Europe will need to rethink its support of Ukraine if Donald Trump is elected president of the United States, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Sunday, as the continent “will not be able to bear the burdens of the war alone”.
Orban opposes military aid to Ukraine and has made clear he thinks Trump shares his views and would negotiate a peace settlement for Ukraine.
He backs former president Trump, the Republic candidate, to beat Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in Tuesday’s U.S. election.
“We (in Europe) need to realize that if there will be a pro-peace president in America, which I not only believe in but I also read the numbers that way, … if what we expect happens and America becomes pro-peace, then Europe cannot remain pro-war,” Orban said.
Ukraine will be high on the agenda when European leaders meet in Budapest in the coming week, he said, referring to a European Political Community meeting and a more informal meeting of EU leaders due to take place.
“Europe cannot bear the burden of [the war] alone, and if Americans switch to peace, then we also need to adapt, and this is what we will discuss in Budapest,” Orban said.
Europe is jittery about how the outcome of the U.S. election will affect the war in Ukraine and the continent’s security.
Orban has angered Brussels with his close ties to Russia and opposition to aid for Ukraine.
Hungary’s foreign minister Peter Szijjarto said in July that the Hungarian government sees Trump as a “chance for peace” in Ukraine.
In July Orban said his team was assisting Trump’s aides with policies on families and migration. On Thursday, he called Trump to wish him good luck ahead of Tuesday’s election.
The presidential candidates have expressed starkly contrasting visions for America’s role in the war, as well as the NATO alliance that serves as a shield against Russian aggression.
The Ukrainian military is losing ground in eastern Ukraine at the fastest pace in years. An influx of several thousand North Korean soldiers to Russia has added an unpredictable new dimension to the most savage war in Europe in generations.
And Russian bombardments — including 20 nights of drone assaults on the capital, Kyiv, in October alone — add to the civilian casualty count every day.
Against this difficult backdrop, Ukraine is bracing for the U.S. elections on Tuesday that will almost certainly shape the course of the country in profoundly different ways, depending on who wins the White House.
Former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee, and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, have expressed starkly contrasting visions for America’s role in the war as well as in the NATO military alliance that has long served as a shield against Russian aggression.
Ukrainian officials — desperate to steer clear of the toxic partisan battles that could jeopardize support from their chief military backer — are seeking to find ways to make different arguments that might appeal to both camps.
Mr. Trump’s claim that he will be able to broker a deal to end the war even before he takes office along with his often-expressed dim views of Ukraine — he has even blamed President Volodymyr Zelensky for starting the war — have stoked concerns that he would force the Ukrainians into a bad deal by cutting off military support.
Mr. Zelensky, who is asked about the prospect of a Trump victory in nearly every news conference and media appearance, told journalists in Iceland last week that he “understands all the risks.”
“Trump talks a lot, but I didn’t hear him say he would reduce support for Ukraine,” he said.
At the same time, Mr. Zelensky is under no illusions about the dire consequences of losing U.S. military assistance.
“If that support weakens, Russia will seize more territory, it would prevent us from winning this war,” he told the South Korean broadcaster KBS. “That is the reality.”
Kyiv is clearly looking for ways to appeal to Mr. Trump’s well-documented transactional approach to foreign policy, with Mr. Zelensky emphasizing that helping defend Ukraine is in America’s economic interests since his country “is rich in natural resources, including critical metals worth trillions of U.S. dollars.”
In 2022, the Canadian consulting company SecDev estimated the full value of all mineral resources of Ukraine at $26 trillion, including coal, gas and oil. Strategic resources — including some 7 percent of the world’s titanium reserves, 20 percent of its graphite reserves and 500,000 tons of lithium essential for electric car batteries — are within Ukrainian territory.
Russia is already plundering some of these resources in occupied territories, according to Ukrainian officials, British intelligence and independent investigations.
Those precious resources, Mr. Zelensky said, “will strengthen either Russia and its allies or Ukraine and the democratic world.”
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a Trump ally, made a similar point in a video he recorded with Mr. Zelensky in September. “They’re sitting on a trillion dollars’ worth of minerals that could be good to our economy,” Mr. Graham said. “So I want to keep helping our friends in Ukraine.”
Mr. Zelensky has also mentioned the possibility of using Ukrainian units to replace certain American troops stationed in Europe after the war, noting that battle-hardened Ukrainian troops could prove useful in protecting the European continent.
That may also have been an appeal to Mr. Trump’s longstanding goal of reducing America’s military presence in Europe. In 2020, he withdrew nearly 10,000 troops from Germany — about a quarter of the contingent stationed there.
“Donald Trump is entirely unpredictable — in both negative and positive ways,” said Oleksandr Kovalenko, a prominent Ukrainian military and political analyst. “Trump could very unpredictably take a stance that completely blocks aid to Ukraine, or he could just as unpredictably decide to provide Ukraine with support that neither Joseph Biden nor Kamala Harris would ever consider.”
Ms. Harris is widely seen as more predictable and likely to pursue policies similar to the Biden administration’s, which presents a different set of challenges for Kyiv.
Many Ukrainians believe that the Biden administration has been cowed by fear of a direct confrontation with Moscow, leading to an overly cautious and slow response that ultimately consigns them to a slow defeat.
“A future President Harris would need to deal with a central problem in America’s support for Ukraine: Does it want Ukraine to beat Russia and is it willing to provide the military, diplomatic and financial resources to do so?” Mick Ryan, a retired Australian Army major general and a fellow at the Lowy Institute, a research group, wrote recently.
“If the answer to this question is yes, it will require the United States and NATO to shift their strategy, and will demand a closer alignment of NATO and Ukrainian strategy to see the war through to victory,” he wrote.
