Trump to meet Zelensky after tensions over Ukraine war
Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky will sit down for a potentially fractious meeting Friday, following a series of scathing attacks by the White House hopeful on the Ukrainian president’s handling of the conflict with Russia.
Zelensky sat down a day earlier with Trump’s Ubited States election rival Kamala Harris, as well as President Joe Biden, who both pledged their support for Kyiv’s war, which has largely been bankrolled by the US.
Trump, who this week accused Zelensky of refusing to “make a deal” to end the conflict, said the pair will meet at around 9:45 am (1345 GMT) at his Trump Tower skyscraper in New York.
US media had earlier reported the meeting would not go ahead after Trump was offended by Zelensky’s comments to The New Yorker magazine, in which he said that the Republican “doesn’t really know how to stop the war.”
Trump struck back at a campaign rally in North Carolina on Wednesday, saying, “We continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal, Zelensky.”
Zelensky is in the US this week participating in the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
He is also looking to shore up support for his country’s war effort as it struggles on the battlefield in the third year of Moscow’s invasion.
– Row with Trump –
The Ukrainian leader presented a so-called “victory” plan to Biden and Harris at the White House on Thursday, with Biden announcing a new military aid package worth nearly $8 billion for Kyiv.
Standing with Zelensky at her side, Harris did not mention Trump by name but said there were “some in my country who would instead force Ukraine to give up large parts of its sovereign territory.”
Biden pledged in a separate meeting with Zelensky that “Russia will not prevail” in the war it launched in February 2022.
Dressed in his trademark military-style outfit, Zelensky replied that “we deeply appreciate that Ukraine and America have stood side by side.”
However, his visit has been clouded by the row with Trump which underscored how November’s US election could upend the support that Ukraine receives from its biggest backer.
Trump has long been critical of the billions of dollars in US support for Ukraine.
He has echoed many of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s talking points, saying at a rally earlier this week that Ukraine could not win as Russia “beat Hitler, they beat Napoleon, that’s what they do.”
Republicans have also been livid after Zelensky visited an arms factory in Biden’s hometown in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, accusing the Ukrainian ambassador of organizing a partisan political event and calling for her to be sacked.
When Trump was president he also asked Zelensky for potentially damaging political material on Biden ahead of the 2020 election — which led to the first of the Republican’s two impeachments.
