Partisan politics ahead of America’s November presidential election intruded Thursday on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s meeting with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to discuss U.S. support for the war in Ukraine.
From the White House, Biden insisted that Russia would not succeed in its war that began when it invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
“Ukraine will prevail, and we'll continue to stand by you every step of the way,” Biden said.
Meeting separately with Zelenskyy, Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, reiterated the administration’s support for Kyiv’s war efforts and underscored that it’s up to Ukraine to decide how the war will end.
Without mentioning his name, Harris criticized Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, whose proposal to end the war would leave Ukraine with less territory and no NATO membership.
“These proposals are the same of those of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. And let us be clear: They are not proposals for peace,” Harris said. “Instead, they are proposals for surrender, which is dangerous and unacceptable.”
Vance suggested in a recent interview that Ukraine and Russia halt fighting and create a demilitarized zone at the current battle lines. Kyiv would need to adhere to a neutral status and stop its bid to join NATO.
On Wednesday, congressional Republicans loyal to former President Donald Trump demanded that the Ukrainian leader fire his ambassador to the U.S., Oksana Markarova, over Zelenskyy's Monday visit to an ammunition factory in Pennsylvania, a hotly contested battleground state in the November U.S. presidential election. Zelenskyy met with the Democratic governor of the state, Josh Shapiro.
In a letter to Zelenskyy, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said the visit to the factory that made munitions for Ukraine was a “partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats” that amounted to “election interference.”
“Support for ending Russia’s war against Ukraine continues to be bipartisan, but our relationship is unnecessarily tested and needlessly tarnished when the candidates at the top of the Republican presidential ticket are targeted in the media by officials in your government,” Johnson said.
The White House called Johnson’s letter a “political stunt” and pointed out that Zelenskyy recently met the Republican governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, in a “similar event.”
Johnson’s reaction reflects Republican anxiety over the prospect of a Harris victory in Pennsylvania, home to many Ukrainian Americans, said Sergiy Kudelia, an associate professor of political science at Baylor University.
"It's a key blue-wall state. Without it, Trump would have a hard time winning the election,” he told VOA. “Given the number of Ukrainians living in Pennsylvania, close to 150,000, Ukrainian Americans could become a key voting bloc capable of swinging the race to one or the other side."
Meeting with Trump
Later on Thursday, Trump said he would meet with Zelenskyy on Friday at Trump Tower in New York. The Republican presidential nominee has in recent days increased his criticism that the U.S. continues to "give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal" to end the war.
On Wednesday, Trump suggested that Biden and Harris were at fault for prolonging the war that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“Biden and Kamala allowed this to happen by feeding Zelenskyy money and munitions like no country has ever seen before,” Trump said. He argued that Kyiv should have made concessions to Moscow before Russian troops attacked, asserting that Ukraine was now “in rubble” and in no position to negotiate the war’s end.
“Any deal — the worst deal — would’ve been better than what we have now,” Trump said.
Trump’s comments created anxiety not only in Ukraine but also in some European capitals that have been supporting Kyiv’s war efforts, said Ian Lesser, distinguished fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
“To turn that around and suddenly give Moscow a great deal more leverage by calling into question the flow of arms to Ukraine, political support for Ukraine, et cetera, is handing a victory to Moscow,” he told VOA.
Deeper strikes
The topics that leaders discussed Thursday included Ukraine’s request for weapons donors to allow Ukrainian forces to use the weapons to strike targets deeper inside Russia.
“I raised with President Biden [our] plan of victory today. We are preparing to discuss the details to strengthen the plan [and] coordinate our positions, use and approach,” Zelenskyy said.
Ukrainian leaders say such strikes are needed to degrade Russia’s ability to carry out its daily missile and drone attacks. But the Biden administration has been reluctant to agree because of concerns about escalation. Russia, a nuclear power, has warned that arming Kyiv with long-range weapons would escalate the conflict beyond Ukraine.
“It will mean that NATO countries, the United States, European countries, are at war with Russia,” Putin said earlier this month.
Kyiv’s request has bipartisan support, including from Republican Senator Lindsay Graham.
“If you allow Ukraine to start hitting legitimate military targets to put pressure on Putin, you're doing the next president a great service, whether it's Trump or Harris. They'll have some leverage to end this war,” he told reporters Thursday.
“He has specific military targets,” Graham said of Zelenskyy’s plan for victory. “If he could start executing that plan, that gives us the best hope of ending this war in 2025.”
Ahead of Zelenskyy’s visit, the U.S. administration announced $8 billion in new aid for Ukraine. In a statement, Biden said the aid included a Patriot missile battery and missiles, as well as air-to-ground munitions and a precision-guided glide bomb with a range of up to 130 kilometers.
The administration is also expanding training for Ukrainian F-16 pilots to include an additional 18 pilots next year.
Zelenskyy thanked the U.S., saying the new aid included “the items that are most critical to protecting our people.”
“We will use this assistance in the most efficient and transparent manner to achieve our major common goal: victory for Ukraine, just and lasting peace, and transatlantic security,” Zelenskyy said on social media platform X.
VOA's Tatiana Vorozhko, Katherine Gypson and Chris Hannas contributed to this report.
