Inside Ukraine's troubled outreach to Trump

MANY NATIONS KEEP A NERVOUS EYE ON U.S.presidential races, but none have as much at stake this time as the Ukrainians.

- SIMON SHUSTER

For them, the result could determine how their war with Russia ends, and their leaders have spent months vying for the support of both candidates. But on Sept. 22, when President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived for a weeklong trip to the U.S., his outreach to Donald Trump nearly went off the rails.

Zelensky's first public event that day was a visit to an arms factory in Scranton, Pa., which he toured alongside the state's Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro. The visit allowed Zelensky to express his gratitude to all the American workers producing weapons for Ukraine. But the optics did not sit well with the Trump campaign. "It seems he took offense," one member of Zelensky's entourage tells TIME.