Republican presidential candidate may pivot to more pro-Ukrainian position in a tightened race against Kamala Harris.

August 6, 2024 

Former top White House official and advisor to Donald Trump Kellyanne Conway’s new role as a lobbyist to boost support for Ukraine highlights Kyiv’s hopes that the Republican Party’s presidential candidate can be swayed to take Ukraine’s side – and benefit from it politically.

According to a disclosure form shared by the U.S. Justice Department on Aug. 2, Conway, Trump’s former campaign manager and senior counselor, was hired at a $50,000 per month price tag by Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk to “engage U.S. lawmakers, experts, and opinion makers to explain the importance of Ukraine to the rules-based order and the protection of democratic principles.”

She is also expected to “contribute to raising awareness among U.S. decision-makers of Ukrainians’ fight for freedom and the Russian illegal war of aggression,” according to the disclosure.

Trump has a history of cozying up to strongman leaders of U.S. adversaries, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, but at an Aug. 3 campaign rally he criticized President Joe Biden’s recent brokering of a hostage deal that, as he put it returned “some of greatest killers” to Putin.

Alleged Russian agents who conducted assassinations abroad were included in the prisoner exchange that led to the release of Americans held by Russia, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.

“We got our people back, but boy we make some horrible, horrible deals,” Trump added.

The comments highlight how Trump consistently seeks to present himself as the stronger politician and deal-maker, a posture he could seek to boost ahead of the Nov. 5 vote in which he seeks a return to the presidency.

The U.S. election, about 90 days away, has become more competitive following the recent decision by 81-year-old President Joe Biden to not seek re-election in 2024. The stage is now set for a tighter race between the 78-year-old Republican nominee and his younger Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, 59.

Some experts and Ukraine watchers say Trump could now lift his chances by reversing course to look stronger on the world stage than Putin by presenting himself as more capable of helping Ukraine than Harris. Her record for backing Kyiv and condemning Russia’s full-scale invasion launched in February 2022 stands firm, all while her campaign seemingly benefits from a shortened race.

Trump stands to gain from a shift towards appealing not only to isolationists but to moderate voters who support aid for Ukraine, including the big Ukrainian and East European diaspora communities in key swing states such as Pennsylvania.

These states, including Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina, are also reaping rewards from the U.S. defense contracts with manufacturers in their districts to produce weaponry for Ukraine.

Citing “a serious struggle within the Republican Party over how to end the war in Ukraine,” Ukrainian political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko told the Kyiv Independent that “Trump will likely maneuver to strike a balance between isolationists and Reaganites” that take a harder line on Russia.

Some Republicans are pushing for a deal between Ukraine and Russia from a position of strength, while isolationists favor a peace deal on Putin’s terms, he added.

“(The Reaganites) are telling Trump that, if a peace deal is made on Russia’s terms, this will be viewed as Trump’s defeat,” Fesenko said. “And there will be no real peace unless Ukraine’s interests are taken into account,” added Fesenko, a regular talking head on Ukrainian state television news programs.

Pro-Ukrainian push in Trump’s camp

Conway’s registration as a lobbyist is part of efforts, Fesenko said, to persuade Trump’s team to back Ukraine and understand Kyiv’s position.

The Ukrainian billionaire Pinchuk is expected to invite Conway to his Yalta European Conference in September. When such people come to Ukraine, they usually meet the country’s leadership, Fesenko added, pointing to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Conway, Trump’s former advisor, isn’t the first person in Trump’s camp to push for a stronger position by the former president seeking re-election.

Mike Pompeo, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and secretary of state under Trump, and American lobbyist David Urban recently published an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal claiming that Trump would support Ukraine if elected.

“Pundits claim that if Donald Trump is re-elected, he will cut off aid to Ukraine, give away its territory, and deal directly with Vladimir Putin to impose an ignominious ‘peace’ on the country,” they wrote. “There’s no evidence that such capitulation will be part of President Trump’s policy and much evidence to the contrary.”

Pompeo and Urban said that “it was Mr. Trump who in 2017 lifted the Obama administration’s arms embargo on Ukraine, providing it with the Javelin hand-held anti-bank systems that helped save Kyiv in the earliest days of Russia’s (full-scale) invasion.”

