A dramatic spat between the US and Ukrainian leaders raises concerns about continued US aid for Ukraine’s war effort.
Uncertain and wary, Ukrainians have voiced their concerns over the possibility of the United States withdrawing its support for the war-torn country following a dramatic shouting match at the Oval Office between the presidents of the US and Ukraine.
A global audience watched in shock as a news conference on Friday between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump shattered already fragile US-Ukrainian relationships.
The two leaders and US Vice President JD Vance clashed over differing visions on how to end the three-year-old conflict with the Ukrainian president seeking security guarantees from a Trump administration that has made a U-turn in decades-long US foreign policy by aligning with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s perspective.
Ukrainians, many of them hardened by three years of war, rallied around Zelenskyy but also expressed dismay about the future of US backing for Kyiv’s war effort as larger and better-equipped Russian forces march across swaths of the east.
“I doubt that we could stand without the American help. They have helped us a lot with weapons and money. Maybe Europe will help us,” Kyiv resident Liudmyla Stetsevych, 47, told the Reuters news agency.
“Trump and Putin are dividing up the world – that’s what I would say. I don’t know what will come of it,”
Other Ukrainians also expressed hope that Ukraine’s allies in Europe would boost political and military support if the US dialled back its own.
“Many European countries voiced their support for Ukraine, we hope they will step up and increase aid for Ukraine, especially military equipment and ammunition,” Alina Zhaivoronko, from Kyiv, told Reuters.
The European Union, the United Kingdom and Norway have overtaken the US in terms of cumulative direct military and non-military aid to Ukraine as they have provided and pledged more than $204bn in aid compared with the US’s $183bn, according to the Institute for the War Study.
Still, the US provides key air defence weaponry and much-needed intelligence to Ukrainian troops. Many in Kyiv fear that without Washington’s support, prospects for Ukraine’s war effort are bleak.
Zhaivoronko said Ukrainians are “very thankful” to the US “for the help we have received all this time and keep receiving now. But our dignity, our honour, should stand above everything.
“It was an unpleasant shock, like we were in a cold shower. It was a very unexpected format of discussion. But there are two sides to this. Diplomatically, President Zelenskyy should have kept to the norms and rules. But on the other side, it was a provocation,” she said.
Nataliia Serhiienko, 67, a retiree in Kyiv, said she thinks Ukrainians approve of their president’s performance in Washington, “because Zelenskyy fought like a lion”.
“They had a heated meeting, a very heated conversation,” she told The Associated Press. But Zelenskyy “was defending Ukraine’s interests”.
At his meeting with Trump, Zelenskyy repeatedly demanded that any deal with the US must include concrete security guarantees for Ukraine should Putin breach a ceasefire agreement. In the past, the Ukrainian president said that Moscow violated truce deals 25 times, including during Trump’s first term.
But following the spat in front of cameras, Zelenskyy left the White House abruptly without signing a much-touted minerals deal. He later declined to apologise for the blowup, saying he regrets the public spat and wanted Trump to be more on Ukraine’s side.
“The Americans don’t know the real situation, what’s going on here,” Ella Kazantseva, 54, told Reuters across from a sea of flags in central Kyiv commemorating Ukraine’s war dead.
“They don’t understand. Everything is beautiful for them.”
