Trump announces Zelensky meeting as Ukrainian president presents ‘victory plan’ in White House

Former US President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he would meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in New York on Friday, a day after a member of his campaign team told the Associated Press that no such meeting had been scheduled.

“As you know, President Zelensky has asked to meet with me, and I will be meeting with him tomorrow morning at around 9:45 in Trump Tower”, Trump told journalists at a press conference in New York, adding that he would be able to “make a deal between President Putin and President Zelensky quite quickly”.

“It’s not a surrender. My strategy is to save lives”, Trump said, though he refused to comment on whether he believed Ukraine should cede territory to Russia to end the war.

The Republican presidential nominee’s confirmation that he would meet Zelensky followed a series of campaign events in which he ramped up his criticism of the Ukrainian president, hitting out at him for “refusing to make a deal” with Moscow and accusing him of casting “nasty little aspersions” on him.

Earlier on Thursday, Zelensky met separately with US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House to present his “victory plan” to end the country’s war with Russia.

Zelensky also thanked Biden for a new $7.9 billion military aid package for Ukraine announced by his administration, while the US president said his country’s priorities were to “strengthen Ukraine’s position on the battlefield” and “help Ukraine succeed in the long term”, including supporting it on its path to EU and NATO membership.

“Russia will not prevail. Ukraine will prevail, and we’ll continue to stand by you every step of the way”, Biden assured Zelensky.

In a joint press conference before she met privately with Zelensky, Harris criticised calls for Ukraine to make concessions to Russia, which she called “proposals for surrender”.

The Democratic presidential nominee lamented that there were “some in my country” who would “force Ukraine to give up large parts of its sovereign territory, who would demand that Ukraine accept neutrality and would require Ukraine to forego security relationships with other nations”.