Ukrainians on Long Island, approaching third anniversary of war, reeling from Trump administration shift in foreign policy

As Long Island’s Ukrainians and their supporters approach the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion, their horror over the war’s ongoing toll is unchanged. But now it is accompanied by unsettling questions over United States support for the Ukraine war effort.

That is partly because Washington — long the linchpin of international backing for Kyiv and the isolation of Moscow — appears to be reversing elements of its foreign policy, planning not just ceasefire negotiations but also warmer relations with the Kremlin in talks by high-level officials this week that took place without Ukrainian officials.

It is also because President Donald Trump, in a news conference days before the anniversary of the Feb. 24 invasion, falsely blamed Kyiv for starting the war. Many in Long Island’s community of Ukrainian immigrants and refugees were gobsmacked.

"I listened to Trump’s speech, that Ukraine is guilty — this is unbelievable to say," said Stepan Kunitski, one of the leaders of the Long Island chapter of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, an advocacy group. "We’re trying to protect our land and we’re guilty? They are killing us."

Kunitski said he had hoped Trump would talk "man to man" with Vladimir Putin and compel the Russian leader to back down. "I voted for Trump and I expected a strong man," Kunitski said. "He promised us to save Ukraine, to be the number one protector, and now [Trump] is playing the game with Putin."

Oleh Dekajlo, a lawyer from East Meadow who is the former president of the committee’s Long Island chapter, said he was shaken by the week’s events, from the talks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to remarks by Trump calling for mining concessions in Ukraine as a condition for continuing U.S. support and a social media post in which he falsely called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a dictator.

"We are all scratching our heads," Dekajlo said. "If the goal was to get NATO to pay their fair share, we can understand that — he may have some credibility there. But don’t, in the same breath, belittle and demean the democratically elected president of a sovereign country."

Anna Konovalova, who fled the Ukrainian city of Dnipro in 2022 with her two young children and now lives in Brentwood, said in an email that she was "offended, deeply concerned, and frankly, terrified by the latest remarks from the current White House Administration."

In interviews this week, Konovalova and others returned to touchstones like the Budapest Memorandum, the 1990s accord under which Ukraine gave up its nuclear stockpile in exchange for security assurances, and what Ukraine views as the true start of Russia’s aggression against its smaller neighbor: not the 2022 invasion but Russia’s 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea.

"People from now-occupied areas lost their homes, their livelihoods, and even their entire families," she wrote. "And yet, after all this, we are being told that we started the war? Where is the justice in this world? It seems to no longer exist."

Dariia Savchenko was a web designer in Ukraine. After fleeing with her husband and their toddler son to the United States, she spends her days learning English and taking care of her son. Like several refugees interviewed for this story, she said that people she loves have been killed: her uncle, cousins and friends.

Short of a military defeat for Russia, she said, "I'm sure this will not stop. Putin will make the largest war in another place. He does not worry about his people."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told CNN and Associated Press reporters last week that the United States would work toward an end to fighting "that’s enduring and acceptable to all the parties engaged," but declined to say what concessions, if any, would be expected of Russia, according to a department transcript. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz sidestepped a question about whether Russia would retain Ukrainian territory it annexed after invading, saying the matter would "be discussed." But Trump, he said, was adamant that fighting not continue. "What the president did not find acceptable was an endless war in Europe that was literally turning into ... a meat grinder of people on both sides."

Russia controls about a fifth of Ukrainian territory. By January of this year, more than 41,783 Ukrainian civilians, including thousands of children, had been killed or wounded in the fighting: blown up by wide-area effect explosives and mines or shot, according to the United Nations. 

Russia has suffered as many as 700,000 casualties since the war began, including up to 200,000 killed in action, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies. The London-based think tank said around 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed.

UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency, estimates that 10.6 million Ukrainians — almost a quarter of the prewar population — are displaced and that up to a third of the nation’s territory has been exposed to contamination by mines and ordnance. The economy is in tatters, with agricultural and industrial hubs in the east devastated and close to a third of prewar jobs lost, according to the agency.

Most analysts agree that, in a ground war now at stalemate, Russia — with a far larger army and a population roughly four times the size of Ukraine — has the upper hand. But in an interview, Edward P. Joseph, lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, pointed to Ukraine’s wartime technical innovations including industrial-scale production of drones for combat and surveillance.

Also significant, he said, was the deployment, first reported last fall, of North Korean troops alongside Russian soldiers in the theater. Keith Kellogg, the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, recently cited that deployment as evidence of Russia’s manpower struggles. "Effectively, Kellogg rebuts the notion that the outcome is foreordained and Ukraine is on death’s door," Joseph said. But he added: "It would be extremely difficult for Ukraine to continue a conventional battle without consistent American military support."

Paul Fritz, a Hofstra University political scientist who studies international politics and security, called the situation "extraordinarily bleak for Ukraine." Ukraine likely does not possess the capacity to maintain the stalemate without U.S. aid, said Fritz, and "this administration has signaled very clearly that they’re no longer willing to support aid." He added that "Republicans in Congress seem to be very quiet — right now, I wouldn’t expect much pushback."

Ukraine still has agency and may continue to fight, Fritz said, perhaps in low-intensity guerrilla conflict, but "Ukrainian people are very tired of war. It might not be worth it for them."

In an interview this week, Bohdan Kopystianskyj, a retired Great Neck architect scheduled to speak Sunday at a rally at the Polish National Home in Glen Cove — organizers moved it from the Holocaust Memorial Tolerance Center to accommodate more people — warned that a ceasefire that left Russia in control of illegally annexed land would not last. "What that signals to Russia is that they have won, done what they wanted to do ... In 10 years they will do it again. They will take more and more and more."

One supporter said he was optimistic in the face of what he called "Trump’s betrayal." Ed Hoey, a retired marketing executive from Wantagh who since 2022 has worked to acquire and ship supplies to Ukraine including combat drones, said a loss of support, if it does happen, would only put off Russia’s eventual defeat. He has watched Ukraine’s military-industrial capacity grow "in leaps and bounds" and seen some of the soldiers he serves in combat. "These people are made of iron," he said.

But some look forward with dread. Alisa Taranenko, an outreach coordinator with Catholic Charities who lives in Brentwood, said the odds were stacked against her homeland. "Let’s be realistic, let’s look at a world map: Look at the huge resources of Russia, and small Ukraine," she said. "Without funding and military support, it cannot continue three or four years more. We haven’t got the resources and people inside are so tired."

Taranenko became a refugee the first day of the invasion, she said. Her parents stayed because their home and their pets are there. "It’s where their soul lives," she said. Some family and friends who stayed have been killed. The survivors "wake up in the morning, go to their jobs, try to keep everything going. I don’t know how they still live in that horror."

With AP