Behind Closed Doors, Ukraine Anxiously Watched the US Election Unfold

Much of the official messaging since the war began has been that Ukraine must—no, will—regain its territory, including Crimea. On my last reporting trip in Kyiv almost exactly a year ago, government radio programs were discussing the imminent seizure of Crimea, that Crimea would be taken within the next few weeks. That never happened and, by any reasonable measure, was never close to happening, but it nevertheless dominated official programming. Now close to three years on, reports of war fatigue have plagued the Ukrainian government. The military is struggling to find new conscripts, and a counterinsurgency fizzled out earlier this year.

As the pessimism grew in the room, Anderson asked, “Am I the only one at this table that believes in Ukrainian victory?”

Anastasiia Kuchma, from Lviv, said that Ukrainians are interested in the US election for how it will determine aid to Ukraine. She hoped that Harris would win, but explained that Ukrainians are frustrated by the Democratic Party. Under Barack Obama, Crimea was annexed, under Biden, the invasion began and has not ceased. “But we also know that Trump is not dependable,” she said. “He can say one thing and do another or do one thing and say another.”

A young man who gave his name as Ivan explained that people have been talking about the election, though they weren’t expecting to care this much when the war began. “In this country we have no politics because of the war,” he said. “At the beginning of the war, we had the thought that the US election was in three years, so we were pretty confident that the war would end by now and I feel quite sad that we are still in this difficult situation.”

Some view the way to Trump’s heart is with a classic pro-American pitch that pits Ukraine as a defense against the United States’s classic enemies. The morning that the results had come in, officials were already eager to display admiration for Trump—who is known to be most easily persuaded by flattery. On popular Ukrainian morning show Snidanok, former foreign affairs minister Dmytro Kuleba listed five positive lessons from Trump’s win, which included a message that Europe will now need to be more responsible for its own defense, which will open new pathways of cooperation for Ukraine across the EU.

This bipartisan approach has meant that some Ukrainian officials have been courting the Republicans long before the 2024 election. At his offices near the parliament, Maryan Zablotskyy, sent messages to US colleagues to push forward with a plan to build a Ronald Reagan statue. He says he wants it to be made from the melted metal of a destroyed Russian tank that attacked Kyiv. A member of the US-Ukraine working parliamentary group, Zablotskyy’s office has a framed photograph of Reagan, and next to it a photo depicting Félix Rodriguez holding a withered Che Guevara captive, just an hour before Rodriguez assassinated him. The photograph was gifted to Zablotskyy by Rodriguez himself.

Zabloskyy talks about the conflict in the language of the Cold War. “It is a fact that we are not just fighting against Russia but also North Korea and Iran, and they are enemies of the United States” he said. “If you’re just being pro-American and you want to establish a balance of powers, you cannot allow this axis of evil win in Ukraine.” He saw no difference between Harris and Trump “in terms of Ukraine policy” in the lead-up to the election.

“There may have been more pro-Ukrainian comments from Democrats, but less pro-Ukrainian actions,” Zabloskyy said. “And there have been maybe not so loving comments from Republicans, but much more affirmative actions.” He cited Trump’s sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, without mentioning that said pipeline was ushered into existence by Trump’s own first secretary of state Rex Tillerson in 2017, despite warnings from the previous Obama administration. He also cited that President Biden repealed the sanctions, also without mentioning that Trump had placed sanctions only after the project reached 90 percent completion during his presidency, which angered US allies in Europe and which Biden rolled back to rebuild the European relations that Trump had damaged.

But when it came to the idea of Trump pressuring Ukraine to meet Russia’s demands in a hypothetical peace deal, Zablotskyy was adamant. “When Russians say peace, they mean capitulation,” he said. “We are not going to accept that under any circumstances.”

Overall, Ukrainians are mostly eager to communicate that they are reluctant to give into despair. They are deeply invested in the US election, but not for one candidate over another—at least not publicly.

For Mariia Didkovska, a student at the National University in Kyiv and the project coordinator for the Institute of American Studies, an NGO and think tank founded in April 2023, the message is that Ukraine must be ready to explore all avenues possible to continue this increasingly bleak war. There is little room for hopelessness.

“We need a two-party approach, that things are not black and white,” she said. To explain this relentless optimism, she explained that on Sunday a rocket launched by Russia blew out the windows of her department, the Institute of International Relations and Journalism. She and other students came to help clean the glass. “Our faculty has told us to be positive, and that we will continue our studies. Because they know that we will need educated people, no matter what happens here,” she said.

“To be optimistic is our only way to survive.”