For Ukrainians and their supporters on Long Island, Donald Trump’s election victory complicated an already murky future.

The incoming US president has said he can end Russia’s war with Ukraine one day, though he hasn’t said how. Trump has criticized US aid to its embattled ally. He praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, and analysts at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington assessed later this week that Putin appeared to assume that Trump “will adhere to the Kremlin’s interests and preferences.” But under the Trump administration, in 2017, the United States sent weapons to Ukraine for the first time, which were used to defend against a 2022 Russian invasion.

“He is an unpredictable politician. We don’t know what to expect from him, and that scares us and gives us hope at the same time,” said Anna Konovalova, who fled Ukraine in 2022 with her two young children. Her family now lives with the sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood, an order of Catholic nuns who have taken in more than 100 Ukrainian refugees in recent years.

About 4,000 Ukrainian immigrants lived on Long Island in 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and at least 100 Ukrainian families fleeing war took refuge on Long Island, priests working to resettle them told Newsday last year .

Konovalova, like many of the refugees, still has family in Ukraine. Her brother, Ihor, is a doctor near Donetsk, on the front lines of the war, and the Russians have advanced near Dnipro, where she once lived and where his wife and son now live. “They (Russian forces) are already quite close,” Konovalova said.

If a Trump administration cuts or limits billions of dollars in U.S. military aid that has so far kept Ukraine in the fight against a much larger enemy, and other nations follow the U.S. lead, it could spell disaster, Konovalova said.

“We’re scared,” she said. “America is a very important partner. (Trump) has a very big influence for the whole world. If they stop helping Ukraine, we will lose our country.”

Concerns about immigration policies

Konovalova also worries that changes to US immigration and humanitarian policies could affect families like hers. A federal program that grants temporary protected status to Ukrainian refugees is set to expire in April. That could mean that even if Konovalova and her family build a life here — she works as a project manager for an IT company and her children learn English and attend public schools — they could be forced to leave, she said .

“Given Trump’s aggressive remarks against immigrants in general, I am concerned about the protection of Ukrainian refugees in the U.S. who are seeking refuge from war and have nowhere to go,” she said in an email.

Alisa Taranenko, coordinator for Catholic Charities in Amityville, who came to the United States three months ago and also lives with the sisters of St. Iosif, said he found Trump’s talk of ending the war quickly promising.

Taranenko — originally from Odesa, a port city that is under Ukrainian control but has been hit by frequent Russian missile attacks this fall — said she worries about Ukraine’s ability to sustain a long-term war .

“We don’t have human resources,” she said. “A million people have already died.”

While Taranenko said “it will be good if (Trump) has some solutions,” she, like other Ukrainians interviewed for this story, found the 24-hour timeline questionable. “He’s a big-talking politician,” she said. “It’s impossible.”

After watching Trump from afar, Taranenko said, “I think he cares more about his own country. In the country, it’s good, but the others? I don’t think he really cares about other countries.”

In an email, Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump-Vance transition, said: “The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin, giving him the mandate to implement the promises he made did in the campaign. He will deliver.”

In Riverhead, Father Bohdan Hedz, the Ukrainian-American pastor of a largely Ukrainian congregation at St. John the Baptist, which regularly sends medical and humanitarian supplies to Ukraine, said many in his mixed political flock took Trump at his word when he promised an end to the war.

“We are hopeful, like every American who voted for President Trump, hoping that change will be made in this country,” Hedz said. Some of his parishioners also felt that “the outgoing administration really dragged their feet,” he said. “The feeling is that aid was given very slowly, not in a timely manner, in amounts that were not enough when it was most needed.” That pattern has been repeated for a number of U.S. weapons systems in limited use by the Ukrainians, including Abrams tanks, F-16 fighter jets and Patriot missiles, he said.

Another Ukrainian priest, Father Vladyslav Budash, priest of Resurrection Byzantine Catholic Parish in Smithtown, said he hoped clearer foreign policies would emerge after the election, which he described as dominated by populism and domestic concerns.

Budash said there are pragmatic reasons to hope that a Trump administration will continue and even strengthen American support for Ukraine. “Supporting Ukraine is not a charity – it’s a benefit to the US” as it fights against a country hostile to the US and its allies.

There were, Budash said, principles he expected Trump to appreciate: “To make America great again, America can’t be stuck in its own problems.” If Russia’s invasion of Ukraine violated international law, so did the actions of countries such as Iran, North Korea and China, which appear to have helped Russia avoid sanctions, Budash said. “How can America be great again if it doesn’t respond to all these challenges?”

“There are many questions”

Marcin Glinski, a Polish life and fitness coach from Calverton who is collecting supplies for Ukraine, said he was impressed by the urgency of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi’s call to congratulate Trump hours after his election . “It shows determination and desperation,” Glinski said. “He’s desperate to build some relationships with Trump.”

In interviews, settlement professionals and other Ukrainians on Long Island said their clients are devastated.

“There is tremendous anxiety and fear that Trump … will allow certain requests, certain concessions,” said Sister Annelle Fitzpatrick, director of the Sisters of St. resettlement office. Joseph. “They fear that a fifth of Ukraine that Russian forces now occupy, he will give them.”

Nadiia Veselova, a case manager for Lutheran Social Services in New York, which has helped place Ukrainian refugees on Long Island, said some clients, who have been in the U.S. for up to two years, are now unsure how to could change immigration policy. “There are many questions from Ukrainians,” she said. “Unfortunately, we don’t know what it will be.”

One night this week, in the darkened banquet hall of the St. Vladimir of Uniondale, Stepan Kunitski and Iryna Boutcha, two leaders of the Long Island chapter of the American Congressional Ukrainian Committee, an advocacy group, said they did not expect Trump to care about the fate of Ukraine the way a Ukrainian would.

But, Boutcha said, “they might find some kind of interest in supporting Ukraine. It has to be in America’s best interest.”

The argument he made for the American interest was twofold. Without opposition, she said, “Putin will not stop” at the border with Ukraine but will push into the rest of Europe, a move that would require direct American intervention by treaty. But, she said, “America does not have to send troops into battle … because Ukraine will protect the whole world. The main task of the Americans is to support the Ukrainians in this struggle.”