Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington on Thursday. Photo: EPA-EFE/TING SHEN / POOL
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met former US President Donald Trump at Trump Tower in New York on Friday at the end of a week in which the Republican nominee for president called out the Ukrainian leader for “refusing to make a deal” with Vladimir Putin to end the war.
Speaking in English to the assembled press ahead of the meeting, a visibly stiff Zelensky thanked Trump for meeting with him, noting that five years had passed since they last met.
“I think we have a common view that the war in Ukraine has to be stopped and Putin can’t win,” Zelensky began, adding that Ukraine had to prevail and that he planned to discuss the details of his victory plan with Trump.
Screenshot: C-Span
Zelensky said that while Americans alone would decide who became the next president, it was important to discuss the steps the two countries would take after the November election. “That’s why I decided to meet both candidates,” he said.
Trump said that in the event of his victory, he would try to work with both Moscow and Kyiv to settle the conflict, saying that Zelensky had “gone through hell and his country has gone through hell”. Trump added that he had a very good relationship with both Zelensky and Putin, leaving him in a good position to mediate a solution should he win the election.
Prior to his meeting with Zelensky, Trump rejected earlier criticism made by Vice President Kamala Harris of his campaign pledge to end the war with Russia, which she called “proposals for surrender”, insisting instead that he only wanted to “save lives”.
Despite Zelensky’s team indicating last week that he would meet with Trump during his visit to Washington, a Trump campaign official said earlier this week that no such meeting was scheduled, a statement Trump himself walked back on Thursday.
In one of the most scathing attacks on the Ukrainian president’s handling of the war in Ukraine, Trump hit out at Zelensky on Wednesday for “refusing to make a deal” with Putin.
“Ukraine is gone. It’s not Ukraine anymore. … Any deal, even the worst deal, would have been better than what we have right now,” Trump said.
“Every time Zelensky comes to the United States, he walks away with $100 billion,” Trump said on Tuesday, a claim that was quickly debunked by the AP, which said that the US had provided more than $56 billion to Ukraine in total since February 2022. “I think he’s the greatest salesman on Earth. But we’re stuck in that war unless I’m president.”