The Javelins Trump delivered in 2017 is a talking point frequently repeated among Republicans in Washington who are both Trump supporters and those in favor of continued aid to Ukraine.

Trump also, Pompeo and Urban wrote, “gave political cover” to House Speaker Mike Johnson when he supported $61 billion in military aid for Ukraine in April after blocking it for months.

Pompeo and Urban argue that “while Mr. Biden stumbled into war through weakness, Mr. Trump could re-establish peace through strength,” a core element of the official Republican party platform.

They suggested driving down energy prices to shrink “Putin’s war-crimes budget,” imposing real sanctions on Russia, revitalizing the NATO military alliance, creating “a $500 billion lend-lease program for Ukraine,” and lifting “all restrictions on the type of weapons Ukraine can obtain and use.”

Steven Moore, a former Republican chief of staff who has been in the ears of U.S. lawmakers since the start of the full-scale invasion and who has pushed for further American support of Ukraine as the founder of the Ukraine Freedom Project, was heartened to see Pompeo discussing Ukraine and national security.

Moore added that because Pompeo is rumored to be a favorite for Secretary of Defense should Trump be elected to a second term, it’s positive for Ukraine that he’s speaking of this now.

Pompeo’s op-ed followed a meeting between former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Trump devoted to Ukraine on July 16 and his claim that Trump would “be strong and decisive in supporting” Kyiv.

Meanwhile, Kurt Volker, who was the U.S. special representative for Ukraine negotiations under Trump’s first presidency, made a case for a more pro-Ukrainian policy in an interview with online newspaper European Pravda in June.

He compared potential concessions to Russia to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan following the withdrawal of U.S. troops under Biden in 2021.

“So now, (Trump) would see that Ukraine failing, losing to Russia, would be just like Afghanistan for him,” Volker said.

“He doesn’t want to be in that position. In Trump’s mind, he also looks at the way the Biden administration has handled things and says: ‘this wouldn’t have happened if I was in charge.’ But he views this as a weakness. He wants to project strength.”

Mike Turner, chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and a Republican congressman from Ohio, also backed Ukraine during a visit to Kyiv on July 1. He said that Ukraine should be allowed to strike “valid military targets” in Russia.

Visiting Kyiv in March, Lindsey Graham, a U.S. Senator in Trump’s camp, pledged that Ukraine would get more of the long-range ATACMS rockets to “knock the damn bridge down.” His comments referred to the bridge across the Kerch Strait that Putin built after he annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014 during his initial invasion of Ukraine.

Republicans may be now trying to look stronger vis-a-vis Russia than they actually are with slightly more pro-Ukrainian rhetoric, according to Stephen Humphreys, a Democrat and U.S. lawyer who has investigated Russian interference in U.S. elections

“Most American people don’t support extreme (anti-Ukrainian) rhetoric,” he told the Kyiv Independent. “They are trying to flip the script. It was too extremist, it won’t sell. For purely political reasons they are trying to moderate their approach.”

However, some close to Capitol Hill haven’t heard this quite yet.

Gary Marx, a longtime faith advisor to Republican leaders who is a frequent guest of Speaker Johnson, hasn’t heard talk of Trump strengthening his rhetoric or policy toward Ukraine. The only strength Trump is projecting toward Russia is his belief of being a strong negotiator, Marx said.

Meanwhile, there is already a backlash from isolationists in Trump’s camp against efforts to lobby for Ukraine.

Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. criticized Conway for taking on the Ukraine lobbying job.

“I don’t know how you can be part of a campaign and do that,” he said in a radio interview, referring to Conway’s lobbying contract with Pinchuk.

Repeatedly expressing how much he liked Conway, having known her for many years, Donald Trump Jr. continued: “The rich guys in Ukraine – they want the war to continue cause they’re stealing the money we were sending them. If you’re working for Ukraine, it’s hard … like I can’t imagine that anyone there is actually working for peace.”

“Trump is the only guy who can get peace there,” Trump’s son added.

False hopes for Trump pivot?

