By: Sofia Tosello
Edited by: Constanza Grajales
After winning back the White House, Donald Trump placed a phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose is in the midst of an intensifying war against Russia. Following the call, Zelenskyy took to X, expressing his commitment to working with the 47th president of the United States to achieve a “just peace” Zelenskyy’s comments underscore his belief that America will continue to ensure the war-torn country does not concede land to Russian President Vladamir Putin. However, Trump’s long-standing attitude towards the notion of Ukrainian democracy and Biden’s rushing assistance to Ukraine in the waning days of his power challenge this optimistic outlook. In other words, with Donald Trump set to retake the White House in January 2025, the future of America’s support regarding the war in Ukraine, and thus the state’s autonomy, hangs in the balance.
Consistently reinforcing his desire to put “America first,” Trump has suggested a band-aid solution to Russia’s escalating war against Ukraine, failing to understand the conflict’s deep-historical roots and implications. Upon returning to the White House, Trump said he would end the war across the Atlantic in “24 hours.” Trump said he would bolster his chummy relationship with Putin to placate the Russian president and ask Ukraine to give up swaths of land, a concession that politicians in Kyiv deem unacceptable. In other words, rather than having discussions with stakeholders in the conflict and expert analysts, Trump would use pre-existing relationships and personal influence to ensure the conflict’s end.
The “America first” slogan Trump embodies means military aid to other countries such as Ukraine might take a hit under his leadership. America has widely funded the Ukrainian war effort, sending $64.1 billion in military assistence to the state since the spark of the conflict in February 2022. Cutting American aid to Ukraine would possibly force the state to Putin’s knees and impede its ability to join NATO. Joining NATO would protect Ukraine against future Russian aggression given its core principle, known as Article 5, that if one member gets attacked, the others are expected to come to their aid.
Trump’s seeming indifference towards the endurance of Ukrainian democracy is backdropped by the increasing intensity of the war despite its impetus . On the day of the election, Russia launched 71 airstrikes. The Russians, who’ve recently embroiled North Korea in the conflict, are advancing in the eastern Donbas region. Ukraine is not decisively winning the war which has led to demoralisation on the home front and in the trenches. In September, a former Ukrainian soldier named Dima told CNN that after battling Russian troops to no avail, he quit the military and took a job in an office in Kyiv—he loves Ukraine, but he’s sick of seeing his comrades die. That is not to undermine Ukrainians’ desire for an autonomous existence free of Russian despotism or legitimize Trump’s calls for ending the war at any cost, but to emphasize the need for nuanced solutions that can resolve the conflict while safeguarding the nation’s independent existence. The power vacuum Trump is poised to fill does nothing to guarantee this.
The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has deep historical roots Trump fails to grasp. During the early-modern era when leaders of the Grand Princedom of Moscow—a medieval state which came to be the seat of power in Russia—brought Ukrainian territory under its control, they also claimed its history. They claimed there existed an “all-Russian” people encompassing both White Russians and “Little Russians” or Ukrainians. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Russian tsarist regime bolstered this historical revisionism and suppressed Ukrainian nationalism, seeing it as both illegitimate and subversive to Russian state power. When the tsarist regime fell and Bolsheviks came to power, creating the Soviet Union, communist officials in Moscow continued to view Ukrainian nationalism as a threat to government power. Leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin imprisoned and murdered the Ukrainian intelligentsia and attempted to systematically starve the Ukrainian peasantry out of existence during the 1930s. Thus, the belief that an independent Ukrainian state should not and does not exist is entrenched among Russian leaders, including Putin. If Trump believes conceding some Ukrainian land to Putin will definitively end the conflict, this not only highlights alack of historical understanding but also reveals the intense degree of his shortsightedness and adherence to American isolationism.
The threat that Russia poses to not only Ukraine but world peace and security as a whole is further reinforced by Biden’s rushing assistance to Ukraine in the final months of his presidency. A senior administration official said that Biden plans to push forward aid to put Ukraine in the “strongest position possible,” transferring the nation $9 billion in military assistance. The notion that Ukraine needs to be put in an extremely strong military position before Trump’s inauguration suggests that this position could be undermined by his presidency.
It remains unclear what exactly a Trump presidency will mean for Ukrainian borders. However, foreboding messaging by the current president and the Republican’s persistent desire to focus entirely on domestic issues heightening the possibility of a future vulnerable Ukraine.
References:
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Image Source: U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Steven Adkins, https://www.usafe.af.mil/News/Photos/igphoto/2003193312/