Ukraine’s jittery new reality: ‘Work with Trump and hope for the best’

Ivan Maschenko kneels down to brush two fingers across the framed portrait of his son Oleksii, who died in battle last year defending Ukraine against Russia’s invasion force.

“Of course we all want this war to end, but when [former President Donald] Trump says he can end it in two days, it is not real,” Mr. Maschenko says, surveying the vast monument to Ukraine’s war dead that has sprung up in Kyiv’s central Maidan Square.

“Our only hope now that he will be back in power is that he will change his position on supporting Ukraine, and change for the best.”

Like most Ukrainians, Mr. Maschenko had been following the U.S. presidential election almost as if it were his own. Before Wednesday morning, many people across Ukraine’s capital expressed nervously a sense that their country’s future hung in the balance of an election in which they had no say.

Like many of his compatriots, Mr. Maschenko asserts that what happens in Ukraine matters for the world, and so it must matter to a great power like the United States.

“If the world wants democracy and order,” he says, “then it must support Ukraine. If [Russian President Vladimir] Putin wins,” he adds, “he will not stop here and he will march to all of Europe.”

And yet, as he and his sister Olena and nephew Timur visit the makeshift monument’s narrow dirt pathways through thousands of tiny Ukrainian flags, he is already resigned to the fact that Mr. Trump will return to the White House. And he says it’s time to move forward with this new reality.

Ukraine has no choice, he says, but to “work with Trump and hope for the best.”

That sentiment is found elsewhere across the city, as Kyiv adjusts to the seismic shift away from President Joe Biden’s “as long as it takes” support and back to President Trump’s “friendship” with Mr. Putin and promises of a rapid end to the war.

Mr. Trump’s election “means we will have to work hard to communicate with a part of America that we were ignoring before,” said Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, speaking Wednesday morning on a postelection panel at the Kyiv State School of Administration. “Regardless of our position, we have to learn to work with both sides of the U.S. political spectrum,” she said.

“I don’t want to lose Ukraine”

Such realism pervaded the panel taking place in a school conference room rebaptized “Pennsylvania” for the occasion.

“With Trump, we will need to learn to differentiate the rhetoric from the action,” said parliament member Yehor Cherniev.

“We should remember that it was Trump in his first term who first sent arms to Ukraine; it wasn’t [President Barack] Obama,” he told his audience. “In fact, Trump can be a pragmatic person, even though he sounds like a quite extreme person sometimes.”

Yet for all the morning-after realism for some, many Ukrainians remain apprehensive about an election they have been glued to for months – the outcome of which leaves them fearful.

“I don’t want to lose Ukraine, but what we hear from the television analysts is that with Trump we will lose the war, and then Russia will take Ukraine from us,” says Tetiana Hrabchak, who tends her stall of traditional Ukrainian embroidered clothing at the Soviet-era Zhytnyi market.

Noting that her heart wanted “Kamala” while her head told her it would be Mr. Trump, Ms. Hrabchak says, “All we can do now is hope for the best for Ukraine.”

Yet many vendors along the rows of vegetables, pickled products, and dried fish are quick to point out that while the impact of the U.S. election is likely to be felt intensely in Ukraine, it is also true that what happens in Ukraine matters to the world.

“We know Trump would help Russia – he says he is the friend of Putin – and that would be bad for the world,” says Volodymyr Polchenko, who sells a variety of pumpkins at his market stall. “[Putin] would only feel more powerful to attack other countries.”

Global risks

Still, the vendors of Zhytnyi market are not of one mind.

“Trump is a true American, but this Kamala is a globalist,” says Bessarion Gabelashvili, a Georgian Ukrainian who with his wife, Elida, sells typical Georgian breads and baked goods. “And don’t forget there were no wars under Trump. Trump is a strong man,” he adds, “and a strong America is good for the world.”

Yet others cite more worrisome reasons the Trump impact on Russia’s war in Ukraine poses grave risks for the world.

“It’s not right that one country can invade another country and succeed in taking it, or even part of it,” says Ivan, bundled up against the cold of an outside café in Kyiv’s trendy Zoloti Vorota district. Like others interviewed, Ivan gave only his first name.

“If that can be possible it means all the security agreements are useless, but we know Trump is for a cease-fire that would leave Russia with our land,” adds Ivan, a marketing student who works part time at a McDonald’s. “Over time that will not be good for America, and it won’t be good for world security.”

His girlfriend, Sofia, who studies psychology in Kharkiv, says the world needs to remember that the war is not just a conflict over land. It has become a conflict between America and Russia and the worldview that each big power represents.

She also invokes global food security. “Ukraine is a breadbasket of the world,” she says, “but Russia wants to stop Ukraine from sending its food production to the world.” That’s another way that “Ukraine matters.”

Others go even bigger picture.

“What’s at stake here is the liberal international order that is beneficial to the United States,” says Ivan Homza, a professor of public policy at the Kyiv School of Economics. Noting that Mr. Trump has long railed against the cost of supporting that system of allies and international security and economic institutions, he adds, “Yes, it costs [the U.S.], but it also benefits [the U.S.] well beyond those costs.”

“We need more friends”

On another floor of the Kyiv School of Economics, the debate club is taking up the U.S. election.

“This election is such an important topic for us,” says club deputy head Victoriia Hermanchuk. “I have friends with relatives on the front lines. For parents with children and the students here, they all want to know about the scenarios for our future.”

One lesson Ukraine should learn from its national anxiety over the U.S. election, some say, is that Ukraine should not be so dependent on one country.

“We need to find more friends, maybe in Asia,” says Vadym Chaplyhin, from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city just 20 miles from the Russian border. “I know Putin is not our friend; it’s Putin who is killing our children,” he says. “So how can I trust a man who is the friend of our worst enemy?”

Another student chimes in on how he sees a Trump victory.

“We all know there are many people who want to end this war, even if it means we need to give some territory to Russia. I think those people might be for Trump,” says Serhii Maiboroda, who offers the common argument that if Ukraine gives up territory to Mr. Putin now, the Russians will be back to take more land, even in other countries, and Ukraine will have to fight again.

“So for us this election is a huge, huge thing, but I think for the world, too,” he says. “This is like a line [drawn]: Will the world have more democracy – or will it have more totalitarianism?”

Oleksandr Naselenko contributed to reporting this story.