A new administration is coming to town, and the president-elect has sent some decidedly mixed signals about continued support for Ukraine. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump repeatedly boasted he could quickly negotiate a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, and at one point complained that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “should never have let that war start. That war’s a loser.” Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and — short of unilateral surrender — there was never any way for Zelensky to deter the attack.

But if a recent report in the Financial Times is correct, Trump is willing to maintain U.S. military supplies to Kyiv after his inauguration, “according to three other people briefed on the discussions with Western officials,” but Trump will demand NATO members more than double the current “2 percent spending target — which only 23 of the alliance’s 32 members currently meet — to 5 percent, two people briefed on the conversations said. One person said they understood that Trump would settle for 3.5 percent.”

If the Ukrainian government wants to keep the arms supplies coming, it needs to tailor its arguments to be persuasive to Trump, his administration and congressional Republicans. And that might well require thanking the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova, for her service and sending........

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