Vice President Kamala Harris meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a trip to the United States while former President Donald Trump is not there, underscoring the 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 this week for the United Nations General Assembly, and he has become increasingly critical of Zelensky, accusing him of having a frontrunner in the upcoming election.
“The president of Ukraine is in our country and he’s making nasty remarks about your favorite president, me,” Trump said Wednesday in North Carolina. “Ukraine is gone. It’s not Ukraine anymore. … Any deal, even the worst deal, would have been better than the one we have right now.”
Zelensky had hinted he would meet with Trump this week, but Trump’s campaign said there had been no formal agreement for a meeting.
Trump has said for months, and has repeated it more frequently at rallies this week, that he would end the war in Ukraine immediately — even if on terms favorable to Moscow — and he has called Zelenskyy a “great salesman” to get money for his country who wants Democrats to win “so badly” to keep the money flowing.
“Every time Zelensky comes to the United States, he leaves with $100 billion,” Trump said Tuesday in Georgia. “I think he’s the best salesman on the planet. But we’re stuck in this war unless I’m president.”
Trump and Zelensky have a complicated history. The House impeached Trump in 2019 after details emerged of a call he made asking Zelensky to seek compromising information about Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Since the possibility of Trump’s return to power has become more realistic, Zelensky has sometimes appeared cautious when discussing Trump or responding to his critics.
Ukraine has enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress since Russia invaded it in 2022. Biden has stepped up international efforts to rally allies to support Ukraine in what has turned into a protracted war. But some Republicans are increasingly skeptical about continued support for the war effort.
Ahead of his meeting with Zelensky on Thursday afternoon, Biden said in a statement that the Defense Department would allocate its remaining security assistance to Ukraine by the end of the year, and that the department was announcing $2.4 billion in security assistance for the country, providing air defense systems, drones and air-to-ground munitions, Patriot missiles and money to bolster the country’s industrial base. Biden also said he was authorizing a $5.5 billion reduction in presidential aid in order to fully utilize the funds Congress appropriated to send U.S. military equipment to Ukraine and replenish U.S. stockpiles.
Harris said she would continue to support Americans if elected.
Without strong support from the United States, it may be difficult for Ukraine to continue the fight against Russia.
The partisan divide appeared to widen this week after Zelenskyy toured a munitions plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Biden’s hometown, in what Trump and other Republicans saw as a signal of the direction he wants to take the November election.
Republicans also criticized Zelenskyy’s recent comments to The New Yorker, in which he called Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, “too radical” and said he needed to “read the history of World War II” to understand why Russian President Vladimir Putin should not be appeased.
“My feeling is that Trump doesn’t really know how to stop the war, even though he thinks he knows how to do it,” Zelensky added.
Vance has also been criticized for his suggestions on how to end the war. He recently discussed in a podcast the possibility of creating a demilitarized zone as part of a “peace deal” that would include a guarantee of neutrality.
Zelensky said this was tantamount to forcing Ukraine to cede territory to Russia.
“His message seems to be that Ukraine has to make a sacrifice,” Zelensky told The New Yorker. “It brings us back to the question of the cost and who will bear it. The idea that the world has to end this war at Ukraine’s expense is unacceptable.”
The Trump campaign said Vance’s comments “should not be taken as a specific proposal by President Trump” and that he was “simply discussing concepts that could be part of a comprehensive plan” to end the war.
Asked about the possibility of giving up territory to Ukraine in exchange for ending the war, Vance told NBC News on Wednesday that he was not ruling out any possibility at this early stage. “Everything will be on the table,” he said.
Republicans criticized Zelensky for traveling to a key state and being seen there alongside Democrats.
“It was a real tactical mistake for Zelenskyy to show up at that Scranton armory alongside Casey and Cartwright because it looks like he’s joining a whirlwind tour for their re-election,” said Reid Smith, vice president for foreign policy. “At a minimum, he is betting that there will be a Democratic majority in the Senate and that Harris will hold Biden’s seat on his Ukraine policies.”
Sen. Bob Casey and Rep. Matt Cartwright, both Democrats, joined Zelenskyy on the visit to Scranton.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican and Trump ally who helped advance Ukraine funding in the House, sent a letter to Zelenskyy “demanding that you immediately fire” Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States over the Pennsylvania trip.
“The installation was in a politically contested key state, was led by a senior political appointee of Kamala Harris, and did not include any Republicans because – intentionally – no Republicans were invited,” Johnson wrote. “The visit was clearly a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats and clearly constitutes election interference. This short-sighted and intentionally political decision has caused Republicans to lose confidence in Ambassador (Oksana) Markarova.”
Johnson has met frequently with Zelenskyy, but he said Wednesday that he was unable to find time this week because of scheduling conflicts.
At the same time, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Biden said the West must maintain its resolve to fight Russian expansionism.
“We cannot get tired. We cannot look away and we will not relax our support for Ukraine,” he said.
Harris echoed that message, telling Zelenskyy in February: “We will be with you for as long as it takes.”
Trump has consistently praised Putin and has promised to end the war on his first day back in the White House, though he has declined to say how or whether he wants kyiv to win.
“I want the war to end,” Trump said when pressed during his only debate with Harris. “I want to save lives,” he added, before falsely claiming that “millions” were dying in the conflict.
A senior Trump administration official echoed Trump’s comments, saying the circumstances surrounding any future peace deal were growing more tense by the day. “Any diplomatic conversation is not going to satisfy both sides,” the former official said.
How Harris would direct the conflict remains unclear. Her national security team is led by Philip Gordon, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs during the years when the Obama administration sought to build more constructive relations with Russia, repairing ties and reversing what Obama called a “dangerous drift.”
But Harris warned during the debate that without U.S. support for Ukraine, Putin would “sit in kyiv with his eyes fixed on the rest of Europe,” and she said Trump would simply “cede everything” to Russia. Democratic criticism of Trump’s stance on Ukraine has often echoed years of ideas that he was beholden to Putin and did not want to upset him.
“That’s not who we are as Americans,” she said, before invoking, in a nod to the electoral stakes, the votes of 800,000 Polish Americans in Pennsylvania, a number about 10 times greater than Biden’s margin of victory in 2020 and 20 times greater than Trump’s margin of victory in 2016.
Poland is one of Russia’s most vocal opponents, and Harris’ supporters have run ads specifically targeting Polish Americans. NBC News had reported that Trump and Polish President Andrzej Duda were scheduled to visit a Catholic shrine together on Sunday, but the trip was canceled due to logistical reasons, according to a campaign source familiar with the arrangements.
But Harris has not offered many details about how she would oversee the war effort as president, especially if Republicans in Congress lose their appetite for approving more funding for the country.
Some outside the administration believe that despite the campaign’s fiery rhetoric, Harris may also be looking for ways to help end the war amid the harsh political realities that a future Harris administration would face.
“I think they recognize that an endless war on NATO’s eastern flank is not in the enduring interest of the alliance and, frankly, in the American interest either,” Stand Together’s Smith said.
