Vice President Kamala Harris is meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a visit to the United States, while former President Donald Trump is not, underscoring a growing partisan divide over a key foreign policy issue.
Harris is scheduled to meet with Zelensky at the White House on Thursday. Trump will not meet with him while he is in the country for the United Nations General Assembly this week, and he has been increasingly critical of Zelensky, accusing him of being his favorite in the upcoming election.
Trump said Wednesday in North Carolina: “The president of Ukraine is in our country and he’s making little nasty remarks about me, your beloved president. “He went to Ukraine. It’s not Ukraine anymore. … Any deal, even the worst deal, would be better than what we have now.”
Zelensky had planned to meet with Trump this week, but Trump’s campaign said there was no formal agreement for a meeting.
Trump has said for months, and repeated more often at rallies this week, that he would immediately end the war in Ukraine — even on terms favorable to Moscow — and he dismissed Zelensky as a “big sell.” money for his country, which wants the Democrats to win “badly” to keep the money flowing.
“Every time Zelensky comes to the United States, he leaves with $100 billion,” Trump said in Georgia on Tuesday. “I think he’s the greatest salesman on earth. But if I am not the president, we are stuck in this war.”
Trump and Zelensky have a complicated past. The House of Representatives impeached Trump in 2019 after details emerged of a call in which he asked Zelensky to conduct dirty searches on Joe Biden and his son Hunter. As the possibility of Trump’s return to power becomes more real, Zelensky does appeared to be treading carefully When discussing Trump or responding to his criticisms.
After Russia invaded Congress in 2022, Ukraine received mostly bipartisan support for Congress. Biden has stepped up his efforts to gather allies internationally to support Ukraine, which has become a long war. But some Republicans are skeptical that continued support for the war effort will increase.
If elected, Harris said he would continue America’s support.
Without strong support from the United States, it may be difficult for Ukraine to continue its fight against Russia.
The partisan divide grew this week after Zelenskyy visited an ammunition factory in Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Republicans also took issue with Zelensky’s recent comments The New Yorker where he called Trump’s nominee, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, “too radical” and said Russian President Vladimir Putin should “read the history of World War II” to understand why he shouldn’t be appeased. .
“My feeling is that Trump doesn’t know how to stop a war, even if he thinks he does,” Zelensky added.
Vance also came under scrutiny for his suggestions on how to end the war. In a recent podcast interview, he raised the possibility of a demilitarized zone as part of a “peace settlement” that includes guarantees of neutrality.
Zelensky said that this is equivalent to forcing Ukraine to give its territory to Russia.
“His message seems to be that Ukraine has to make sacrifices,” Zelensky told The New Yorker. “This brings us back to the question of costs and who bears it. The idea that the world is ending this war at the expense of Ukraine is unacceptable.”
Trump’s campaign said Vance’s comments “should not be taken as a concrete proposal by President Trump” and merely “speaks to concepts that may be part of a comprehensive plan” to end the war.
But when asked if he believed Ukraine should cede land in exchange for ending the war, Vance told NBC News on Wednesday that he wouldn’t rule anything out at this early stage. “Everything will be on the table,” he said.
Republicans have criticized Zelenskiy for going to a swing state and appearing there alongside Democrats.
“Zelensky showing up at that Scranton arsenal with Casey and Cartwright was a real tactical blunder, as he appears to be joining their re-election fit-stop tour,” said Reid Smith, vice president for foreign policy. at Stand Together, a nonprofit libertarian organization founded by Charles Koch. “At the very least, he’s betting that there will be a Democratic majority in the Senate and that Harris will keep Biden in office in terms of his policies on Ukraine.”
Zelenskiy was joined on his visit to Scranton by Sen. Bob Casey and Rep. Matt Cartwright, both Democrats.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Trump ally who helped fund Ukraine through House mediation, sent a letter to Zelensky “demanding the immediate firing” of Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States over his trip to Pennsylvania.
“The facility was in a politically contentious battleground, run by Kamala Harris’ top political surrogate, and failed to include a single Republican because — purposefully — no Republicans were invited,” Johnson wrote. “The tour was clearly a partisan campaign designed to help Democrats and is clearly election interference. This short-sighted and deliberate political move caused Republicans to lose confidence in the ambassador [Oksana] Markarova”.
Johnson has met frequently with Zelenskyy, but he said on Wednesday he could not find time this week due to scheduling conflicts.
Meanwhile, Biden said in his speech at the UN General Assembly that the West should continue its determination to fight Russian expansionism.
“We don’t get tired. We cannot look away and we will not stop supporting Ukraine,” he said.
Harris echoed this message, He tells Zelensky “We’ll be with you as long as it takes” in February.
Trump has a long history of praising Putin, and on his first day back in the White House he has vowed to end the war, though he declined to say whether or not he wanted Kiev to win.
“I want the war to stop,” Trump pressed Harris during his only debate. “I want to save lives,” he said, adding that “millions” had died in the conflict.
A senior Trump administration official echoed Trump, saying the terms of any future settlement deal are getting tougher by the day. The former official said: “Any diplomatic conversation will not be a conversation that both sides will be happy with.”
How Harris will lead the conflict remains unclear. His national security team is led by Philip Gordon, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs during the Obama administration’s efforts to engage more constructively with Russia, repair relations and reverse what Obama called a “dangerous slide.”
But Harris warned in the debate that without US support for Ukraine, Putin would be “sitting in Kiev with his eyes on the rest of Europe” and he said Trump would simply “give in” to Russia. Democratic criticism of Trump’s stance on Ukraine has often nodded to years of suggestions that he owes Putin and is unwilling to cross him.
“We’re not like Americans,” he said, pointing to the 800,000 Polish-American vote in Pennsylvania, roughly 10 times the margin Biden won in 2020 and 20 times Trump’s. Margin of victory in 2016.
Poland is one of Russia’s strongest rivals, and Harris has supporters run ads specifically targeting Polish Americans. NBC News reported that Trump and Polish President Andrzej Duda were to visit a Catholic shrine together last Sunday, but the visit was canceled due to logistical reasons, according to a campaign source familiar with the planning.
But Harris did not elaborate on many details about how he would oversee the war effort as president, especially if Republicans in Congress lose their appetite for approving more funds for the country.
Some outside the administration argue that despite the fiery campaign rhetoric, Harris may also be looking for ways to help end the war amid the stark political realities a future Harris administration will face.
“I think they understand that having an endless war on NATO’s eastern flank is not in the alliance’s permanent interests, nor, frankly, in America’s interests,” Smith said of Together.