On the day that American President Donald Trump announced the suspension of US military aid to Ukraine, ordinary Ukrainians were left dismayed by the rapid deterioration in relations with their former staunch ally, and angered at America’s treatment of their country.

"I haven't slept for three nights," Nina, a 72-year-old pensioner, told bne IntelliNews in Kyiv.

"I am shocked. I didn’t expect Trump to behave in such a vile way. There are no words. I just can’t understand how someone in Trump’s position can behave so shamelessly,” Nina said, describing the now notorious confrontation in the Oval Office between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Trump.

Beyond the very public shouting match and the suspension of military aid, the US has in the past week voted alongside Russia to oppose a UN resolution that condemned “Russian aggression” in Ukraine, ordered US Cyber Command to cease offensive cyber operations against Russia, and is reported to be considering sanction relief measures.

Valeria, a 31-year-old office worker, said she cannot understand why President Trump has made it his priority to normalise relations with Russia: “Trump’s actions are incomprehensible to us. Russia is an occupier, an aggressor. Why doesn't America support us?”

Three years of fighting have taken their toll, but the mood in Kyiv remains grimly defiant. Vadim, 57, a tourism company manager said “Ukraine will fight. We have no other choice, because unlike Trump, we know history very well. And we know what happens when Putin comes to Ukraine. There won't be thousands of deaths, but millions. And we won't die on the battlefield, but in prisons. That's much worse.”

Trump and Vice-President JD Vance have repeatedly claimed that Zelenskiy is “not ready for peace.” But as Valeria told bne IntelliNews, the route to a lasting peace is far from obvious: “We want to end the war, but it’s not clear how we can do that. Of course we want peace, to live in tranquility. But I don’t know how we can give away a piece of our land. These are our people.”

Just last week Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that Russia would not accept anything less than the occupation of the remainder of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts as a precondition for peace.

Valeria acknowledges fighting will be "very hard" without US support, but sees no alternative: "If we don't fight, we won't survive. Russia will just keep occupying us and will continue destroying our men, women, and children."

For Valeria, as for so many other Ukrainians, memories of war crimes perpetrated by Russian soldiers make the prospect of an unjust peace extremely hard to swallow: “Bucha and Irpin – all that happened. They destroyed so much, killed so many. And now they want more territory. We see the maps they're putting out.”

Indeed, whilst America is Ukraine’s single largest military aid donor and has provided the country with much of the heavy military equipment required to hold back Russian advances, no one that bne IntelliNews spoke to saw the suspension of US aid as a reason to stop fighting. “We have to carry on fighting, as long as we can,” said Nina.

Not everyone was surprised by the change of US policy under Trump. Oleg, a 66-year-old army veteran, seemed unphased by the perilous situation Ukraine finds itself in: "I understood that it was going to go this way. Trump is just a political prostitute," he said with disdain.

Platon, a 27-year-old IT worker, has also been anticipating much harsher treatment of Ukraine under the new American administration: "We have been afraid since January, when Trump became president," he added.

"I was expecting it because of the behaviour of Donald Trump — two weeks ago he called Zelenskiy a dictator. It looks like the moral part of the Ukraine war doesn't matter to him," Platon said.

Yet what appears to be a major diplomatic and military setback has had one unexpected consequence - strengthening domestic support for President Zelenskiy, even among those who were previously lukewarm about his leadership.

Vadim, the tourism manager, said that he didn’t vote for Zelenskiy in 2019, but now supports him fully. “Trump has united Ukrainians behind Zelenskiy,” he said. Likewise Oleg praised Zelenskiy for the way he responded to the Oval Office debacle: “I support Zelenskiy and I’ve always supported Zelenskiy, and now I support him even more. Good on him. He didn’t bow down.”

The expressions of support for Zelenskiy have a particular resonance, given that Trump has repeatedly sought to claim that the Ukrainian president is unpopular amongst Ukrainians – even going so far as to call him “a dictator without elections” in a post on Truth Social.

This is a characterisation that Platon firmly rejected: “I support Zelenskiy now more than ever. He is our fairly-elected president. We are the ones who can criticise him, and not Trump. We are the ones who are living here and see what’s going on.”