Last month, Trump seemed to blame Zelensky for letting the conflict with Russia to begin and called him “one of the greatest salesmen I’ve ever seen.” But Trump also said that this does not mean “I don’t want to help him, because I feel very badly” for Ukrainians.

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Trump’s dealings with Zelensky and Ukraine at times has been complicated, dating back to 2019, when Trump cut off military aid to Ukraine. That’s also when he held a phone call with Zelensky, allegedly pressuring him to help in Trump’s reelection campaign, leading to his first impeachment.

In the run-up to Election Day, Zelensky also alienated Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, calling him “too radical” after he suggested that Ukraine should concede large parts of its territory to Russia and freeze current battle lines.

But some Ukrainian officials expressed hope that a change in power in Washington could work to Kyiv’s advantage. Although they have been vocally grateful for American support of Ukraine, they also have criticised the slow pace with which the Biden administration has released weapons and the restrictions placed on long-range strikes within Russian territory.

“Now that Trump has become president again, Ukraine becomes a matter of his success or failure. It’s now a personal matter,” said Oleksandr Merezhko, chairman of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee.

“He doesn’t want it to be said in the future that ‘on his watch,’ he lost Ukraine. This is now his personal story, and it will be one of the markers of whether he will be a successful president and go down in history or not,” Merezhko said.

Merezhko said that in general, Trump has been more supportive of Ukraine than President Barack Obama, who barred Kyiv from receiving lethal American weapons when he was in office.

But Ukrainian officials also acknowledge they must identify arguments to win Trump over and convince him to back Ukraine. With his election, US policy could become more transactional.

“The logic of geopolitics will look different,” Pavlo Klimkin, Ukraine’s former foreign minister, told Ukrainian NV radio, adding, that “being a businessman, Trump views geopolitics as a ‘You give me this, I give you that’ exchange.”

Ukrainian opposition parliament deputy Oleksiy Honcharenko said the world is moving “from a rules-based international order to a deals-based international order, [and] under Donald Trump, the global order will be based not on rules but on agreements.”

What Ukraine would be able to offer Trump is an open question. And Russian President Vladimir Putin will also be making arguments and offering proposals.

Ukraine “must stop appealing to values and such and instead demonstrate what we have and why we are needed,” Honcharenko wrote on Telegram. “And we do have something: one of the world’s best armies, a key role in the global food market, technologies – primarily military – and resources,” he wrote.

Washington Post