Donald Trump urged Volodymyr Zelenskyy to accept Russia’s terms for ending its war in a volatile White House meeting on Friday, warning that Vladimir Putin had said he would “destroy” Ukraine if it did not agree.
The meeting between the US and Ukrainian presidents descended many times into a “shouting match”, with Trump “cursing all the time”, people familiar with the matter said.
They added that the US president tossed aside maps of the frontline in Ukraine, insisted Zelenskyy surrender the entire Donbas region to Putin, and repeatedly echoed talking points the Russian leader had made in their call a day earlier.
Though Trump later endorsed a freeze of the current front lines, the acrimonious meeting appeared to reflect the capricious nature of the US president’s position on the war and his willingness to endorse Putin’s maximalist demands.
The meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy came amid a fresh push by the US president to end Russia’s war following the ceasefire secured between Israel and Hamas.
Zelenskyy and his team went to the White House hoping to persuade Trump to supply them with long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, but the US president ultimately declined to do so.
The tense meeting echoed a similarly fractious encounter at the White House in February, in which Trump and Vice-President JD Vance lambasted Zelenskyy for what they characterised as a lack of gratitude towards the US.
During Friday’s meeting, Trump appeared to have adopted many of Putin’s talking points verbatim, even when they contradicted his own recent statements about Russia’s weaknesses, said European officials briefed on the meeting.
According to a European official with knowledge of the meeting, Trump told Zelenskyy that Putin had told him the conflict was a “special operation, not even a war”, adding that the Ukrainian leader needed to cut a deal or face destruction.
The official said that Trump told Zelenskyy he was losing the war, warning: “If [Putin] wants it, he will destroy you.”
At one point in the meeting, the US president threw Ukraine’s maps of the battlefield to one side, the official familiar with the encounter said. According to the official, Trump said he was “sick” of seeing the map of the frontline of Ukraine again and again.
“This red line, I don’t even know where this is. I’ve never been there,” Trump said, according to the official.
Trump also said that Russia’s economy is “doing great”, the official said, in a sharp contrast to his recent public remarks in which he urged Putin to negotiate because his “economy is going to collapse”.
The White House and the Ukrainian president’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump told Fox News on Sunday that he was confident about securing an end to the conflict, and added that Putin is “going to take something, he’s won certain property”.
Putin made a new offer to Trump on Thursday under which Ukraine would surrender the parts of the eastern Donbas region under its control in exchange for some small areas of the two southern frontline regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
The Russian proposal marks a small concession from that made during Putin’s last meeting with Trump in Alaska in August, where he said he would agree to freeze the line of contact elsewhere on the frontline if Ukraine surrendered the Donbas.
That meeting also ended acrimoniously after Putin rejected Trump’s push for an immediate ceasefire and digressed at length about medieval Ukrainian history, prompting the US to explore ramped-up support for Kyiv, including by supplying Tomahawk missiles.
But ceding the remainder of the Donbas still under Ukrainian control would be a non-starter for Ukraine, as it would hand Moscow territory it has only partially occupied for more than a decade and failed to seize despite its efforts since Putin ordered the invasion in 2022.
Russian forces have struggled to retain the territory in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia that Putin offered in exchange, and have made virtually no progress on the battlefield there since 2022, the year the war began.
“To give [the Donbas] to Russia without a fight is unacceptable for Ukrainian society, and Putin knows that,” said Oleksandr Merezhko, chair of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
He said that Putin might be pushing the contentious idea “with a purpose to cause division within Ukraine and undermine our unity”.
Merezhko added: “It’s not about getting more territory for Russia, it’s about how to destroy us from within.”
Trump’s belligerent repetition of Putin’s rhetoric on Friday dashed hopes among many of Ukraine’s European allies that he could be convinced to increase support to Kyiv.
That hope had risen after Trump in recent weeks expressed frustration and impatience with the Russian president’s refusal to actively engage in bilateral peace negotiations with Zelenskyy.
Three other European officials briefed on the White House discussions confirmed that Trump had spent much of the meeting lecturing Zelenskyy, repeating Putin’s arguments about the conflict and urging him to accept the Russian proposal.
“Zelenskyy was very negative” following the meeting, according to one of the officials, adding that European leaders were “not optimistic but pragmatic with planning next steps”.
In a statement on Sunday, Zelenskyy said “decisive steps are needed from the United States, Europe, the G20 and G7 countries” to end the war.
Yeah, I don't put too much stock into anything he says either. He tends to parrot whatever the last person he talked to told him, which would've been Putin in this case. It does look like he might be flipping back to trying to put pressure on Ukraine though now that he's realized he can't pressure Russia. Unlike the Europeans, the Americans realize the war is lost, and they are trying to find an off ramp for themselves.