Kamala Harris faces difficult choices on Ukraine war if she beats Donald Trump: Patrick Mercer

In the deeply divisive atmosphere of US politics, most Democrat voters loathe President Trump and Harris’s ascent to stardom in only a few days demonstrates just that.

Whoever wins the race, though, he or she will have some very tricky decisions to make and no one is watching the contest more closely than President Zelensky.

Now, you can denigrate Joe Biden’s team (and I point to those around him because of the poor man’s health), but they have managed to steer Europe and NATO away from an all out war with Russia - and that’s been no mean achievement in the face the deeply irresponsible jingoism from Whitehall and Paris.

True, Ukraine is staggering, but she’s still fighting and has every reason to hope that a new, Democrat president might rejuvenate her hopes, armouries and forces. I wonder, though.

President Trump and JD Vance’s stance is well known. Undoubtedly they will use the war to lever more responsibility and money out of Britain and the European countries for their own defence whilst engaging in realpolitik with President Putin. There’s no point in listening to the biased press on this point: Crimea and the four, new oblasts are now part of Russia and by her constitution will only be surrendered at the point of the bayonet - and that’s something which Ukraine has shown she cannot do.

Team Trump understand this and I can only think that any peace treaty which may be framed in the autumn will include swathes of land being recognised as Russian - the same swathes which Ukraine has previously sworn to liberate.

Details about NATO membership, non-aggression guarantees and the like can follow, but I suspect that a great deal of Russian blood will have been shed for modest but tangible gains and that NATO will be badly poised for whatever Moscow decides to do next.

The other side of the coin is that Madame President will put money and muscle firmly behind Kyiv and help to drive Russia back. But will she? So far Ms Harris has attended the Munich Security Conference and made some predictable noises in support of Joe Biden’s stance, but she will probably appoint Philip Gordon as her security advisor because, I’m told, both of them share an interest in the Middle East.

So, I believe that whoever gets to wear the crown, a battered Ukraine will be increasingly neglected whilst the new incumbent rebuilds the US’s forces in order to face an overwhelming threat from China and the jigsaw puzzle of what might or might not happen in Israel, Iran and beyond.

President Zelensky’s rhetoric remains buoyant whilst his forces are conducting some eye catching, if minor, raids across the Russian border near Kharkov. Yet he’s started elaborating on the second peace conference that he’s organised.

This one will take place shortly before the US elections, but this time Russia will be invited. Whether Moscow’s people will attend is another matter, but this is the first glimpse of realism from Kyiv since the failed peace initiative of April 2022.

If I’m right and Kyiv’s going to be forced to the negotiating table because US support is likely to taper off, what can be done in the interim? Put simply, Kyiv’s hand has got to be strengthened. First, the widespread discontent within the country which is manifest by the increasingly frequent burning of recruiting officers’ vehicles and offices and attacks upon their personnel must be stamped on. Then novel forms of attacking Russia from all angles must be looked at.

Perhaps a general withdrawal from frontline positions to bastions and redoubts further west would buy time, save lives and shorten the front. Always conscious of the media, I doubt that Kyiv would do this, but operationally it makes sense and, by sacrificing ground for time something more innovative can be achieved.

For instance, the one area in which Ukraine has triumphed has been its maritime drone operations against Russian shipping. Cheap and deadly these weapons punch above their weight as do their aerial equivalents which have done so much damage to Moscow’s logistics. They’re also spectacular and easy for the media to cover. What must not happen, however, would be formal permission being given by the West for the cruise missiles that we’ve supplied to be fired, as Lord Cameron would say, ‘deep into Russia’.

Were that to happen, Moscow is fully ready to retaliate against their launch sites with ultra fast missiles that will kill NATO technicians who - it’s a open secret - are right there. Obviously, there’d be a crisis that would scupper any peace talks, testing the Presidential candidates and causing both, I’d guess, to wish themselves clear of the Ukrainian entanglement even faster than they had planned.

It’s going to be a difficult time for Ukraine and the only answer is large numbers of fully trained troops to push Russia away. While almost every NATO country has men stationed on the Ukrainian border, they’re much more likely to be used to evacuate their ambassadors and nationals when we hang Ukraine out to dry like we did to Afghanistan.

Patrick Mercer is a former MP for Newark and Army colonel.