Kiev, Feb 22: Days before the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukrainians are as sombre and tense as they were right before Moscow launched the war. Only now, they aren’t just worried about their longtime enemy.Ukraine’s stunning new threat comes from its once staunchest ally, the United States, whose support appears to be fading as President Donald Trump echoes the narrative of Russian President Vladimir Putin while pledging to stop the fighting between the two countries.
After their initial shock at Trump’s false claims this week that Ukraine is led by a “dictator” who started the war with Russia, the Ukrainian people are rallying around a defiant President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who publicly criticized Trump for promoting Russian “disinformation.”
“Yes, he’s not a perfect president, but he’s not a dictator,” said Kateryna Karaush, a 25-year-old tech worker from Kyiv who like many Ukrainians — and even some Republicans in Congress — is struggling to wrap her head around Trump’s embrace of Russia, which represents a major about-face in US foreign policy.
“It feels like the whole world is against us,” Karaush said.
Against long odds, Ukrainians – with massive military support from the US – have prevented Russia from overtaking their country, even if roughly one fifth of it is now under Russia control.
But after three years of war, both civilians and soldiers are exhausted. Hundreds of thousands have been killed or wounded, tens of thousands are missing, and millions have fled the country.
The mood only became gloomier in recent days as Trump signaled his desire to rapidly bring the fighting to a close on terms that Zelenskyy and many in the West say are too favorable to Russia.
After Trump called Zelenskyy a “dictator” – for legally postponing an election last year — and as reports emerged of US and Russian officials meeting in Saudi Arabia to discuss a possible ceasefire without input from Ukraine, even some of Zelenskyy’s harshest domestic critics have begun defending him.
“We may have different opinions about Zelenskyy, but only Ukrainian citizens have the right to judge his support,” said Yaroslav Zhelezniak, a lawmaker from the opposition party Holos. “And to publicly criticize him too, because, in the end, he is our elected leader.”