Harris, who is fighting it out with Donald Trump to win next month’s presidential election, was speaking during a press conference alongside Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president.
Zelenskyy was in the United States to attend the UN General Assembly in New York but also to present his Victory Plan, which outlines how Ukraine plans to defeat Russia, to President Joe Biden and Harris.
“History has shown us that if we allow aggressors like Putin to take land with impunity they keep going and Putin could set his sights on Poland and the Baltic states and other NATO allies,” said Harris.
“We also know that other would-be aggressors around the world are watching to see what happens in Ukraine. If Putin is allowed to win, they will become emboldened, and history reminds us, and is so clear in reminding us, that the United States cannot and should not isolate ourselves from the rest of the world. Isolation is not insulation.”
She added that the United States supported Ukraine not out of charity but because “it is in our strategic interests.”
Her reference to isolation comes as an apparent reference to the Ukraine policy espoused by Trump. The Republican candidate has claimed that the current White House policy was locking the U.S. into an unending war that Ukraine has no chance of winning.
Trump has also said that he could end the war quickly, if he were president, although his critics suspect that he would achieve this by appeasing Putin and forcing Kyiv to cede territory.
Harris, if elected, looks set to continue the strong support for Ukraine offered by the current U.S. administration, although it remains unclear if she will take that support to another level by allowing Kyiv to use Western-made weapons in long-range strikes on Russia.
