President Zelensky arrived for talks with Trump with high hopes of a breakthrough that could end the war in Ukraine
Donald Trump made weird comments about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s clothes and attacked his predecessor Joe Biden during a dinner between the two leaders at the White House
President Zelensky arrived for talks with Trump with high hopes of a breakthrough that could end the war in Ukraine.
But the US President signalled ahead of the meeting that he’s not ready to sell Kyiv a long-range missile system that the Ukrainians say they desperately need.
President Trump had appeared willing to provide the Tomahawk missiles in recent weeks.
But after a lengthy phone call with Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Thursday night, he seemed to have cooled on the idea.
“We need Tomahawks for the United States of America too,” Trump said on Thursday evening.
“We have a lot of them, but we need them. I mean we can’t deplete our country.”
Sitting down for a working lunch at the White House, President Trump said it was an honour to be with a “strong leader, a man who has been through a lot. And a man who I’ve gotten to know very well, and we’ve gotten along really very well.”
He said they would talk about what was discussed during his call with Putin during the Lunch.
“President Zelensky has endured a lot,” Trump told reporters at the beginning of the lunch. “And we’ve endured it with him.”
Mr Zelensky congratulated President Trump on the ceasefire in the Middle East, and said he hoped the momentum was with them to end the war in Ukraine as well.
Trump said Mr Zelensky looked “beautiful in his jacket” – a black blazer matched with a black shirt and tie.
He added: “I think President Putin wants to end the war or he wouldn’t be speaking this way…I think President Zelensky wants to get it ended, now we have to get it done.”
But asked what concessions he was willing to make to end the conflict, President Zelensky said: “We want peace, Putin doesn’t want….we understand what we need to push Putin to a negotiation table.”
He added: “We don’t speak about Nato…it’s a decision for allies to decide where we are.
“But the most important thing for people in Ukraine, who are under each day attacks, is to have strong security guarantees.
“Nato is the best, but weapons are very important and allies are very important.”
Asked by a reporter what the difference was between negotiations with Donald Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden, President Zelensky said: “President Trump has a big chance now to finish this war. President Biden is now not the President, so he doesn’t have a chance to finish this war.
“President Trump has shown to the world that he can manage a ceasefire in the Middle East, and that’s what I hope he will do and we will have big success.
“For Ukraine it’s a big chance, and I hope that President Trump can manage it.”
Trump interjected, saying: “I would say the biggest difference is one is extremely competent and the other is grossly incompetent.”
During Thursday’s two-hour phone call, Trump agreed to meet with Putin in Hungary in two weeks’ time, at a summit hosted by the country’s far-right leader Viktor Orban in Budapest.
Trump said it would most likely be a “double meeting” between him and Putin, but that Mr Zelensky would be “in touch.”
The summit will mark the first time Putin has set foot on EU soil since the start of the war – and is further complicated by him being banned from flying through EU airspace.
Ahead of Trump’s meeting with Zelensky, Ukrainian officials suggested their President was planning to sweeten his offer to President Trump with an energy pact.
He’s said to be looking to offer to store US liquefied natural gas in Ukraine’s gas storage facilities, which would allow for American presence in the European energy market.