By LORI HINNANT and YEHOR KONOVALOV
kyiv, Ukraine (AP) — Soldiers in a Ukrainian artillery battery on the front lines in the country’s east were only vaguely aware of U.S. election results pointing to Donald Trump’s victory Wednesday — but firm in their hopes for the next president of the United States.
Their entrenched artillery battery fires on Russian forces daily – and comes under fire almost as often. The other day, one of their aerial nets captured a Russian drone.
“I hope that the quantity of weapons, the quantity of weapons for our victory will increase,” said the 39-year-old unit commander, who calls himself Mozart, hours before victory was confirmed of Trump. “It doesn’t matter who the president is, as long as they don’t cut off our aid, because we need it.”
Although Trump’s election casts doubt on U.S. support for Ukraine — and, ultimately, kyiv’s ability to repel the Russian invasion — soldiers using their Starlink connection to the Internet have learned the results sparingly from Associated Press journalists.
Mozart — whose other soldiers did not give his name Wednesday in accordance with Ukrainian military protocol and gave musical nicknames to battlefield positions — is among many Ukrainians who hope Trump stays the course on U.S. support for their country. Russian forces have recently made progress in the east, although the commander described the frontline situation as “static.”
It was under Trump that the United States first sent weapons to Ukraine in its fight against Russia, in 2017. These Javelin anti-tank missiles were crucial to Ukraine’s ability to repel an invasion on a large scale in 2022. But Trump as a whole is wary of US involvement in foreign conflicts.
Trump, who has touted his good relationship with President Vladimir Putin and called the Russian leader “pretty smart” for invading Ukraine, has repeatedly criticized U.S. support for Ukraine. He called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “the greatest salesman in the world” for securing U.S. aid.
Zelensky was one of the first world leaders to publicly congratulate Trump and said the two discussed how to end “Russian aggression against Ukraine” when they met in September.
“I appreciate President Trump’s commitment to the ‘peace through strength’ approach to world affairs. It is exactly this principle that can practically bring a just peace in Ukraine closer. I hope we implement this together,” he wrote in a post on social platform X.
Trump has repeatedly said he would secure a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia within a day if elected, although he has not specified how. During his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, he twice refused to directly answer the question of whether he wanted Ukraine to win – raising fears that kyiv would be forced to accept unfavorable conditions in the negotiations he oversaw.
In kyiv, which is attacked almost daily by Russian drones, Viktoriia Zubrytska, 18, was pragmatic about her expectations of the next American president. She believes Ukraine will be forced to give up territory in exchange for peace under a Trump presidency. But she said she prefers that to what she calls the false hope offered by the Biden administration.
“We will live in a world of facts where we will be certain of what awaits us,” the law student said. “Certainty and objective truth are far better than lies and living in illusions.”
According to VoteCast, 74% of voters who supported Harris favored continuing aid to Ukraine, compared to just 36% of Trump voters. AP VoteCast is a survey of the American electorate conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago.
On the front line in eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Andriy, nicknamed “Rodych” or “Parent,” has resigned himself to the fact that he has no power to influence the American vote .
“We will find something” no matter what, he said.
“We are a shield between Europe and Russia,” he added. “Other countries don’t understand what’s happening here, they see it on television and for them, it’s far away.”
America’s NATO allies were also closely monitoring the election. France and Germany held a last-minute high-level defense meeting on Wednesday in Paris to discuss the results, and Ukraine will likely be the focus of the meeting. The two main powers of the European Union provide significant support to Ukraine to defend it against the Russian war.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, citing a “more aggressive Russia,” also invoked Trump’s motto: “peace through strength.”
Rutte praised Trump for his work during his first term to persuade alliance countries to increase their defense spending.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he did not know whether Putin planned to congratulate Trump, but stressed that Moscow considered the United States a “hostile” country.
Peskov reiterated the Kremlin’s assertion that US support for Ukraine was tantamount to its involvement in the conflict, telling reporters: “Let us not forget that we are talking about a hostile country that is both directly and indirectly involved in a war against our state. »
He nevertheless highlighted Trump’s promise to end the war quickly once elected.
“The United States can help end the conflict,” Peskov said, adding that “it certainly cannot happen overnight.”
Konovalov reported from the Kharkiv region. Associated Press journalists Lorne Cook in Brussels; Hanna Arhirova, Illia Novikov and Volodymyr Yurchuk in kyiv, Ukraine; Danica Kirka in London; and Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.
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