President Trump meeting with Ukraine’s Zelensky at White House

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump will host the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy He will meet the US leader at the White House on Friday It’s signaling that you’re not ready. He will agree to sell Kiev a long-range missile system that Ukrainians say it desperately needs.

>>WATCH LIVE: Boston 25 News will broadcast the meeting on television and online

Zelenskyy had a one-on-one meeting with Trump the day after the US president and Russian President Vladimir Putin had a long phone call to discuss the conflict.

Recently, Trump showed clarity will sell Ukraine long range Tomahawk cruise missilesEven as Putin warns that such a move would further strain US-Russia relations.

But I follow Thursday’s meeting with PutinTrump appeared to downplay the possibility of Ukraine receiving the missiles, which have a range of about 995 miles (1,600 kilometers).

“We need Tomahawks for the United States of America too,” Trump said. “There are a lot of them, but we need them. So we can’t exhaust our country.”

There was Zelenskyy looking for weapons This will allow Ukrainian forces to strike deep into Russian territory and target key military sites, energy facilities and critical infrastructure. Zelenskyy argued that such attacks would force Putin to take Trump’s calls for direct negotiations to end the war more seriously.

However, Putin warned Trump during the meeting that providing Tomahawks to Kiev “will not change the situation on the battlefield, but will seriously damage relations between our countries,” according to Putin’s foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said that talk of providing Tomahawks had already served a purpose by pushing Putin into talks. “The bottom line is that we need to continue with strong action. Strength can truly create momentum for peace,” Sybiha said on social platform X late Thursday.

Ukrainian officials also stated that Zelenskyy plans to appeal to Trump’s economic interests by aiming to discuss the possibility of energy deals with the United States.

Zelenskyy is considering offering to store American liquefied natural gas in Ukraine’s gas storage facilities, which would enable America’s presence in the European energy market.

He previewed the strategy Thursday in meetings with Energy Secretary Chris Wright and the heads of American energy companies, which led him to share in X that it was important to repair Ukraine’s energy infrastructure after Russian attacks and expand the “presence of American businesses in Ukraine.”

This will be Trump and Zelenskyy’s fourth face-to-face meeting since Republicans returned to office in January and their second in less than a month.

After his meeting with Putin on Thursday, Trump announced that he would soon meet the Russian leader in Budapest, Hungary, to discuss ways to end the war. The two also agreed that their top aides, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, will meet next week at an unspecified location.

Fresh out of brokerage ceasefire and hostage agreement Amid tensions between Israel and Hamas, Trump said finding an end to the war in Ukraine was now his top foreign policy priority and expressed new confidence in the possibility of achieving it.

Before his meeting with Putin, Trump had signaled his growing disappointment with the Russian leader.

Last month, he said he believed Ukraine could regain all the territory it lost to Russia; This was a dramatic shift from the US leader’s repeated stance. Kiev was called on to make concessions to end the war.

Going back to Trump’s 2024 campaign, insisted he would end the war quicklybut peace efforts appeared to stall after a diplomatic offensive in August. summit with Putin in Alaska and a White House met with Zelenskyy and European allies.

Trump emerged from these meetings confident that he was on track to arrange direct talks between Zelenskyy and Putin. However, the Russian leader showed no interest in meeting with Zelenskyy, and Moscow further intensified its bombardment against Ukraine.

Trump, on the other hand, struck a more neutral tone on Ukraine after his “very productive” meeting with Putin.

He also hinted that negotiations between Putin and Zelenskyy may have to be conducted indirectly.

“They don’t get along very well with those two,” Trump said. “So we can do something where we’re separate. Separate but equal.”

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