Trump, Zelenskyy to meet as tensions rise over US support for Ukraine

Donald Trump will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a time when public tensions between the two have been rising over defending Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.

Trump said Zelenskyy requested the meeting. The visit is scheduled for around 9:45 a.m. ET at Trump Tower in New York, less than a day after Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent, met with the Ukrainian leader and expressed his unwavering support.

“I look forward to seeing you tomorrow,” Trump said at a news conference Thursday. “I think I will be able to reach an agreement between President (Vladimir) Putin and President Zelenskyy, quite quickly.”

The meeting is highly anticipated and comes as Election Day approaches, with Trump and Harris taking starkly different positions on supporting Ukraine in the third year of its war with Russia.

Trump argues that Putin would never have invaded if he had been president, while disparagingly calling Zelenskyy a “sellout” for obtaining American assistance for Ukraine. In recent days, Trump has praised Russia’s historic military victories and insisted that the United States needs to “get out” and end its involvement in Ukraine.

Friday’s meeting was almost unscheduled even though Zelenskyy’s office said something had been planned during the Ukrainian leader’s visit to the U.N. General Assembly, during which he is making his final address to allies.

In an interview with The New Yorker that was published earlier this week, Zelenskyy suggested that Trump misunderstands and oversimplifies the conflict. The Ukrainian leader said Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, was “too radical” and had essentially advocated for Ukraine to “make a sacrifice” by “giving up its territories.”

Trump criticized Zelenskyy and Ukraine on two separate occasions this week. Speaking Wednesday in North Carolina, Trump referred to Ukraine as “demolished” and its people as “dead.”

“Any deal, the worst deal, would have been better than what we have now,” Trump said. “If they had made a bad deal, it would have been much better. “They would have given up a little bit and everyone would still be alive and every building would have been built and every tower would age another 2,000 years.”

Meanwhile, Harris on Thursday sided with Zelenskyy, saying Trump’s pressure for Ukraine to quickly reach a deal to end the war were “not peace proposals” but “surrender proposals.” Trump on Thursday said he was not advocating a surrender.

While Trump and Vance have long been skeptical of U.S. support for Ukraine, other Republican allies of the former president have backed kyiv’s defense against Moscow’s invasion and argue that supporting Ukraine is in the U.S. interest.

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