What is happening in Ukraine concerns you too.

That was the message that Ukraine and Ukrainians at home and abroad have been striving to communicate to the foreign public for years now. To debunk the appealing but false notion that Russia will stop at the territories that it occupied in the East and South of Ukraine, I’ve given speeches and hosted fundraisers during my three years of studying in the U.S. Still, the U.S. support of Ukrainian resistance could not be described as steadfast, as Ukraine did not receive necessary weapons for months last spring due to a deadlock in Congress. I experienced the effects of this firsthand when Russia was able to bomb the energy plant in my hometown in Ukraine while our air defense unit simply did not have enough missiles to shoot down the Russian ones. With all this in mind, Kamala Harris’ decision to position herself as a candidate who realizes the risk that Russia poses is an acknowledgment of the concerns of many, including Americans of Eastern-European heritage. 

As was mentioned in The Argus’ coverage of the presidential debate, Donald Trump’s refusal to declare that he wants Ukraine to win has indeed signaled the lack of a tough approach against the Russian dictatorships. This stands in stark contrast to the Republican leaders of the past, whose stances allowed them to create an image as the party that stands against tyranny. With this reputation fading due to Trump and his supporters, it made a lot of sense for the Harris campaign to work to gain the votes of those who take the threat of Russia seriously. During the debate, the Vice President underscored the importance of American weapons for preserving Ukraine’s independence and democracy before stating that Putin’s ambitions do not end with Ukraine.

“Tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up,” Harris very pointedly remarked to Trump during the debate.

The digital and TV ads, run by a PAC that is supportive of the Democrats, go further in courting the votes of sizable Eastern-European communities in the swing states. They position Kamala Harris as a successor to the American tradition of defending freedom. This puts her alongside both Democratic and Republican presidents, like Kennedy and Reagan—both of whom were popular among those whose ancestral lands were behind the wall Reagan told to tear down. 

“If we stand by while an aggressor invades its neighbor with impunity, they will keep going,” she says in the videos.  

Another ad references Ukrainian history of resisting foreign invasions and features an iconic medieval mosaic of Orans in Kyiv, which is easily recognizable to the Ukrainian diaspora. 

It would be easy to dismiss these efforts as attempts to woo a specific demographic in the unpredictable toss-up of this year’s election. However, the Russian government has provided more than enough evidence to suggest that the general rhetoric of the above-mentioned claims is true. The last decades were marked by people and whole countries incorrectly believing that Russia would stop its belligerence—first at Georgia, then at the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine, then at the Donbas region, and now at almost one-fourth of Ukrainian territory. It is time to finally recognize that the only way to stop the ever-growing Russian aggression is for Ukraine to have enough arms to stop the advancing Russian army and liberate the occupied territories. 

The countries that are near Russia realize this, as they know that the same outlandish and pseudo-historic claims that Russian imperialism has over Ukrainian lands could apply to them as well. They saw how the USSR occupied Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia and installed puppet governments in even more countries. It is also hard not to notice that Russian fighter drones flying over Poland and Romania have become an awfully common occurrence.

Eastern-European countries have responded to this threat. The Baltic states have been at the forefront of supporting Ukraine with armaments, with the Estonian prime minister saying that there is no “plan B” for the scenario of Russia succeeding in its invasion. Despite the narratives being spread in the U.S. that European countries expect the U.S. to defend them without making their own contributions, they are stepping up their defenses in Poland, for example, raising their military budget to amount to 5% of their GDP. 

As Ukraine and other countries are determined not to let Russia continue its streak of invasions, the U.S. should strengthen its support of the Ukrainian Armed Forces as well. Prolonged deliberations over a particular kind of weapon being sent or using this assistance as a bargaining chip in inter-party debacles lead to grave consequences that undermine the sovereignty and safety of nations. Let’s hope that understanding this will guide the presidential candidates beyond the fight for votes in swing states. 

Yaryna Kholod is a member of the class of 2028 and can be reached at ykholod@wesleyan.edu.