Zelensky to make missile case in US after Trump-Putin phone call

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will meet with US President Donald Trump in Washington on Friday as Trump considers whether to arm Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles that could strike deep into Russia.

Their meeting came a day after Trump said “great progress” had been made in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and that the two had agreed to meet face-to-face in Hungary.

Trump said the first meeting with Putin since mid-August was “very productive,” adding that teams from Washington and Moscow will meet next week.

When Zelensky arrived in the United States, his third visit since January, he said Moscow “hurried to restart the dialogue as soon as it heard about the Tomahawks.”

Zelensky called on the United States to provide Ukraine with advanced missiles with a range of 2,500 km (1,500 mi).

Asked earlier this week if Trump would consider giving Ukraine a Tomahawk, Trump said, “We’ll see… I might.”

But when asked about the same possibility after his meeting with Putin, Trump said “we can’t exhaust” the US stockpile of Tomahawks and added “we need them too… so I don’t know what we can do about it.”

Writing on the Truth Social platform after his meeting with Putin ended, Trump said that he and the Russian President “spent a lot of time talking about trade between Russia and the United States once the War with Ukraine ended.”

He said “senior advisors” from both countries would meet next week at an unspecified location and that the American delegation would be led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Trump also said he would brief Zelensky on Friday about his talks with Putin, adding: “I believe great progress was made in today’s phone call.”

He later told reporters that he expected to meet Putin in Hungary “within two weeks.”

Ahead of the Trump-Putin meeting, Russia carried out one of the largest attacks of the year on Ukraine, including 28 ballistic missiles and 320 unmanned aerial vehicles, according to Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States Olga Stefanishyna.

Stefanishyna said that Russia’s overnight attack on Ukraine before the call “reveals Moscow’s true attitude towards peace.”

In a statement to the BBC’s US partner CBS, he added: “These attacks show that Moscow’s strategy is terror and exhaustion. The only effective response is pressure through tougher sanctions, strengthened air defenses and the provision of long-range capabilities.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said the Budapest meeting scheduled for X was “great news for the peace-loving people of the world”.

He had previously said: “Peace requires patience, strength and humility. Europe must change its stance. Instead of fueling the fire of arrogance and endless war, we need negotiations with Russia. Only dialogue can bring peace to our continent.”

Trump has taken a much tougher tone against Putin over the Ukraine war after a face-to-face summit in Alaska in August failed to make decisive progress in attempts to broker a peace deal.

The two met on US soil on August 15 for a summit that the US president hoped would help convince the Russian President to enter into comprehensive peace talks to end the Ukraine war. Russia launched its large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

They spoke again days later when Trump interrupted a meeting with Zelensky and European leaders to call Putin.

Since then, neither the White House nor the Kremlin have publicly confirmed any communication between the two.

During the presidential election campaign, Trump claimed he could end the war in Ukraine in a matter of days, but has since acknowledged that resolving the conflict was harder than any issue he has been involved in since returning to power.

Trump was seen as more sympathetic to Russia than his predecessor, Joe Biden, and strained relations with Zelensky came to a head on February 28, when he and Vice President J.D. Vance berated the Ukrainian president on live television in the Oval Office.

But public relations with Zelensky have improved greatly in recent months.

In September, Trump signaled a major shift in his perspective on the conflict, saying he believed Kiev could “regain all of Ukraine in its original state”; This was a far cry from his public calls for Kiev to give up territory occupied by Russia.

In late July, Trump gave Putin less than two weeks to agree to a ceasefire or face sweeping sanctions, including measures against countries still trading with Russia.

However, after Putin agreed to meet Trump in Alaska, he did not follow through on the threat; The US president hailed this as a significant diplomatic success at the time, but it produced no tangible results.

Earlier Thursday, India’s foreign ministry cast doubt on Trump’s claim a day earlier that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had agreed to stop buying Russian oil.

An Indian government spokesman said he was “not aware of any discussions between the two leaders” the day before, after Trump said Modi had assured him the purchases would stop “shortly.”

In order to increase economic pressure on the Kremlin, the USA pressured countries, especially India, China and NATO members, to stop purchasing energy from Russia. Zelensky also repeated these calls many times.