President Donald Trump will host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House on Friday afternoon, as he intensifies efforts to end Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The Ukrainians are seeking additional long-range capabilities and economic pressure as they continue to combat Russian strikes.
“Every air defense system for Ukraine matters – it saves lives. Every decision that can strengthen us brings the end of the war closer. Security can be guaranteed if everything we have agreed on, including here in Washington, is implemented,” Zelenskyy stated.
But the meeting now comes as Trump also plans for a second meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
MEETING WITH PUTIN
Trump announced the plans for a senior-level meeting between U.S. and Russian delegations, followed by a face-to-face meeting between the leaders after speaking to Putin by phone for more than two hours on Thursday. The Kremlin said planning was underway for the meeting in Hungary, whose Prime Minister Viktor Orban is seen as more friendly toward Russia.
“They don't get along too well, those two, and it's sometimes tough to have meetings,” Trump said of Putin and Zelenskyy. “So we may do something where we're separate, but separate but equal.”
Trump met with Putin for the first time in Alaska in August, the first direct in-person engagement with Putin at the leader level since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It did not lead to a deal to end the fighting and since then, Russia has intensified its strikes against Ukraine. Since the meeting, the US has supported additional military aid for Ukraine through NATO partners, while Trump has expressed disappointment in Putin.
Trump said he intends to fill Zelenskyy in on the call, which he described as “productive.”
“That phone call, if it successfully pauses the acceleration of American military support to Ukraine, will provide a strategic opportunity for Putin to inflict harm in the next few weeks that is going to have a winter long effect in Ukraine, and that is the dangerous part of that phone call, in the moment that we're in,” said Kristine Berzina, a senior fellow of US defense and transatlantic security at the German Marshall Fund.
TRUMP ZELENSKYY MEETING
Zelenskyy’s trip to Washington for his third White House visit comes as Ukraine presses for more pressure on Russia. The first meeting in February broke down and was cut short, while the second, after the Alaska meeting, included major European allies.
“The key topics of the visit include strengthening Ukraine’s air defense, boosting the resilience of our energy sector, expanding long-range capabilities, and exploring additional sanctions on Russia. As we have seen time and again, direct communication between our presidents has yielded the clearest mutual understanding—and Ukraine remains fully committed to this format,” stated Ukraine’s Ambassador to the U.S. Olga Stefanishnya.
As Russia has continued strikes against energy and civilian infrastructure, Ukraine has called for more air defense systems and long-range capabilities. Zelenskyy will meet Trump amid the considerations for additional capabilities for Ukraine, including Tomahawks.
TOMAHAWKS
While Trump said “we’ll see” about Tomahawks last week after speaking by phone with Zelenskyy, and suggested he could potentially tell Putin “… that if the war is not settled, that we may very well do it. We may not, but we may do it,” he did not commit to the capability after his call with the Russian leader.
“They're very vital, they're very powerful, they're very accurate, they're very good. But we need them too. So I don't know what we can do about that,” Trump said.
Regional experts believe the U.S. provisions of Tomahawks could be an important policy signal.
“More importantly than us giving them a tomahawk is the policy implications of us giving them a tomahawk. The United States is back in the business of giving capable weapons to Ukraine. The United States is now authorizing deep strikes into Russia with Western weapons. The United States is aiding Ukraine in the intelligence requirements to strike, to strike precisely and deeply. Those three policy implications, to me, are almost more important than the fact that we're actually giving them some weapons,” said retired Gen. Philip Breedlove, the former NATO supreme allied commander.
Breedlove said three statements should be made from the White House for the Russians to hear.
“We're going to give them the intel, the policy and the go button on striking deeply into your country with American weapons,” Breedlove said.
Breedlove believes Trump is serious.
“I think our President is serious this time. I think he knows that America is watching our track record so far, and it's zero, as they say in baseball — we're 0-four, and we need to be seen as serious. And I think he's going to have to take some action to reverse this track record of not accomplishing anything in these negotiations,” Breedlove said.
A new policy could pave the way for allies to provide capabilities.
