STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
All right, we've been following the news of Ukraine's incursion into Russia. The country that was invaded is now invading its invader. We don't know how or if Russia will push the Ukrainians back. However that battle turns out, a different contest may matter more to Ukraine. It's the U.S. presidential election, which will decide who leads a vital Ukrainian ally.
It would be easy to sketch out a simple difference between Vice President Harris and former President Trump on this issue. Harris is part of the Biden administration, which supports Ukraine and NATO. Trump has criticized NATO and keeps praising Russia's Vladimir Putin. Matthew Kaminski says his reporting for Politico finds the distinction is more complicated.
MATTHEW KAMINSKI: I think there's more divisions within Trump world than we typically would recognize. But at the same time, I think it's also an open question where Harris would go if she were to become president. The one thing about Harris that is important to understand is that she would not keep the same foreign policy team in place, which gives her a chance to do things differently. And certainly the Ukrainians would want the U.S. administration to be much more aggressive in supporting them in this conflict against Russia. They are very grateful for this support. Biden has brought together the Western coalition. But there's a lot of frustration in Kyiv with Washington.
INSKEEP: You're referring to occasions in which the Biden administration has been slow to deliver arms or has simply declined to deliver arms that might be used in an offensive capacity against Russia, that might widen the war from the U.S. perspective.
KAMINSKI: Yes, for sure. Every time they've asked for a new piece of equipment that was seen as potentially escalatory, it has taken a long time for the U.S. to sign off on it. And they think they have lost the opportunities they had at the beginning of the conflict to make gains that are much harder to make now because we are stuck in a war of attrition on the eastern front.
INSKEEP: Granting that it's necessarily a mystery, are there any clues about whether and how Vice President Harris would be any different?
KAMINSKI: I think the Ukrainians see her in two ways. One, she is a member of the existing team, which gives them some reassurance that they do have supporters back in Washington. I think the second thing they look to is that Vice President Harris went to a peace conference that Zelenskyy organized earlier this year in Switzerland and also gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference, which is the main gathering of defense ministers and defense officials in the world, where she was more supportive, in their view, than they've heard sometimes the White House being for Ukraine in this conflict. But I think from a Ukrainian point of view, they are very much hoping that the next administration will be less cautious than Biden has been.
INSKEEP: Now, you said at the beginning that there was something of a divide in the Trump camp. What do you mean?
KAMINSKI: I think there are - I sort of call it the Trump id and the Trump ego. And the Trump id - you know, his emotional sort of response is that America shouldn't be too engaged in helping foreigners fight wars. I will come in and get this done quickly. And that is the part of the Trump brain and the part of Trump world that really resonates with the new kind of isolationist wing of the Republican Party.
But the Republican Party has not been entirely remade in the Trump period. And remember that within the Republican Party and within Trump's inner circle, you do have hawks on defense. And by that, I mean there are people around Trump like Mike Pompeo, his former secretary of state, Robert O'Brien, his former national security adviser, Senator Tom Cotton. And I know the Ukrainians are very much counting on them and have been working with them and lobbying them to say, hey, wait a minute, the U.S. has interests here, and that the Trump administration can be seen as being strong by supporting Ukraine in giving them continued military support, saying that the U.S. should try and bring Ukraine into NATO longer term and should really give them much stronger cards to get a better deal from Putin if and when it comes to that.
INSKEEP: This all sounds very interesting and subtle. But, as you know very well, the one thing that former President Trump has said very clearly in public is, if I'm elected, I'm going to end the war before my inauguration, which suggests a very quick peace settlement that maybe would not be so great for the Ukrainians.
KAMINSKI: And that's obviously the great, you know, anxiety that Kyiv has but does seem (ph) they also have some confidence that they have made the case successfully to people around Trump that supporting Ukraine is in America's interest.
Then over this summer, it was interesting to see that after Donald Trump was nominated by his party in Milwaukee, the first call that he had with a foreign leader was with President Zelenskyy. And in that call, I was told that Trump said a couple of things. One - that people assume that I'm going to - the deal will be favorable to Putin. That is, quote-unquote, "fake news." It's a familiar phrase from Donald Trump. And secondly, that I - the kind of deal that the U.S. envisions would be something that would honor the sacrifices that Ukraine has made over the last 2 1/2 years but, in fact, over the last decade in fighting Russia in this conflict.
INSKEEP: I think you're telling me that when it comes to Vice President Harris, you can figure out the general direction of the policy 'cause she's already part of the current administration. But there are many questions about the details, and they could be life-or-death details. And then when you say the debate in the Trump camp is between Trump's ego and his id, you're telling me that this depends entirely on the mood of one man. Is that right?
KAMINSKI: I think, first of all, on the Harris question, the U.S. and the NATO-led support for Ukraine will have to be different from 2025 onwards than it has the last two years. It is not sustainable for the U.S. and the Europeans to provide the kind of military support at this level - probably longer-term - without major changes in European industrial capacity, American ability to produce enough weapons to give to the Ukrainians. Harris will have an opportunity to define a new sort of NATO - U.S.-led but NATO European strategy to support Ukraine with new people. The question of Trump always comes back to one man.
INSKEEP: Matthew Kaminski is editor-at-large of Politico and a longtime observer of Ukraine. Thanks so much.
KAMINSKI: Thank you.
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