Midterms: Kyiv expects nothing from Washington, and it is right

According to France 24, Ukrainians are watching the expected Democratic victory in the midterm elections with caution. The country, at war for four years, was first rattled by the massive Russian strikes of recent days. It knows, still according to the channel, that it is hard to change a foreign policy over which Donald Trump keeps a firm hand. That is all we know at this stage: the dispatch says nothing about the detail of the votes or the measures the Democrats might try.

What follows is our reading, not an established fact.

The Ukrainian caution is clear-eyed. In the United States, foreign policy belongs to the executive. An opposition Congress can obstruct, delay and amend a budget. It does not dictate the line. And the American state is not a person: it is an apparatus serving a ruling class, which arbitrates according to its interests. Whether the president is a Republican or faces a Democratic majority, the question remains the same: what does Ukraine bring in, and what does it cost?

Cui bono? Let us ask it plainly. A long war benefits arms manufacturers, the reconstruction markets that Western capital is already eyeing, and the powers that covet land, resources and spheres of influence. Sanctions, arms contracts and alliances are, through the Leninist lens, the political shell of economic rivalries. Washington backs Kyiv as long as it serves its position against Moscow. Not a day longer than necessary.

The Democrats are not the enemies of this logic. They are one version of it. They speak the language of the "rules-based order", beloved of chancelleries, whose main virtue is to dress up great-power interests as principles. Ukrainians, who are receiving Russian missiles, have good reason to distrust both discourses. A change of majority in Washington weighs little against a salvo on Kyiv.

There is a broader lesson. Hoping that a distant electoral turnover will settle a war is to treat a reform as a victory. What a parliament grants, an executive takes back when interests shift. The real question is that of the balance of power: who, in the societies concerned, has a hold over the decision to wage war or to end it? For now, neither ordinary Ukrainians, nor mobilised Russians, nor American voters.

What we still do not know weighs heavily: the exact content of any Congressional initiatives, Trump's real position after the vote, and the future of aid. France 24 says nothing about it, and we will not fill this void with rumours. We keep the essentials: in Kyiv, people have understood that power is not decided at the ballot boxes of another country.