“If the Americans giving Tomahawks and frankly, ATACMS and planes and everything else that we've seen trickle in over the past three plus years, within the first six months of the war, they would not be here having this conversation. The war would have been dramatically different, and the Ukrainians would have been in a far better place,” said Berzina. “But what we've seen instead is a pattern by which the notion of acceptability of certain kinds of aid grows over time, and if one country is able and willing to provide a more sophisticated kind of weapon system, other allies may be as well.”
But Putin warned against their use in the Russian-initiated call with Trump.
“The issue of possible supplies of long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine was also discussed. Vladimir Putin reiterated his thesis that the Tomahawks will not change the situation on the battlefield but will inflict significant damage to the relations between our countries, let alone the prospects for a peaceful settlement,” said Yuri Ushakov, Russian presidential foreign affairs advisor.
For Putin, Breedlove says, “This is the ultimate holy crap, ‘I need to distract him,’ and hopefully our president sees through that.”
However, Trump may not “allow any dramatic decision” before the meeting with Putin, according to Dr. Liana Fix, a senior fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“The Russian side will very much use that meeting in Budapest to deter him from that, to relay nuclear concerns to him that he probably will not be able to distinguish on his own whether that is a bluff or whether that is a real concern, and we might end up in the same situation as with Alaska, with the same playbook,” said Fix.
The priority of Zelenskyy and European leaders may now be to prepare Trump ahead of his meeting with Putin to “kind of inoculate him against Putin’s speaking and talking points,” according to Fix.
SANCTIONS
Trump has also threatened greater economic pressure against Russia and called for allies to do more to cut off purchases of Russian energy, but has not moved forward on it beyond increasing tariffs against India over the issue.
A bill that would enact significant sanctions on Russia with Republican support remains in the Senate. While Senate Majority Leader John Thune reportedly gave indications it could move forward, Trump did not give it an explicit green light ahead of the meeting with Zelenskyy.
“We'll see what happens. We may have this may be such a productive call that we're going to end up we want to get peace,” Trump said, noting he planned to update Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson on his call with Putin.
“I’m not against anything. I'm just saying it may not be perfect timing,” he added.
MIDDLE EAST
Trump, who promised on the campaign trail to quickly end the war but has been candid it has not been as easy as he initially thought, believes success in the Middle East could help the negotiation with Russia and Ukraine.
“I actually believe that the Success in the Middle East will help in our negotiation in attaining an end to the War with Russia/Ukraine,” Trump wrote on Truth Social after his call with Putin.
The visit will bookend a week that started with a visit to Israel and Egypt for Trump to sign a peace deal over Gaza.
“We’ve got to get Russia done,” Trump said to Special Envoy Steve Witkoff during his speech to the Israeli Knesset.
“We expect that the momentum of curbing terror and war that succeeded in the Middle East will help to end Russia’s war against Ukraine,” Zelenskyy stated. “Putin is certainly no braver than Hamas or any other terrorist. The language of strength and justice will inevitably work against Russia as well. We can already see that Moscow is rushing to resume dialogue as soon as it hears about Tomahawks.”
UKRAINIAN DELEGATIONS
Meanwhile, Ukrainian delegations have been engaging leaders throughout Washington ahead of the meeting.
Zelenskyy met with defense and energy companies shortly after arriving in Washington.
Ukrainian Ambassador Olga Stefanishyna called it a “completely new format of engagement” as teams have engaged with financial parters, on economic and energy infrastructure, defense industries, lawmakers and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“We sincerely hope for concrete decisions tomorrow,” Andriy Yermak, the head of the office of the president of Ukraine, wrote in part on X after meeting with Special Presidential Envoy to Ukraine Gen. Keith Kellogg.
“Beyond military cooperation, this week is also a moment to advance Ukraine–U.S. economic ties. The ambitious bilateral critical minerals deal has already entered the implementation phase, with initial projects underway. In parallel, we have launched negotiations on a unique technology-sharing agreement that would give the U.S. access to Ukraine’s cutting-edge drone technologies—across land, air, and maritime platforms. This partnership is not only a strategic advantage for Ukraine but also a real contribution to U.S. and allied security globally,” said Stefanishyna.