Brian Bonner, a Democrat and former chief editor of the English-language newspaper Kyiv Post and host of the Ukraine Calling radio show, said “it’s a false hope” to bet Trump will be a stronger supporter of Ukraine than his Democratic rivals.

“I don’t think Trump cares about Ukraine. Everything about Trump’s behavior suggests he is more aligned with the Kremlin,” Bonner said. “Part of the Republican party is more hawkish than Biden, but it’s not the dominant wing of the party.”

Although Trump recruited some of the hawkish and pro-Ukrainian Republicans during his first term, “Trump 2.0 is not going to do that,” Bonner added.

Reno Domenico, head of Democrats Abroad in Ukraine, agreed, saying that “actions speak louder than words.”

“We know what they did in reality,” he added, saying that Trump’s allies blocked $61 billion in U.S. aid for Ukraine for months. “If Trump wins, Ukraine will be dismembered, and then there will be a war again even if some ceasefire is in place.”

Jonathan Katz, a national security expert at the Brookings Institute, said that “there are some elements of Republican support for Ukraine but it’s not the Trump lane of this party.”

“It’s good and it’s important to hear from Republicans in the national security space who are willing to lay out a strategy of continued support regardless of administration,” he said. “But these are not people who are speaking for Mr. Trump. And unfortunately this (potential Trump) administration will have less of those people, those national security types that would support Ukraine.”

Kamala Harris on Ukraine

Some say that Harris’ expected nomination is affecting Trump’s Ukraine policies. Harris has consistently supported military aid for Ukraine and the country’s territorial integrity.

While Biden trailed Trump by several percentage points, Harris is currently performing better than Trump in opinion polls. According to election analyst Nate Silver’s national poll aggregate, Harris would get 45.5% as of Aug. 5, while Trump would receive 44.1%.

Kyrylo Demchenko, who was Ukraine’s youth delegate at the country’s UN delegation in New York from 2023 to 2024, believes that Harris’ nomination “has already changed her opponent,” and both candidates are competing for the moderate electorate.

As a result, Trump’s team has to appeal not only to the isolationists and anti-Ukrainian electorate but also to moderates who support a stronger international role for the U.S. and aid for Ukraine, Demchenko said.

“The situation has changed for the better for Ukraine,” Demchenko, who is currently serving in the Ukrainian army, told the Kyiv Independent. “The Ukrainian agenda has become more relevant. Regardless of how it will end, it’s intensifying the competition, and both candidates will update their programs.”

Domenico of Democrats Abroad in Ukraine, said that “Harris’ nomination energized the party,” adding that “there is room for her to grow.”

Harris is expected to maintain Biden’s Ukraine policies but some hope that she will strengthen support for Kyiv. However, in her shortened campaign she has walked back from some of her progressive stances displayed in the 2020 race in hopes of securing moderates from Trump.

Biden has faced criticism for the slow and incremental pace of military aid for Ukraine and imposing restrictions on the use of U.S. weapons against Russia.

Humphreys, the attorney who investigated Russian interference, argued that the public support for Ukraine was slipping away under Biden, who “has not been able make the case for Ukraine and build American public enthusiasm for the Ukraine policy.”

But he believes that Harris is capable of making that case for Ukraine.

“She is a former prosecutor,” he said. “She will come up with more forceful policies.”

It’s yet unclear if Harris will make some crucial decisions necessary for Ukraine’s victory, such as lifting restrictions on the use of American weapons against Russian territory.

There is hope in Washington that should Harris win in November, her national security advisor Phil Gordon will replace Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who is viewed as being fearful of escalation with Russia at Ukraine’s peril.

Meanwhile, Volodymyr Aryev, a Ukrainian lawmaker from ex-President Petro Poroshenko’s European Solidarity party, said that what Ukraine needs most is to preserve longstanding bipartisan support with U.S. legislators.

Both candidates, he said, have upsides and downsides for Ukraine but Kyiv should work with both sides in the election and use all forms of diplomacy to connect with them.

“We shouldn’t interfere in the U.S. election on anyone’s side,” he said. “If we back someone, and the other side wins, it will be difficult for us.

https://kyivindependent.com/pro-ukraine-lobbying-efforts-up-on-hopes-trump-could-pivot-to-look-stronger-against-putin-than-harris