Washington — President Trump is hosting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House Friday, a day after Mr. Trump had a long call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and announced that the two leaders will meet in Budapest.
Zelenskyy and Mr. Trump shook hands when the Ukrainian president arrived, and a reporter asked the president if he believes he can persuade Putin to end the war. “Yup,” Mr. Trump responded.
“It’s an honor to be with a very strong leader, a man who has been through a lot,” Mr. Trump said in the meeting, adding he thinks they’re making “great progress” in ending the war.
The meeting between the two leaders includes Mr. Trump’s Cabinet, and the president was seated across from Zelenskyy.
Zelenskyy congratulated Mr. Trump on the “successful ceasefire” in the Middle East. The Ukrainian president said he thinks Putin is “not ready” to end the war.
Mr. Trump brought up the possibility that Zelenskyy could join his meeting with Putin in Budapest, but then added that the meetings “may be separated.”
The president was also asked by a reporter about the possibility that the U.S. would provide long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine. “We’re going to be talking about that. That’s why we’re here,” he said. But he went on to say that hopefully, the war could be brought to an end without Tomahawk missiles.
Zelenskyy is asking Mr. Trump for more military aid as the war with Russia continues. Mr. Trump has been considering sending Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine. But he has also said he’d want to raise that possibility with Putin first, suggesting it could coax Putin to cooperate as Mr. Trump continues to try to bring an end to the war.
Mr. Trump said he discussed the Tomahawks “a little bit” with Putin during their phone call Thursday. But he appeared to downplay the idea of sending them.
“I will say to you, we need Tomahawks for the United States of America too,” the president said Thursday. “We have a lot of them, but we need them. I mean we can’t deplete our country.”
Mr. Trump had previously said the Tomahawks would be a “new step of aggression” in the Russia-Ukraine war. The missiles would enable Ukraine to strike deep within Russia.
“I might say ‘Look: if this war is not going to get settled, I’m going to send the Tomahawks,'” Mr. Trump told reporters earlier this week. “We may not, but we may do it.”
The last time the U.S. and Ukrainian presidents met in person was in late September, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York. Mr. Trump and Zelenskyy spoke twice over the weekend, on Saturday and Sunday, ahead of Mr. Trump’s whirlwind Middle East trip to mark the Israel-Hamas peace deal.
Russia has given no indication it wants to end the war. And Ukrainian authorities said there had been another large-scale Russian strike hours before Mr. Trump spoke with Putin on the phone.
“The massive overnight strike — launched hours before the conversation between Putin and President Trump — exposes Moscow’s real attitude toward peace,” Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S. Olga Stefanishyna said in a statement Thursday. “While discussions about ending the war continue, Russia once again chose missiles over dialogue, turning this attack into a direct blow to ongoing peace efforts led by President Trump.”
Mr. Trump in recent months has expressed frustration with Putin over the failure to end the war, though on a separate front, first lady Melania Trump said last week that she has worked with the Russian leader’s team to return Ukrainian children to their families.
Mr. Trump said “great progress was made” in his Thursday call with Putin, although he didn’t give any details.
U.S. and Russian advisers will be meeting next week in a location that hasn’t been disclosed yet ahead of the anticipated Trump-Putin meeting. The president indicated that initial meetings leading up to the meeting with the Russian leader would be led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.