Mr. Biden’s tepid response to a plan for victory that Mr. Zelensky presented on a recent trip to Washington has added to a deepening sense of frustration that has spilled into public view, with Kyiv saying it limits its options for finding an acceptable end to the war.
There is no indication that the United States will provide Ukraine with the kind of military support it believes it needs to force Russia into negotiations and no sign that Washington is ready to commit to the kind of security guarantees Kyiv views as essential to a durable peace.
Mr. Zelensky told reporters this week that America had delivered only a small fraction of the military support it pledged in a $61 billion aid package passed in April, complicating Ukraine’s ability to plan for what comes after the presidential election in the United States.
“You have to count on very specific things in very concrete time, otherwise you can’t manage this situation, you cannot manage defending lines, you can’t secure people, you can’t prepare for the winter,” he said this week.
“It’s not a question of money,” he said. “It’s always a question of bureaucracy, logistics, ideas or skepticism.”
As Ukraine continues to lose ground on the eastern front, Mr. Kovalenko, the military analyst, said that no matter who wins on Tuesday, the domestic partisan political battles that could follow the election present their own risk, sowing chaos that Moscow will move to eagerly exploit.
“What actually frightens me more is not January 2025, when the inauguration will take place, but the period right after the election,” he said in an interview. “Russia will now take full advantage of the U.S. elections, after which internal political events will dominate, distracting American society from Ukraine and other foreign policy issues.”
Constant Méheut and Liubov Sholudko contributed reporting from Kyiv.
Marc Santora has been reporting from Ukraine since the beginning of the war with Russia. He was previously based in London as an international news editor focused on breaking news events and earlier the bureau chief for East and Central Europe, based in Warsaw. He has also reported extensively from Iraq and Africa. More about Marc Santora
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/03/world/europe/trump-harris-ukraine-election.html
Former Republican President Donald Trump has an edge over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris on who would better navigate the country through the Ukraine and Middle East wars, a Wall Street Journal opinion poll of seven battleground states showed.
In overall support, the poll published on Friday showed Harris and Trump tied across the seven states that could decide the November presidential election.
The poll showed Harris with marginal 2 percentage point leads in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, Trump up 6 points in Nevada and 1 in Pennsylvania, and the two tied in North Carolina and Wisconsin. The poll of 600 registered voters in each state conducted on Sept. 28-Oct. 8 had a margin of error of 4 percentage points in each state.
The neck-and-neck results echo other polls reflecting a tight race before the Nov. 5 election as Americans grapple with concerns about the economy, immigration, women’s rights and the nation’s democratic values in picking between the two candidates.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll this week also found Trump and Harris locked in a close race nationally, with Harris marginally ahead 46% to 43%.
Surveys of swing state voters can be an important indicator given that state-by-state results of the Electoral College will determine the winner, with the seven battleground states likely being decisive.
Harris would win a narrow majority in the Electoral College if she captures the states where she holds an edge in the WSJ’s poll.
According to the WSJ poll, Trump leads Harris in the seven swing states 50% to 39% on who is best able to handle Russia’s war in Ukraine. Trump also has a 48% to 33% lead over Harris on who is better suited to handle the Israel-Hamas war.
More voters said they backed Trump on the economy and immigration while more said Harris would do a better job when it comes to housing, healthcare and caring about people like them, the WSJ poll found.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy has begun a meeting with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in New York, Voice of America reports.
Zelenskyy is on a visit to the United States, where he has already met with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
Independent US presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. has announced that he will support Republican candidate Donald Trump in the upcoming elections.
“I will be supporting Trump,” he said during his address to voters.
At the same time, Kennedy Jr. explained that this does not mean the end of his campaign. He said that his supporters would be able to vote for him in those states where Trump would not be able to win a majority of votes anyway.
At the same time, Kennedy Jr. noted that in 10 states where both Trump and his rival Kamala Harris have a chance of winning, he will withdraw his candidacy so as not to take votes away from the Republican candidate.
During the week, the US media wrote that Kennedy might announce his withdrawal from the race in the near future.
On Tuesday, Trump told CNN that if he wins, he may give Kennedy a position in his administration if he refuses to run and supports the Republicans.
In April 2023, JFK Jr. announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential primary. However, he later stated that he would run as an independent candidate.
In recent months, American media have noted that Kennedy would not have a serious chance of winning if he ran. However, in a number of states, he could have taken a significant number of votes from other candidates and thus influenced the election results.
Robert Kennedy Jr, 70, is an environmental lawyer and anti-vaccination activist. He is the son of former New York Senator and U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy and the nephew of the 35th President John F. Kennedy.
Earlier, the Experts Club analytical center presented an analytical material on the most important elections in the world in 2024, a detailed video analysis is available here – https://youtu.be/73DB0GbJy4M?si=eGb95W02MgF6KzXU
US presidential candidate from the Republican Party Donal Trump commented on his phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Today, President Zelensky and I had a very good phone conversation with President Zelensky of Ukraine…. I appreciate President Zelensky reaching out to me because as your next President of the United States, I will bring peace to the world and end a war that has cost so many lives and destroyed countless innocent families. Both sides will be able to come together and make an agreement that will end violence and pave the way for prosperity,” Truth wrote on social media after speaking with Ukrainian President Zelensky on Saturday night
Trump also mentioned that Zelensky congratulated him on the success of the Republican National Convention and on becoming the Republican Party’s nominee for President of the United States.
“He condemned the heinous assassination attempt that took place last Saturday and noted that these are times when the American people come together in a spirit of unity,” Trump emphasized.
