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September 27, 2024 3:08pm

Inside Ukraine’s Effort to Win Over Donald Trump

“It has to be good old-fashioned greed,” #Pompeo told TIME in Kyiv after his meeting with #Zelensky. “It has to be a good old-fashioned, commercial, profit-driven, incentive-forming, risk-taking, entrepreneurial model that delivers that sustainable place for Ukraine.” Appealing for American help in the defense of Ukraine’s democracy or its survival as a nation would not be likely to secure Trump's lasting support. “It can’t be a donor base,” Pompeo explains. “It’s not, ‘Hey, we had a donor conference.’ Those are interesting, and they get things rolling perhaps. But they are wholly unsustainable.”

In trying to deliver that message to Trump and his supporters, some of Zelensky’s Republican allies have pointed to the resource wealth Ukraine could offer the U.S. after the war. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, hammered on this point in a video he recorded with Zelensky in Kyiv earlier this month. “They’re sitting on a trillion dollars of minerals that could be good to our economy,” said the Republican from North Carolina. “So I want to keep helping our friends in Ukraine.”

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Back in Kyiv, Zelensky’s allies have spent months trying to influence Trump’s views on the war. Leaders of the country’s vibrant community of #Baptists have reached out repeatedly to Trump’s evangelical allies on Capitol Hill, including House Speaker Mike #Johnson. Victor #Pinchuk, a Ukrainian billionaire on good terms with the Zelensky administration, hired Trump’s former aide Kellyanne #Conway as a lobbyist in Washington for a fee of $50,000 per month. According to official filings with the Justice Department, Conway will advise Pinchuk’s foundation on “the current state of views on Ukraine among US elected officials, candidates, experts, and opinion leaders.” The lobbying agreement expires on Nov. 14, about a week after Election Day, unless both sides agree to extend it.

In mid-September, about a week before Zelensky’s arrival in the U.S., Pinchuk hosted an annual summit in Kyiv that attracted a range of influential guests from the U.S. and Europe. While working on the program, Pinchuk appealed to Boris #Johnson, the former British Prime Minister, to convince Trump to participate via live video link. “Unfortunately I failed completely to get that,” Johnson said at the conference.