, and blamed Barack Obama for allowing the occupation of Crimea in 2014.
When Zelensky came into power in 2019, Trump was still in the White House. His was the first American administration that the Zelensky government dealt with. Ukrainian diplomats maintained deep contacts with the Republican party both in the Senate and in Congress after Joe Biden won in 2020. But during Trump’s first term there was no breakthrough in negotiations with Russia over eastern Ukraine. When Ukraine did feature in the US news, it was in stories about scandals involving Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine; or the Republican lobbyist Paul Manafort, who before working for Donald Trump was a spin doctor for the authoritarian, pro-Russian president Victor Yanukovych; or, during one of Trump’s impeachments, about a call with Zelensky in which Trump asked for an investigation into the Bidens’ business activity in Ukraine.
By the time of Trump’s 2020 campaign speech in Tampa, Florida, attendees were suspicious of questions from a Ukrainian journalist, although men in Proud Boys T-shirts still agreed to go on camera. The few who were willing to speak to a reporter from Kyiv would start by talking about accusations of Ukrainian interference in US elections and Hunter Biden’s alleged corruption in Ukraine. There was no reason for Zelensky to open an investigation into Biden in Ukraine, but that was not something people were ready to hear.
Shortly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when Zelensky was still extremely popular around the globe, Donald Trump Jr mocked the Ukrainian leader and spread pro-Russian conspiracies.
Returning to the US in 2024, I wondered if Trump voters would be irritated when I mentioned Ukraine. To my surprise, Trump supporters promised me their candidate would end the war by being strong towards Putin. In Saginaw, Michigan, JD Vance presented his running mate as “the president who’ll bring peace and prosperity”, and “the end of the foreign wars”.
Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, and Mike Waltz, future national security adviser, have met numerous times with Ukrainians and were extremely supportive of Kyiv in the early stages of the war. They later opposed Biden’s support for Ukraine—but only because Republican military veterans and advisers had concluded the Biden administration’s approach to supporting Ukraine was indecisive and inefficient.
This year, the Vietnam war veterans who had fought communism were no longer to be found at Trump’s rallies. Instead, there were more young men who could hardly remember the Cold War. Among this new generation of Republicans, anti-communist sentiment and criticism of Russia—something which bonded eastern Europeans—is almost gone.
After the 2024 election, Trump immediately announced that two important figures from his first term—former foreign secretary Mike Pompeo and former US representative at the UN Nikki Haley, both of whom were well known in Ukraine and considered fierce critics of Russia—wouldn’t be in his new cabinet.
Instead, the former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has been nominated to be director of national intelligence. Gabbard is beloved by Russian state TV channel RT and is also known to be an RT viewer. On the third day of the full-scale invasion in 2022 she accused Washington of provoking Moscow, and shortly after spread stories about supposed US-financed biological weapons labs in Ukraine. Elon Musk, set to be co-chair of the new government efficiency department, has allowed Ukraine to use (and pay for) the Starlink satellite internet capacity on the battlefield, but has suggested Ukrainians should cede Crimea and has boasted about his direct contacts with the Russian leader, with the Kremlin confirming that one of these calls had taken place.
In recent years, I have repeatedly asked analysts why, little by little, American conservatives were siding with Moscow. Many explained that Ukraine is presenting itself as the defender of liberal democracy, while Moscow poses as a defender of “traditional” values. Presumably, they are thinking of how Putin’s regime has, since the invasion of Crimea, portrayed Ukraine as having been spoiled by “Gay-ropa”—a term widely used on Russian state television. As Ukrainians protested during the Maidan Revolution in 2014 against Viktor Yanukovych (now exiled in Russia), Moscow stood for ultraconservative values, patriarchy and the persecution of LGBTQ+ people. Kremlin propaganda also promoted antisemitic and conspiratorial theories about a “world government” run by philanthropist George Soros and others. Later, it would denounce climate change and Covid vaccine science.
Today’s Ukraine does have little in common with the Republican platform. Ukraine is far from being a beacon of the progressive movement, but in the country that aspires to join the European Union and to escape the Russian sphere of influence, anti-liberal voices are in the margins. Politics is secular; reproductive rights are uncontroversial; a welfare state, free education and healthcare are basic norms; libertarianism is a fringe position.
Observing the new Trump administration from Kyiv is bewildering. In every society, people believe in conspiracies, but in Ukraine to promote such ideas means to be pro-Russian; now Robert Kennedy Jr, who openly denounces vaccines, may become the US health secretary. Ukrainian female veterans lobbied hard so that Ukrainian women could fight in certain combat positions—as snipers, for example. Meanwhile, Trump’s pick for defence secretary Pete Hegseth has said women should not serve in combat roles at all.
Ukrainian officials, including the prime minister, have expressed their readiness to work with the new US administration and have called Trump a “strong leader”. Flattery is, however, far from a strategy. The current task for Ukraine is to ensure it is in a position of strength when Trump forces it to negotiate with Moscow.
