WASHINGTON – With American support for Ukraine at a partisan crossroads, Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday slammed suggestions that Kyiv should cede territory for the sake of peace with Moscow as “dangerous and unacceptable.”
The Democratic presidential nominee spoke alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as she unleashed the veiled criticism of Republican candidate Donald Trump's push for Ukraine to quickly cut a deal to end the war.
“They are not proposals for peace,” Harris said. “Instead they are proposals for surrender.”
Her comments were a reminder of the high stakes for the war effort in this year's election. Trump, for his part, has criticized U.S. assistance for Ukraine, praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and faulted Zelenskyy for the ongoing bloodshed.
Trump said he will meet with Zelenskyy in New York on Friday after days of questions over whether the two leaders will sit down together. He rejected Harris' criticisms and insisted that he only wants to stop the “horror show that's gone on.”
Asked if Ukraine should give up territory, Trump said “we'll see what happens” and “we need peace.”
Before announcing the meeting with Zelenskyy, Trump posted on social media a purported message from the Ukrainian leader asking to see him. The message, which was not confirmed by Ukrainian officials, said “we have to strive to understand each other.”
The decision to publicly disclose what appeared to be private communications, however benign their contents, was a reminder of the tension that's been brewing between Trump and Zelenskyy.
It was a far different impression than Harris delivered Thursday as she embraced Ukraine's defense and outlined a broader foreign policy vision rooted in “international order, rules and norms.” Harris rejected calls for the U.S. to walk away from its global role and warned that potential aggressors could be emboldened if Putin emerges victorious.
“The United States supports Ukraine not out of charity, but because it’s in our strategic interest,” Harris said.
Zelenskyy was in Washington to present the White House and Congress with his plans for reaching an endgame in the war by improving Ukraine's chances on the battlefield and its eventual leverage at the negotiating table. He's pushing to lift restrictions on using long-range Western weapons to strike targets deeper in Russian territory.
No movement on this issue was evident during Zelenskyy's visit. However, President Joe Biden announced billions of dollars more in missiles, drones, ammunition and other supplies. The weapons include an additional Patriot missile defense battery and a new shipment of glide bombs that can be deployed from Western fighter jets, increasing their strike range.
Biden pledged to ensure that all approved funding is disbursed before he leaves office, and said he plans to convene a meeting with other world leaders focused on Ukraine’s defense during a visit to Germany next month.
“We stand with Ukraine, now and in the future," Biden said alongside Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. “Russia will not prevail. Ukraine will prevail.”
Ukrainian officials are anxious to maintain good relations with whomever becomes the next president of the United States, which is its biggest and most important provider of arms, money and other support. But the effort risks slipping into the political blender of the presidential campaign, polarizing the discussion around a war that used to be a bipartisan cause célèbre in Washington.
About two thirds of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said the U.S. has a responsibility to help Ukraine, compared with one third of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in July.
Americans are also split on which presidential candidate would do a better job handling the war. An AP-NORC poll from August found that about one-third of Americans said they trusted Harris more, while a similar share said the same about Trump.
On Thursday, Zelenskyy found some bipartisan support as he visited Capitol Hill, where he was greeted by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Sen. Lindsay Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said Zelenskyy asked to use long-range weapons, such as British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles or U.S.-made ATACMS, for “maximum benefit to bring Putin to the table” and increase Ukraine's negotiating position.
"If we don’t make that fundamental choice this week, I think the outcome for Ukraine is dire,” Graham said.
Administration officials have been skeptical of Zelenskyy's request, believing the weapons could have limited benefits but increase the risk of escalating the conflict. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, said senators gave Zelenskyy advice on how to persuade Biden to loosen restrictions.
Rep. Jim Himes, another Connecticut Democrat and the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said Zelenskyy wanted “more, faster.”
“He was politely frustrated," Himes said, and specifically requested more Patriot missile defenses as Russia escalates strikes on Ukraine's cities and energy grid before the winter.
Zelenskyy faces a much more tense situation with Trump. The latest round of sniping started on Sunday, when The New Yorker published an interview with Zelenskyy in which he criticized JD Vance, Trump's running mate, as “too radical” for suggesting that Ukraine needs to give up some territory to end the war. Zelenskyy also dismissed Trump's boasts that he could quickly negotiate a solution, saying “my feeling is that Trump doesn’t really know how to stop the war even if he might think he knows how.”
On the same day, Zelenskyy toured a Pennsylvania factory producing munitions for the war. He was joined by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, a top surrogate for Harris, and Republicans criticized the visit as a political stunt in a political battleground state.
House Speaker Mike Johnson demanded that Zelenskyy fire the Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S., alleging that the tour was “designed to help Democrats and is clearly election interference.” The Louisiana Republican didn't attend any of lawmakers' meetings with Zelenskyy on Thursday.
Trump complained this week that Zelenskyy is “making little nasty aspersions toward your favorite president, me.” He also described the Ukrainian leader as “the greatest salesman on Earth” for securing U.S. support, and he complained that “we continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal” to end the war. Trump’s message dovetails with Russian propaganda that claims intransigence by Kyiv — not aggression from Moscow — has prolonged the bloodshed.
Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Zelenskyy is in a “no-win situation" where he “can’t even visit a U.S. weapons manufacturer to say thank you without being attacked.”
Trump was impeached during his first term over asking Zelenskyy for help investigating Biden, then a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, at a time when the Ukrainian leader was seeking support from Washington. Now there are fears that Trump would cut off or add strings to U.S. military assistance if he returned to the White House.
Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Trump is not wrong to want a negotiated end to the war. However, he said, Trump risks undermining Ukraine by enabling Putin to make more gains on the battlefield.
“Neither Ukraine nor Russia is going to win this war, and the sooner that the parties try to end this, the better," Kupchan said. "Where Trump goes off course, and where Biden and Harris have a much stronger argument, is that we get to that point not by throwing Ukraine under the bus but by giving them sufficient support so they can block further Russian aggression.”
___ Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani and Michelle Price in New York and Ellen Knickmeyer, Lisa Mascaro, Mary Clare Jalonick, Kevin Freking, Steven Groves and Amelia Thomson-Deveaux in Washington contributed to this report.