Beleaguered Ukrainians deplore unpalatable choices as U.S. votes

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KYIV, Ukraine — Americans who are unhappy with their choices in the presidential election should spend some time in Ukraine. The anxious nation doesn’t get to choose between a continuation of the Biden-Harris administration, which has been a source of mounting frustration, and a Trump administration, which promises perhaps more ominous policy shifts.

With battlefield losses mounting and Russia grinding away at defenses in Donbas, Ukrainians are looking on anxiously at the election in the U.S., its most critical ally. The result could decide the course of the country’s 2½-year-old war with Russia and seal its fate as an independent nation.

Ukrainians say overwhelmingly that they will spend Election Day glued to TV screens or their phones and wait with bated breath. The result of the presidential election will largely determine the fate of their besieged country and the security architecture of Europe for decades to come.

The inability to affect the outcome leaves many Ukrainians fatalistic despite their keen interest in the result.

“I honestly have no opinion,” said Yevhen, 28, an officer who, until recently, was 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 U.S. role in foreign policy are on offer. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022, former President Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, has criticized the tens of billions of dollars in U.S. economic and military aid sent 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.”

Mr. Trump has pledged to end the war before taking office in January but hasn’t explained how.

Ukrainians consider Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, Mr. Trump’s running mate, even more dangerous. Mr. Vance voted against the major U.S. aid package this year and remarked 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 many Ukrainians see as a capitulation and a Russian victory. Moscow would retain control over the territory it has seized, and Ukraine would be kept out of NATO and be left vulnerable to another Russian attack.

At the time, Oleksandr Merezhko, chairman of the Ukrainian parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, called the proposal “election rhetoric which will hardly stand the test of political reality.”

The ‘least bad’ option

The Ukrainian government has avoided any public endorsement. Mr. Zelenskyy met with both candidates during his September trip to the U.S., and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha recently said Kyiv was confident of continued American support regardless of the election result.

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, primarily because of the unpredictability of Mr. Trump and his self-proclaimed fondness for authoritarian leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Even so, many fear Ms. Harris’ foreign policy would dovetail with the Biden administration’s, which is considered slow, ineffectual and hamstrung by fear of escalation and a profound misunderstanding of Russia and 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 longtime 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 and White House restrictions on the use of U.S.-made weapons to strike targets within Russia have infuriated many Ukrainians.

“We’ve seen the Harris-Biden track record, which is pretty terrible, with that six months of just no aid whatsoever,” “Matthew” said. “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 last week, Mr. Zelenskyy said only a meager fraction of the American military aid approved by Congress this year had arrived, even as Kyiv faced an increasingly difficult situation on the battlefield in eastern and southern Ukraine.

The next day, Mr. Zelenskyy called out Western allies’ lack of response to North Korea’s deployment of thousands of troops to support Russia’s invasion. The stunning escalation has been met with a surprisingly muted response from the U.S. and Europe.

“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 said.

“The support is mostly theoretical and rhetorical, and that really is not helpful in any way,” “Matthew” said. “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 election will put more pressure on Ukraine to fight on its own.

“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 “Vitaliy,” a Defense Ministry employee who declined to give his full name for the record and who suggested the Biden administration had 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 said. “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.”