Donald Trump’s resounding victory in last fortnight’s US presidential election hit Ukraine with the force of a Kalibr cruise missile. As we know, the former and future president is somewhere between an ardent admirer and begrudging critic of Vladimir Putin. His first impeachment (how long ago that now seems! How quaint!) came after a ham-fisted attempt to blackmail Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by threatening to withhold military assistance. In his first term, Trump preferred upbraiding America’s NATO allies to criticising its adversaries.
Even Zelenskyy’s mighty rhetorical gifts cannot obscure the blunt reality: on the current heading, Ukraine will lose this war, and be subject to peace of Putin’s choosing.
Trump’s transactional and, arguably, authoritarian instincts make him a dubious steward of the liberal international order at precisely the time Ukraine most needs a stalwart one. All these things are true. However, a second truth exists alongside it: many senior Ukrainian officials reacted to Trump’s win with relief.
The war has so far been prosecuted entirely under the aegis of a conventionally multilateral US president – Joe Biden. And it’s going badly. Ukraine has just suffered its worst month of territorial losses since 2022. As I write, Russian forces are advancing on the strategically important city of Kurakhove, in the Donetsk Oblast. In an echo of Hemingway’s old saw about going broke suddenly, then rapidly, Ukrainian generals fret about incremental Russian gains soon becoming large ones. Behind the frontlines, Ukrainian society is creaking under the strain. The country has only approximately one-third of its pre-war electricity generating capacity. Conscription quotas are not being met. There are persistent reports Ukraine’s soldiers are deserting their positions. Even Zelenskyy’s mighty rhetorical gifts cannot obscure the blunt reality: on the current heading, Ukraine will lose this war, and be subject to peace of Putin’s choosing.
In private, Zelenskyy’s staffers grumble about what they call the Biden administration’s “self-deterrence”. Most complaints centre on delays to already-promised aid. Zelenskyy recently claimed that only 10 per cent of the US aid earmarked for his country in the 2023–24 financial year had actually reached Ukraine. Context is partly exculpatory here. Although the executive branch of the US government has access to a special facility, known as the Presidential Drawdown Authority, it cannot simply hand over unlimited amounts of money with no Congressional oversight. Over the last year, as Ukraine has slipped down the White House’s list of priorities, more and more aid must be administered through (slower) formal procurement channels.
With winter approaching, and the United States about to re-enter an uncertain political era, Putin is likely to intensify his attacks on Ukraine’s military forces and energy infrastructure.
Zelenskyy must now gamble that the wildcard of Trump will be better than the somewhat underwhelming known quantity of Biden. He knows his country cannot win this war without significant American assistance. It is, in essence, a twofold gamble – both on Trump’s mercurial nature, and sentiment within his administration, and the Republican Party more broadly.
The early signs are ambivalent. Trump’s Vice President-elect, JD Vance, outlined a potential peace plan (involving the establishment of a demilitarised zone along current battle lines, Russia maintaining control of territory it has already annexed, and a “guarantee” of Ukrainian neutrality) that one could be forgiven for mistaking as Vladimir Putin’s. Yet Trump has named Senator Marco Rubio, a persistent China and Russia hawk, as his Secretary of State. It could just be proof that Rubio was the most effective supplicant. Or it could suggest that there is a live debate within the Republican Party about how to approach Ukraine.
Trump has already spoken with both Putin and Zelenskyy, with the Washington Post reporting that he advised the Russian leader to not use the impending handover of power as an opportunity to escalate the war. On the campaign trail, Trump made a typically bombastic claim that he would end the war within 24 hours. Just as typically, he has refused to elaborate on how – although one imagines that any peace that satisfies Moscow would anger Kyiv. Trump knows that, despite the war slipping from the front pages, he would be blamed if he were to sell out Ukraine.
However, we must be careful not to commit an error of analysis. Just because the Biden administration has not, and likely will not, be able to deliver on its promises to Ukraine, is no guarantee Trump will even be interested in doing the same. The most plausible explanation, as ever, is that Trump interprets success and failure through a narrow, mercantile lens. His gripes about NATO are principally that European members do not make sufficient financial contributions. Likewise, his eventual views on the merits of providing continued aid to Ukraine may hinge on which of his advisers does a better job of making the argument in dollar terms. With winter approaching, and the United States about to re-enter an uncertain political era, Putin is likely to intensify his attacks on Ukraine’s military forces and energy infrastructure. For Zelenskyy, the risks are obvious. But he has no choice but to gamble. The costs of not doing so would be catastrophic.
