CNN
—
Bets were hedged, upsides conjured up and insurance policies created. But in the end, most people hoped it wouldn’t happen.
For months, Ukraine and its NATO allies have had to entertain the idea of a Trump victory, juggling the conceit of a strongman in the US president who can be an even tougher ally, a dealmaker who can create a favorable peace, or new eyes that can see a new end to a grueling war.
This was just a comforting fiction: The road ahead for Kyiv is extremely hard. There should be no lasting mystery about what a Trump presidency means for Ukraine. Donald Trump has said he would end the war “in 24 hours,” but not how. He also said that “Zelensky should never have let that war start,” calling him “one of the biggest salesmen I’ve ever seen” who receives $100 billion every time he visits Congress.
As of this morning, the fact that these statements are wild exaggerations ceased to matter. They became the warped lens through which the president-elect of the United States will perceive the greatest conflict in Europe since the Nazis. Trump may appoint a cabinet that gently adjusts the pace or tone of his instincts, but ultimately he wants out. Never mind that Ukraine’s war has strategically so far provided the Pentagon with a comparatively inexpensive way to humiliate its second-largest adversary at no cost to American life. It’s an anathema to two of Trump’s first-term dislikes: costly U.S. military involvement abroad and exasperated Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin’s initial response—that U.S.-Russia relations could not get worse than they are now under President Joe Biden—certainly belies the joy. The year that came was for Russia, according to most analyses, a cautious gamble. Moscow has stationed forces on the hills around Ukraine’s military hubs in the Donbas – near Pokrovsk, Kurakhove, Chasiv Yar – to enable this winter’s punitive push by Kiev out of the Donetsk region.
Success in Donetsk could leave the path to major cities like Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia wide open, making the Ukrainian capital suddenly very vulnerable and likely tipping the scales for war. Still, the clock has ticked on Russia’s efforts. Western officials have suggested that the casualty rate — of perhaps 1,200 killed or wounded a day — is unsustainable without another large, unpopular Russian mobilization, and that next year Moscow could see a real crisis in armor production and ammunition.
Putin played the last few cards in the hope that Trump would win, confident that he would remain a man of instinct – isolationist and distrustful of America’s long-term alliances.
Trump is erratic and unpredictable, especially with complex and time-consuming issues like foreign conflicts. He prefers the quick fix of just leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban, or a Singapore face-to-face with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, or a drone strike on Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qasem Soleimani. We may never learn if he really studied the direction he is imposing on Ukraine, or if he just never wants to talk about the war again or spend money on it.
Regardless of the speed or detail of Trump’s approach, the damage will still be palpable in the coming weeks. I remember last December the massive blow to morale among Ukrainian troops when Congress halted US military aid for about six months. Frontline troops told me they would have to flee their positions without that help, even though they knew the Biden administration still wanted — in principle — their backs. Now they have to deal with the flip side: the possibility that some aid is still trickling through from the Pentagon and European NATO allies, but that the Trump administration has instead adopted a hostile posture at Kiev’s backbone.
In addition, Trump enters the White House at perhaps the most dangerous time for Kiev since the beginning of the war. Multiple analyzes of the frontline show that Ukraine has lost ground at an almost unprecedented rate in October; losing small villages that are unimportant in themselves, but in the round mean a strategic setback that makes the East acutely vulnerable.
There has long been a political flaw in NATO’s strategy; The Biden administration did not want to arm Ukraine powerfully enough to defeat Russia militarily, fearing a wider escalation. But Biden also could not accept to let Russia win. Instead, the alliance allowed Ukraine to endure, hoping that Putin would eventually fall apart. That was the messy contradiction at the heart of support for Kiev, but better than asking Ukraine to capitulate.
Without the will to fight – the belief that the battle is winnable – it is almost impossible to ask Ukrainians to sit under shell fire in a trench, or drive their armor against the deadly fire of the enemy. No one wants to be the last soldier to die in a war; no one wants to lose their life in battle to protect a family that will likely live under Russian occupation anyway.
Trump’s victory could also complicate the position itself for Zelensky. For years, Zelensky — to paraphrase Trump — has primarily been an outstanding salesman of Ukraine’s cause. Now he is weighed down by enormous baggage from Trump’s first term when he was involved in Trump’s requests to investigate the Biden family. Can Zelensky still be that salesman? Is a new face in Bankova more likely to procure military aid or strike a lasting peace deal?
Those weary of the war in Ukraine – whether allies in Kiev or front-line soldiers – should still not embrace the idea of a Trump-backed deal. Moscow has proven, in Syria in 2013 and Ukraine in 2015, that it negotiates to buy time to prepare for or fulfill its military objectives. Putin will accept whatever territorial gains he can materialize – the gains he already has on the negotiating table. But he will then regroup, and not stop. He has sold the war internally that Russia is facing to the united ranks of the entire NATO alliance. An overheated Russian economy, astronomical death tolls and restructuring of Russia’s industrial base, all in service of the alleged struggle, cannot be easily remade. Putin increasingly needs the war to maintain his grip on power.
This is evident in his maximalist behavior towards Russia’s neighbors over the past month. The recent turmoil in Georgia and Moldova, where pro-Russian forces have challenged pro-European movements with limited success, could see even greater intervention from Russia in the coming months. Putin is unlikely to suddenly abandon his hunger for greater regional influence. Remember his original rationale: This war started because he wanted to occupy Ukraine and keep it out of NATO and the European Union. The Russian blood that has been expended for nearly three years is likely to require a greater victory than simply maintaining the territorial gains it already has.
An important lesson of the war will meanwhile face a serious assault. For the past two years, Putin’s fiercest opponents have pushed the key idea that we no longer need to fear Russia; that the Kremlin stoked fear of its huge bear as a psychological weapon to compensate for its military decline. Ukraine’s unexpected resistance showed that fears were misplaced and that Moscow had struggled to defeat a neighbor it once despised as unable to fight.
Now a Trump White House could be asking the world to quickly swallow a seemingly similar claim that is frighteningly different: that the West should not be afraid of Russia because it doesn’t really mean much harm. It would be Putin’s greatest victory and the West’s worst weakness.
