Many countries keep an eye on US presidential races, but none are more at risk than the people of Ukraine. For them, the result could mean how their war with Russia will end, and their leaders have spent months seeking the support of both candidates. The effort, culminating in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to the US this week, has involved priests and billionaires, high-paid lobbyists, and a former British prime minister.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Since Sunday, when Zelensky arrived to begin his trip, some officials in his party appeared to be playing down their expectations. Regardless of who wins in November, one of them told me, “things are going to be bad for us.”
In their view, the victory of Kamala Harris may extend the policies of the administration of Biden, Zelensky and his advisers who see as excessive caution and indecisiveness in the fight against Russia. Trump’s victory, meanwhile, presents both risks and opportunities for Ukrainians, according to four people familiar with their contacts with the candidates.
“There is a level of optimism about Trump,” one of them told TIME in Kyiv ahead of Zelensky’s visit to the US, requesting anonymity to discuss the sensitive issues of wartime negotiations. “Of course we could be wrong. We don’t know how he will break up with the rest of the West. He might weaken it… But someone has to stop this fight, and Kamala Harris doesn’t seem like she can play that role. Trump in theory can take drastic measures, at least that’s our opinion. ”
This week, when Zelensky met with world leaders at the United Nations in New York, Trump’s speech turned on him, and he began mocking Zelensky at his campaign meetings. The attack surprised Ukrainians, because only two months earlier, during a warm phone call in July, Trump promised Zelensky that he would support Ukraine. “So who is the real Trump?” asked a member of the delegation going to the US with Zelensky this week. “It’s still an open question.”
Given how tight the US presidential race remains, Ukrainians can’t stop getting involved with either candidate. They have tried since the summer to build bridges with the Trump campaign, holding numerous meetings with top Republicans and former Trump administration officials. Among the most prominent has been Mike Pompeo, former CIA director and Secretary of State, who has expressed interest in joining Trump’s future administration. In recent months, he has met repeatedly with senior Ukrainian officials, helping them understand the dynamics of the US presidential race and the Trump campaign’s evolving nature of the war in Ukraine. In mid-September, Pompeo met with Zelensky in Kyiv and offered practical advice on how to advance Ukraine’s foreign policy: appeal to America’s interests, not its values.
“It should be good old-fashioned greed,” Pompeo told TIME in Kyiv after his meeting with Zelensky. “It has to be a good old-fashioned, commercial, profit-driven, incentive-creating, risk-taking, business model that brings that sustainable environment to Ukraine.” Applying for American assistance in protecting Ukraine’s democracy or its survival as a nation will not get Trump’s lasting support. “It won’t be a donor base,” Pompeo explained. “It’s not like, ‘Hey, we had a donor conference.’ That’s interesting, and it gets things going maybe. But they are not sustainable at all.”
In an effort to deliver that message to Trump and his supporters, some of Zelensky’s Republican allies pointed to the wealth of resources Ukraine could offer the US after the war. Senator Lindsey Graham, a friend of Trump, captured this point in a video she recorded with Zelensky in Kyiv earlier this month. “They’re sitting on three billion dollars in minerals that would be good for our economy,” said the North Carolina Republican. So I want to continue helping our friends in Ukraine.
Zelensky, who accepted that with a polite smile, has so far avoided these direct appeals to US economic interests, preferring to argue that Ukraine is defending not only itself but the entire free world from Russian aggression. He hoped to bring the dispute to Trump personally, and Trump said last week that he would “probably” meet with Zelensky during his visit to the U.S. Their parties discussed the idea of ​​a meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, according to two officials close to Zelensky. But Ukrainians brushed that aside, as it could be seen as an endorsement of the Trump campaign.
Instead, the Ukrainians asked to meet with Trump in a neutral place, for example, on the set of a US television network for a joint discussion. This election was still being discussed when Zelensky arrived in the US, according to one of the Ukrainian officials. But the first public event of the trip seemed to change the tone of these discussions. On Sunday, Zelensky visited a weapons factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the city where President Biden was born and raised.
