Desperate for peace, Ukraine embraces Trump

DAVOS, Switzerland — Only months ago, Kyiv was terrified a second Donald Trump presidency would force Ukraine to capitulate to Vladimir Putin. Today, it’s pinning its hopes on Trump finally ending three years of carnage.

Gathering in Davos this week for the annual World Economic Forum, Ukrainians and their backers see the newly inaugurated United States president as a circuit-breaker who could force Putin to the negotiating table and offer Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy an off-ramp as well.

“It’s real optimism,” Kurt Volker, who served during Trump’s first term as the U.S. special representative for Ukraine, told POLITICO. “2024 felt like a year of waiting. We have elections, we have distractions, the Biden administration would say no, then they’d say yes … 2025 is looking like a year of action. We are finally moving.”

Kyiv is under no illusions: The obstacle to peace is not the occupant of the White House, it’s the one in the Kremlin. But when faced with the continuity of the Biden era versus the disruption of Trump, Ukrainians seem ready to see where the wild ride will take them.

Zelenskyy himself acknowledged that Trump may finally get Moscow and Kyiv to the negotiating table. “Trump is a businessman. He knows how to apply pressure,” Zelenskyy told a gathering of reporters Tuesday after delivering a fiery address to the Davos crowd, adding that he was “hopeful” about the new administration.

“What we need now is certainty,” said Maksym Timchenko, the chief executive of DTEK, the top private investor in Ukraine’s energy industry. “And I think the Trump administration can bring more certainty. Definitely, this certainty should not compromise a just peace in Ukraine. But this should be year of action.”

The problem? That “action” may not be pretty.

Zelenskyy may be pushed into making concessions that until recently seemed unthinkable — he will likely have to accept that Ukraine will not be able to return to its prewar borders (though he will never recognize its conquered lands as Russian territory) and that its bid to join NATO is dead in the water. That much was clear both from the president’s own remarks at Davos, and from the Ukrainians who have traveled there to refocus attention on the war in their homeland (and to do deals).

Still, speaking to POLITICO on the sidelines of a Trump inauguration watch party at Ukraine House on the main Davos promenade Monday evening, Kyiv School of Economics President Tymofiy Mylovanov was grimly eager for the age of Trump to begin.

“It might not be good — but it will be much better than under Biden,” said Mylovanov, a former Ukrainian minister, referring to his country’s fate under Trump. “Biden managed the war as a crisis — he thought if he holds out long enough, the storm will pass. But it’s not passing. Trump takes the perspective that we have to stop the storm. He’s not concerned about how it will be stopped.”

Zelenskyy the Trump whisperer

Trump’s unpredictability and penchant for forceful rhetoric could give Zelenskyy the off-ramp he needs to get exhausted Ukrainians on board with a peace deal that acknowledges the reality on the ground: Kyiv’s forces don’t have the manpower to retake occupied Crimea or the eastern Donbas region.

But if Zelenskyy plays his cards right, Putin could face his own reckoning.

Inflation in Russia is out of control, interest rates are artificially frozen at an already sky-high 21 percent, there’s a labor shortage and mass war casualties — “this is not sustainable as a society,” said Volker, Trump’s one-time Ukraine special representative.

In a clear appeal to Trump’s baser urges (and to his talking points), Zelenskyy railed at Europe in his address to the Davos crowd on Tuesday, lamenting its lackluster defense spending, throwing his weight behind Trump’s 5 percent NATO spending target, and blasting the European Union for being “more focused on regulation than on freedom.”

“Trump, he told me … he will be doing everything to end the war this year. And I told him, ‘we are your partner,’” Zelenskyy said.

“President Zelenskyy has played it extremely well,” Volker observed. “By aligning himself with what President Trump wants, he’s made it clear that the problem is not Ukraine. The problem is Putin.”

The next weeks will be crucial for Kyiv and for Moscow.

“I think Trump is going to call Putin and tell him to end the war. I think Putin will not agree … and I think the Trump team will understand they have to show strength. Show more resolve. And put it all on the table,” Volker said.

That could mean harsher sanctions, substantially increasing U.S. energy exports to starve Putin’s war budget, and continued military support for Ukraine. “Not taxpayer money, but there are various ways to do this, including a lend-lease program, including by Europe seizing the €300 billion in Russian assets and using that money to buy U.S. defense equipment,” Volker said. “That will send a signal to Putin: This isn’t going to get better.”

Ukraine’s two bubbles

Zoya Lytvyn, head of the Global Government Technology Centre in Kyiv, said Ukrainian opinion on Trump is split between two bubbles. The first contains those who lionize Western values, align with the U.S. Democratic Party — and are “afraid of Trump and [Vice President] JD Vance.”

Meanwhile, “those in the second bubble are saying we already have seen everything that Biden could do, and the level of support he could provide, and it was not enough.” Trump, at least, “has enough power to bring stabilization.”

Ukraine Freedom Project founder Steven Moore, who spent seven years on Capitol Hill, mostly as chief of staff to former Chief Deputy GOP Whip Peter Roskam, said: “Ukrainians don’t know what Trump’s gonna do. But they do know what Biden did.”

“The Biden administration was stringing things out, slow-walking weapons … Something needs to change.”

“There’s optimism,” said Moore, who is now based in Ukraine and campaigns to inform members of Congress about the atrocities being committed by Putin’s forces in Russian-occupied Ukraine.

“Ukrainians I speak to feel like Trump is a strong leader, whereas Biden couldn’t string together a sentence on some days.”