WASHINGTON, DC: President Donald Trump is set to host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House on Friday, as the U.S. leader signals he is not yet ready to approve Kyiv’s request for long-range missile systems.
The meeting comes a day after Trump held a lengthy phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
In recent days, Trump had appeared open to selling Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine, weapons capable of striking targets up to 995 miles (1,600 kilometers) away, even as Putin warned that such a move would severely strain relations between Washington and Moscow.
But after Thursday’s call, Trump appeared to soften his stance.
“We need Tomahawks for the United States of America too,” Trump told reporters. “We have a lot of them, but we need them. I mean, we can’t deplete our country.”
Zelenskyy has been urging the U.S. to supply long-range missiles that would allow Ukrainian forces to hit deep inside Russian territory, targeting military facilities, energy infrastructure, and logistics hubs. He argues that such capabilities could pressure Putin to take Trump’s push for direct negotiations more seriously.
However, Putin cautioned Trump that providing Kyiv with the Tomahawks “won’t change the situation on the battlefield, but would cause substantial damage to the relationship between our countries,” according to Yuri Ushakov, the Kremlin’s foreign policy adviser.
Friday’s meeting will mark the fourth face-to-face encounter between Trump and Zelenskyy since the Republican returned to office in January, and their second in less than a month.
Trump said he will soon meet Putin in Budapest, Hungary, to continue discussions on ending the war. The two leaders also agreed that senior aides, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, would meet next week at an undisclosed location.
After helping broker a ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas, Trump has made ending the war in Ukraine his top foreign policy goal and expressed growing optimism about achieving it.
Yet frustrations have surfaced. Last month, Trump suggested that Ukraine could reclaim all occupied territories, a major shift from his earlier calls for Kyiv to accept territorial concessions to secure peace.
Despite promising during his 2024 campaign to end the war “quickly,” Trump’s diplomatic efforts have faltered since an intense round of talks in August that included a summit with Putin in Alaska and a White House meeting with Zelenskyy and European allies.
Trump had hoped those meetings would pave the way for direct negotiations between Zelenskyy and Putin. But the Russian leader has shown no willingness to meet his Ukrainian counterpart, instead intensifying missile strikes across Ukraine.
After Thursday’s call, Trump adopted a more neutral tone toward both sides, describing the conversation as “very productive” and suggesting that indirect talks might be necessary.
“They don’t get along too well, those two,” Trump said. “So we may do something where we’re separate — separate but equal.”
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