Trump says he will meet Zelensky despite campaign criticism
Donald Trump has agreed to a last-minute meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky, despite his ongoing criticisms of the Ukrainian leader during the U.S. campaign.
The Republican presidential nominee announced at a news conference that Zelensky will visit Trump Tower on Friday, shortly after Trump had criticized him for not making a deal with Moscow. This decision marks a shift from earlier campaign statements suggesting that a meeting between the two was highly unlikely.
Their relationship has been rocky; Trump was impeached in 2019 for allegedly pressuring Zelensky to investigate the Biden family. A rough transcript of their call indicated that Trump urged Zelensky to look into both Joe Biden and his son.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Trump has often echoed Moscow’s narratives regarding the conflict. During the presidential debate in September, he avoided a question about whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war.
In announcing the meeting with Zelensky, Trump reiterated his long-held belief that he could “make a deal” between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelensky “quite quickly.” However, he did not provide specific details about his plan and refrained from answering whether he thinks Ukraine should give up territory to Russia to end the war.
“It’s a shame what’s happening in Ukraine. So many deaths, so much destruction. It’s a horrible thing,” Trump stated to reporters in New York on Thursday.
Friday’s meeting comes amid tension between Zelensky and the Republican party ahead of November’s US presidential election.
Some Republicans were angered by Zelensky’s visit to an arms factory in Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, with top Democrats, including state Governor Josh Shapiro, earlier this week.
Zelensky’s trip to the key swing state was labelled by leading Republicans as a partisan campaign event. In a public letter, speaker of the US House Mike Johnson said the visit was “designed to help Democrats” and claimed it amounted to “election interference”.
Trump has grown increasingly critical of continued US funding for Ukraine, and in recent days has sharpened his attacks against Zelensky, calling him the “greatest salesman on Earth”.
In contrast, Zelensky recently told the New Yorker magazine that he believes Trump “doesn’t really know how to stop the war”.
When asked about Zelensky’s comments on Thursday, Trump replied: “I do believe I disagree with him. He doesn’t know me.”
On Thursday, Zelensky met US President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris at the White House to discuss his “victory plan”, which he hopes will pressure Russia into agreeing a diplomatic end to the war.
Hours before, Biden had announced a further $7.9bn (£5.9bn) package of military assistance to Ukraine.
As Zelensky visited the US, drone attacks continued in Ukraine. On Thursday night, three people were killed and 14 others wounded in a Russian drone attack on Izmail, a port city on the River Danube.
Russia has targeted Izmail’s grain export facilities in the past, however prosecutors say two boys aged three and 13, and a girl aged 14, were among those wounded in the latest attack.
Romania’s defence ministry said it was possible that one of the Russian drones involved in the attack had crossed the border into Romania, a Nato member state, for a very short period.
