With President Trump’s decision to negotiate with Putin, even Ukraine’s war-weary Jews are determined to dig in their heels

President Trump’s decision to negotiate with Russia over the heads of Ukraine and its European allies sent shockwaves across Europe. But inside Ukraine itself — including its Jewish community — Zelensky is riding high, as locals as locals are determined to fight on, no matter what

Just over a year ago, when I visited Ukraine, the general mood was subdued. The fervor with which civilians had enlisted in the army, the unwavering determination that fueled tales of heroism, and the sheer audacity with which this small nation had faced down the mighty Russian military had all begun to wane. Two years of war wear down even the most resilient, and the prevailing sentiment was that Ukrainians would sign almost anything just to bring an end to a conflict that had devastated them politically, socially, and economically.

Yet amid the exhaustion, there was one source of comfort: the unwavering support of the West. That belief — however fragile — was what kept them going. They placed their trust in the idea that the free world understood this war was only the beginning, that Moscow’s aggression against Kyiv was but the first step in a grander campaign to restore the Russian Empire under its modern czar, Vladimir Putin. “This is a war to defend democracy, and we are on the side of the good,” they would say.

President Trump’s recent election emboldened many of the battle-weary Ukrainians, who hoped he would leverage his position to pursue peace, or at least a ceasefire. “Everyone assumed that January 20 would be his inauguration, and by January 25, negotiations between Russia and Ukraine would already be underway,” says Rabbi Moshe Webber, a rosh kollel in Dnipro. “Many of us believed that by mid-February, flights would resume, and the country would be fully open again. There was widespread euphoria — people were talking about how Trump would solve everything.”

But Trump’s recent remarks both on social media and interviews, in which he blamed Ukraine for the ongoing war, and went so far as to portray Zelensky as a dictator with an approval rating of four percent, instantly burst the optimistic bubble.

His first barb, and perhaps most painful, was his remark about how the war began. When during a speech in Miami Trump mentioned the topic of ending the war that started when Russian troops crossed the border into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he placed the blame squarely on Ukraine itself: “You’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it... You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”

His second assertion was no less shocking. Volodymyr Zelensky, who was democratically elected by over 73 percent of Ukrainians in a free and fair vote, is, in Trump’s opinion, a dictator. “We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law,” Trump declared on another occasion during an impromptu press conference at Mar-a-Lago. In a subsequent social media post, he doubled down: “A Dictator without Elections, Zelensky better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”

While Trump shares bombastic statements like this freely, his position as the leader of the free world lends more gravity to his pronouncements, and Ukrainians reacted with dismay and deep disappointment. The unwavering Western support they’ve counted on until now is no longer certain.