In late November, Keith Kellogg, Trump’s former foreign policy adviser and one of the major critics of Biden’s Ukraine policy, was appointed Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia. The 80 year-old retired general had travelled to Ukraine after the full-scale invasion, visiting Kyiv, Izyum and Odesa, and expressed his support. But in April this year he issued a paper through the America First Policy Institute titled “America First, Russia & Ukraine”, which encouraged opening diplomatic talks. He proposed freezing the front lines in their current position and taking Ukraine’s Nato accession off the table, but also giving the country weapons—and increasing military support if Russia refuses to negotiate. In the absence of any other substantial plan for negotiations, today it is read as a possible playbook.
The best option for Ukraine will likely be through Nato. Zelensky has said that Ukraine cannot retake all the territory held by Russia without stronger military support—but this support is nowhere on the horizon. However, with Nato membership, the collective defence guarantee could be applied to territory controlled by the Ukrainian government. This would be similar to how West Germany joined Nato in 1955.
Trump uses any opportunity to bash Nato—and to speak about abandoning the alliance rather than enlarging it—but this may be an opportunity for the US to move defence responsibilities on to European shoulders. Ukraine membership may find support in Europe too: after Trump’s second victory, it took time for European leaders to craft a clear message about what they would do if the US abandoned Ukraine, but the idea of inviting Ukraine to Nato under different conditions has not been dismissed.
Kyiv also argues for allowing Russian frozen assets (roughly $320bn, the lion’s share of it in Europe) to be given to Ukraine. Making Kyiv buy American weapons (instead of receiving defence aid) with Russian money via funds preserved in Europe may look like a great deal for Trump.
In the two months up until Trump’s inauguration, Kyiv will work with the Biden administration to strengthen its position on the battlefield. Recent months have been tough: in October, the Russian army occupied 500 square kilometres of Ukrainian land in the east, the biggest advance since March 2022.
For Ukraine, the military capability to strike Russian territory make the country safer—even when Moscow deploys nuclear blackmail, as it did when in November it used an intercontinental ballistic missile against Ukraine for the first time, hitting Dnipro, a town 80 miles away from the front line. Being able to strike Russia means Moscow won’t launch missiles from bases that are within range of western weapons, giving Ukrainian air defence a better chance of intercepting the attacks.
Russian escalation started before the US election. The Kremlin intensified attacks on the Ukrainian power grid, and missile strikes on Ukrainian towns have been more destructive over the past month. In late October, North Korean troops were deployed to the Russian region of Kursk to push out the Ukrainian military incursion there and ensure that this territory doesn’t become a bargaining chip for Ukraine. Without control over its own land Russia won’t be interested in freezing the front line.
The Trump team speaks about wars as a trade-off. In the case of Ukraine, that means Kyiv should make territorial concessions in return for Moscow ceasing attacks. However, for Moscow, this war has never been about Ukrainian territory. Putin wants to establish a new world order. Russia won’t dare to invade Nato members, but Putin wants countries outside of the alliance to be under his political umbrella.
Trump wants to reduce American costs and its presence in Europe and Asia. He wants Nato members and long-term US partners such as South Korea to pay for their own defence. This perfectly suits the Kremlin. (Ukraine has suggested that if it wins the war, the Ukrainian army will substitute American troops in Europe.)
Moscow’s demands for Ukraine are unchanged: Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia should stay under Moscow’s rule, Ukraine should not join Nato in the foreseeable future and, most importantly, Ukraine should be disarmed.
Neither America nor other western partners has so far made a security guarantee to Ukraine, which means that any territorial concession to Russia in return for a ceasefire would amount to nothing but unconditional surrender. Living with war, with missile strikes, with the deaths of Ukrainian soldiers and the loss of some towns and villages, seems preferable to living under Russian occupation while Moscow strengthens its war machine to destroy Ukraine later.
For the past year Ukraine has been strengthening its defence sector, and on 9th November Zelensky announced that the country had produced over a hundred rockets—but this is far from sufficient. The current level of western support does not allow Ukraine to win the war but it does preserve a level of normalcy for millions of people. Air defences have shot down most Russian missiles, and the Ukrainian state is functioning: banks, hospitals and schools are open, and people further from the front line live their lives. But without greater support, Ukraine will be able to defend fewer of its cities, and more civilians and soldiers will die—and more residents will leave the country.
Ukraine will do what it takes to avoid total withdrawal of support, hoping that sooner or later it will become clear to the rest of the world that agreeing to Russian conditions will prolong the war, rather than end it. While talks between Trump and Putin may last for months, Kyiv will be pre-emptively reaching out to the Republicans, including the Maga camp, so they at least understand that withdrawing support from Ukraine and a rapid deterioration of the situation on the front line may damage the US’s standing as a reliable partner among its allies.
Trump hates losers and prefers strong guys. The sudden fall of the Assad regime in Syria, backed by Russia for over a decade, indicates the Kremlin is not all-powerful and invincible. And we Ukrainians see ourselves as the strong guys, no matter what western experts write: a nation with limited resources capable of confronting a nuclear power while the Kremlin, with all its funds, has been unable to defeat a smaller country for the last three years.
Russia’s permanent strategy is to shake the west and reduce global support for Ukraine. For Ukrainians, the permanent task is not to let Moscow succeed.
