‘Ukraine’s very existence is at stake’: Zelenskyy enters the US election

Kyiv, Ukraine – When Russia invaded Ukraine, President Joe Biden launched an unflinching attack on his Russian counterpart.

“Putin is the aggressor,” he said of Ukraine’s worst enemy, now one of the world’s most isolated leaders. “Putin chose this war. And now he and his country will bear the consequences.”

During that speech at the White House on February 24, 2022, he called out Putin by name more than a dozen times.

Last week, in stark contrast, Biden’s Republican predecessor Donald Trump bragged that he enjoyed a “very good” relationship with Putin. He has previously called the Russian assault on Ukraine “genius” and described Putin as “smart”.

As the United States gears up for an election that will usher in a new president, Ukraine is stepping into the race.

Last week, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met the two main hopefuls, as well as Biden, and pitched his “victory plan“.

An aide to Zelenskyy told Al Jazeera that his boss and administration could not openly endorse a candidate, despite their political preferences.

“We need to be pragmatic, we can’t play favourites. Our very statehood, Ukraine’s very existence is at stake,” the aide told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, a particularly diplomatic response.

But Trump cannot be described as reciprocally diplomatic when it comes to Ukraine. He was first impeached over his pressure on Kyiv, has touted a vague “peace plan” to end the Russia-Ukraine war, and has threatened to halt US aid to Ukraine if elected. While openly admiring Putin, he has derided Zelenskyy.

Even so, some observers say Trump could end the war, as opposed to his rival, the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

“Harris is about the tactic of ‘slowly boiling the frog’, ie, exhausting Russia without an escalation on the global level. The problem is that Ukraine is being exhausted along with Russia,” Kyiv-based analyst Aleksey Kushch told Al Jazeera.

He said Trump’s “peace plan” would work better.

Trump’s advisers suggest ending the war by supplying advanced arms to Kyiv if Moscow does not want peace talks – or by weaning Ukraine off the US military aid altogether if Zelenskyy refuses to powwow.

“Trump is about the search for a fast decision – either peace or an abrupt upping of the ante with supplies of new advanced weaponry to Ukraine,” Kushch said.

‘Predictable Harris’

Harris, currently Joe Biden’s vice president, may continue the White House’s steady yet cautious aid. The question of Ukraine using advanced Western arms to attack deep in Russia, Kyiv’s most urgent demand, remains unanswered. Ukraine believes long-range missile strikes will put it in a better position at the negotiating table.

To one of Ukraine’s top military analysts, Harris is the preferred option.

“A predictable Harris is closer situation-wise than an unpredictable Trump,” General Lieutenant Ihor Romanenko, former deputy chief of the General Staff of Armed Forces, told Al Jazeera.

He dismissed Trump’s “peace plan”, saying if the US aid is halted, Kyiv may be forced to stop resisting Russia: “We will. But on what conditions? With what perspectives?”

Democratic presidential nominee and US Vice President Kamala Harris met with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus in Washington [File: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via Reuters]

Romanenko hopes that after almost three years of Biden’s indecision, Harris will let Kyiv use Western long-range missiles and fighter jets to attack Russian military airfields, bases and supply hubs and thus limit Russia’s use of missiles and gliding bombs.

“We hope that in terms of decisiveness and courage she will go farther than Biden,” Romanenko said.

Last week, playing favourites, as the Ukrainian presidential aide put it, may have seemed easy.

Addressing supporters on Wednesday, Trump jeered at Zelenskyy for “refusing to make a deal” with Putin.

He claimed that Ukraine should have “given up a little bit and everybody would be living”.

Trump declared that Zelenskyy was “making nasty little aspersions towards your favourite president – me”.

“We continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal – Zelenskyy,” he added.

The denigrating tone contradicted Trump’s promise to keep supporting Kyiv expressed during his phone conversation with Zelenskyy in July.

Apparently, the “aspersion” was Zelenskyy’s visit to an ammunition factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Biden’s hometown, four days earlier.

Zelenskyy was chaperoned by Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor Josh Shapiro who supports Harris – and seeks the votes of Pennsylvanians of Eastern European origin, a sizeable minority in the key swing state.

US House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, accused Zelenskyy of “election interference” and urged him to fire his ambassador to the US for “organising a partisan campaign”.

Another source of Trump’s ire at Zelenskyy may have been a New Yorker article in which Zelenskyy said that Trump “doesn’t really know how to stop the war even if he might think he knows how”.

Zelenskyy was also quoted as saying that Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance, an ultraconservative vocally opposed to aiding Kyiv, is “too radical” and willing to “give up” Ukraine’s territories to Russia.

Courting the Democrats

Harris lambasted Trump’s diatribe as “proposals for surrender” during her brief meeting with Zelenskyy.

She said Trump’s proposal was similar to Putin’s suggestion to stop the war if Kyiv agrees to recognise occupied areas as part of Russia – and cedes more areas in the east and south to Moscow.

But Zelenskyy’s relationship with Harris has been complicated.

They first met at a security conference in Munich in February 2022, just days before the full-scale invasion began.

Zelenskyy urged Harris to impose “pre-emptive” sanctions on Moscow and supply advanced weaponry to Kyiv, but she turned him down, Time magazine claimed in July.

On Thursday, Zelenskyy also met with Biden, and the outgoing president pledged to “stand by you every step of the way”.

Biden also ordered the allocation of all the approved aid to Ukraine before he leaves office.

Zelenskyy then met with Trump on Friday, when the ex-US president made a characteristically chameleonic move, appearing to warm to the Ukrainian leader.

Trump reiterated his pledge to end the war “quickly”.

“We have a very good relationship,” Trump said standing next to the Ukrainian leader.

But he also underlined his “very good relationship, as you know, with President Putin”.

“If we win [the November 5 vote], I think we’re going to get it resolved very quickly,” said Trump.

Calling their relationship “good” feels far-fetched.

In 2019, Trump froze $390m in aid while pressuring Zelenskyy to investigate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, who had worked for Burisma, a natural gas producer allegedly implicated in corruption schemes.

Although the Zelenskyy-appointed prosecutor-general did not investigate Biden, Zelenskyy never publicly criticised Trump’s pressure even after it triggered his first impeachment in December 2019.

‘Trump fooling around on the podium’

Back in Ukraine, Trump’s taunting of Zelenskyy enraged many.

“He has the mind of a spoiled teenager, he twists everything in his favour. He’s unpredictable and dangerous to the US, to Ukraine, to the whole world,” Maxim, a 37-year-old serviceman, told Al Jazeera.

Trump’s Wednesday rant was a classic example of victim-blaming, according to Svetlana Chunikhina, vice president of the Association of Political Psychologists of Ukraine, a group in Kyiv.

“Here’s Trump fooling around on the podium claiming that the war in Ukraine has been going on for three years because Zelenskyy doesn’t make a deal, and Biden is mainlining him with money and arms,” she told Al Jazeera.

“That’s why Ukraine is in ruins – not because Putin’s f***wits rain bombs and missiles on living people,” she said. “It is, of course, safer to kick the victim than the aggressor.”