“Ukraine, disregarding what Mr. Trump says, it’s a success case for Eastern Europe,” said Gumenyuk. “If Ukraine succeeds, everybody is watching in the region — Moldovans, Belarussians, the Caucasus, Central Asia. If this country slides back to old times, or goes in the Russian direction, the region is lost.”

There was once a bipartisan conviction in Congress that such an outcome would be calamitous. But Trump obviously has no problem with Russia expanding its influence. He has no interest in seeing liberal democracy thrive in Eastern Europe or anywhere else. For liberal Ukrainians, earnestly trying to live up to Western ideals that the world’s most powerful Western country is in the process of abandoning, this new geopolitical situation has been deeply alarming.

“It’s extremely important that our integrity, our image, our hard work that we’ve been carrying out over these years, our fight for freedom, our fight for democracy, is continuously supported by our partners,” said Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, Ukraine’s former vice prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, told me. “And this is the major challenge right now.”

It almost doesn’t matter, said Gumenyuk, that after freezing military aid to Ukraine, Trump eventually unfroze it. The aid was militarily necessary, but it was also seen as symbolic, “to show Russia that the U.S. is on our side,” she said. “And now it is clear that Trump is not on the Ukrainians’ side.” The shock of this is something Western-oriented Ukrainians are only beginning to grapple with.

Those who dream of a more open society have no other power to turn to. President Emmanuel Macron of France wants to reach out to Russia to forestall the influence of China. The U.K. is roiled by Brexit. Ukrainian liberals I met with last week kept using the same phrase — they spoke of being “left alone” with Russia.