Visiting the facility alongside the country’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, Zelensky expressed gratitude to all American workers who help produce Ukrainian weapons. But the sight of the visit angered Trump and his allies, and their talks about a possible meeting with Zelensky broke down. “It looks like he’s upset,” one Ukrainian official said of Trump. The problem, he added, seems to have been the choice of location: the birthplace of a US President who is in a hotly contested position.
On Monday, the day after Zelensky’s trip to Scranton, Trump held a rally in Pennsylvania, where he launched a new line of attack on the Ukrainian leader, calling him “the world’s greatest salesman” for managing to convince the US to send aid. Ukraine. Trump also told a crowd in Pennsylvania that Zelensky wants the Democrats to win in November: “He wants them to win this election badly.” The next day, at a rally in Georgia, Trump used the same line against Zelensky. “Every time he comes to the United States, he takes $100 billion with him,” he said, drawing boos from the crowd. “But we’re stuck in that war without me being president,” Trump added.
Such comments have caused concern among Ukrainian observers, including those within Zelensky’s party. However, they see no other option than to continue to try to lobby the Republican candidate and win his support. “Yes, we hear all this,” said one Ukrainian official close to Zelensky about Trump’s latest speech. “But we still have to try.” Their biggest hope, he added, is that Trump’s views on war are still uncertain, and that his unpredictable nature could leave room for his position to swing the path in Ukraine.
Back in Kyiv, Zelensky’s allies spent months trying to influence Trump’s views on war. Leaders of the country’s active Baptist community have repeatedly reached out to Trump’s evangelical allies on Capitol Hill, including House Speaker Mike Johnson. Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian billionaire who has good relations with the Zelensky administration, hired former Trump aide Kellyanne Conway as a lawyer in Washington for $50,000 a month. According to an official filing with the Justice Department, Conway will advise Pinchuk’s foundation on “the current state of opinion on Ukraine among US elected officials, candidates, experts and opinion leaders.” The lobbying agreement expires Nov. 14, about a week after Election Day, unless both sides agree to an extension.
In mid-September, about a week before Zelensky’s arrival in the US, Pinchuk held an annual conference in Kyiv that attracted many influential visitors from the US and Europe. While working on the show, Pinchuk urged Boris Johnson, the former British Prime Minister, to convince Trump to participate via a live video link. “Unfortunately, I completely failed to find that,” Johnson said at the conference.
Instead, Trump sent a short video message that he apparently filmed aboard his private jet while flying to a campaign event. “War with Russia and Ukraine would never have happened if I was president,” Trump said in the video, prompting a few gasps from the audience in Kyiv. “One of the first things I want to do is resolve that conflict with Russia and Ukraine.”
But he did not put forward any detailed plan to achieve that. Earlier this month, Trump’s ally, Senator JD Vance, proposed a “peaceful settlement” that would involve Ukraine giving up a large amount of territory occupied by Russia. “The current demarcation line between Russia and Ukraine, it’s like a no-go zone,” Vance said in a podcast that aired on September 11.
That idea of ​​ending the war alarmed many in Kyiv. “He’s very strong,” Zelensky said of Vance in an interview New Yorker. “For us, these are dangerous signs, coming from a potential Vice President.” He added: “I have to say that this has never been the case with Trump.” When Zelensky spoke with Trump in July—their first conversation since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022—the Ukrainian leader came away reassured. “His message was as good as it could be,” Zelensky said.
It encouraged Ukrainians to believe they could defeat Trump, or at least measure up to the ideas Vance brought to the Republican platform. But, as Zelensky admitted on the eve of his trip to the US this week, getting Trump to understand war will be a challenge enough. “My feeling is that Trump doesn’t really know how to stop the war or if he can think you know how,” he said New Yorker. “In this war, oftentimes, the deeper you look the less you understand.”
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