Long Island's Ukrainian community reacts to Donald Trump's election victory

For Ukrainians and their supporters on Long Island, Donald Trump’s election victory has complicated an already clouded future.

The incoming U.S. president has said he can end Russia’s war with Ukraine in a day, though he has not said how. Trump has criticized U.S. aid to its embattled ally. He has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, and analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War assessed late last week that Putin appears to assume Trump "will defer to the Kremlin's interests and preferences." But it was under Trump’s administration, in 2017, that the United States first sent weapons to Ukraine that were used to defend against Russia’s 2022 invasion.

“He is an unpredictable politician. We don’t know what to expect from him, and this is what scares us and gives hope at the same time,” said Anna Konovalova, who fled Ukraine in 2022 with her two young children. Her family now lives with Brentwood’s Sisters of St. Joseph, an order of Catholic nuns who have taken in more than 100 Ukrainian refugees in recent years.

About 4,000 Ukrainian immigrants lived on Long Island in 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and at least 100 Ukrainian families fleeing the war have taken refuge on Long Island, priests working to resettle them told Newsday last year.

Konovalova, like many of the refugees, has family still in Ukraine. Her brother, Ihor, is a medic near Donetsk, at the front line of the war, and Russians have advanced near Dnipro, where she once lived and where her brother's wife and son live now. “They [Russian forces] are already pretty close,” Konovalova said.

If a Trump administration interrupts or curtails billions of dollars of American military aid that have so far kept Ukraine in the fight against a much larger enemy, and other nations follow the American lead, it could mean disaster, Konovalova said.

“We are scared,” she said. “America is a very important partner. [Trump] has a very big influence for all the world. If they stop helping Ukraine, we will lose our country.”

Worries over immigration policies

Konovalova also worries that changes to U.S. immigration and humanitarian policies could affect families like hers. A federal program giving temporary protected status to Ukrainian refugees is set to expire in April. That could mean that even as Konovalova and her family build a life here — she works as a project manager for an IT company and her children are learning English and attending public schools — they might be forced to leave, she said. 

“Given Trump’s aggressive remarks against immigrants in general, I am worried about protections for Ukrainian refugees in the USA who are sheltering from war and have no place to go,” she said in an email.

Alisa Taranenko, an outreach coordinator for Catholic Charities in Amityville who came to the United States three months ago and also lives with the Sisters of St. Joseph, said she found Trump’s talk of a quick end to the war promising.

Taranenko — originally from Odesa, a port city that is under Ukrainian control but has been hit by frequent Russian missile attacks this fall — said she worried about Ukraine’s ability to sustain a long-term war.

“We haven’t got the human resources,” she said. “A million people already have died.”

While Taranenko said “it will be good if [Trump] has some solutions,” she, like other Ukrainians interviewed for this story, called a 24-hour timeline questionable. “That’s a politician talking big,” she said. “It’s impossible.”

Having watched Trump from afar, Taranenko said, “I think he cares more about his own country. Inside the country, he is good, but what about the others? I don’t think he really cares about other countries.”

In an email, Karoline Leavitt, a Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman, said: “The American people reelected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.”

In Riverhead, Father Bohdan Hedz, a Ukrainian American pastor of a largely Ukrainian congregation at St. John the Baptist Parish that regularly sends medical and humanitarian supplies to Ukraine, said many members of his politically mixed flock took Trump at his word when he promised an end to the war.

“We are hopeful, like every American that voted for President Trump, hoping that changes will be made in this country,” Hedz said. Some of his parishioners also felt “the outgoing administration really dragged their feet,” he said. “The sentiment is that aid was given very slowly, not given in a timely fashion, in amounts that were not sufficient when they were needed the most.” That pattern was repeated for a number of American weapons systems in limited use by Ukrainians, including Abrams tanks, F-16 fighters and Patriot missiles, he said.

Another Ukrainian priest, Father Vladyslav Budash, priest of Smithtown’s Resurrection Byzantine Catholic Parish, said he hoped clearer foreign policies would emerge after an election he described as dominated by populism and domestic concerns.

Budash said there were pragmatic reasons to hope a Trump administration would continue and even strengthen American support for Ukraine. “Supporting Ukraine is not a charity — it’s a benefit for the U.S.” because it is fighting against a country hostile to the United States and its allies.

There were also, Budash said, principles that he expected Trump would appreciate: “To make America great again, America cannot be locked inside of its own problems.” If Russia’s invasion of Ukraine broke international law, so did the actions of countries like Iran, North Korea and China, which appear to have helped Russia evade sanctions, Budash said. “How can America be great again if it doesn’t react on all these challenges?”

'There are many questions'

Marcin Glinski, a Calverton-based life and fitness coach from Poland who collects supplies for Ukraine, said he was struck by the haste Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy showed in calling to congratulate Trump hours after his election. "It shows determination and desperation," Glinski said. "He is desperate to establish some relations with Trump."

In interviews, professionals who provide settlement and other services to Ukrainians on Long Island said their clients were frazzled.

“There’s tremendous anxiety and fear that Trump … will allow certain demands, certain concessions,” said Sister Annelle Fitzpatrick, director of the Sisters of St. Joseph resettlement office. “They’re afraid that the one-fifth of Ukraine that Russian forces now occupy, he will give it to them.”

Nadiia Veselova, case manager for Lutheran Social Services of New York, which has helped place some Ukrainian refugees on Long Island, said some clients who have been in the United States for as long as two years are now unsure how immigration policy might change. “There are many questions from Ukrainians,” she said. “Unfortunately, we don’t know what will be.”

In the darkened banquet hall of St. Vladimir’s Parish Center in Uniondale one night last week, Stepan Kunitski and Iryna Boutcha, two leaders of the Long Island chapter of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, an advocacy group, said they did not expect Trump to care about Ukraine’s fate as a Ukrainian would.

But, Boutcha said, “He might find some kind of interest to support Ukraine. It must be in America’s interest.”

The argument she made for American interest was twofold. Without opposition, she said, “Putin won’t stop” at Ukraine’s border but will push into the rest of Europe, a move that would by treaty compel direct American intervention. But, she said, “America doesn’t have to send troops to fight … because Ukraine will protect all the world. The main task for Americans is to support Ukrainians in this fight.”