Trump and Zelensky to meet amid Republican anger
Donald Trump has said he will meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in New York on Friday.
The Republican presidential nominee told a news conference that the pair will meet around 09:45 ET (14:45 BST) at his Trump Tower property.
The meeting is set to go ahead despite earlier reports it had been cancelled amid growing anger from senior Republicans after Zelensky earlier visited the key swing US state of Pennsylvania.
On Thursday, Zelensky met US President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris at the White House to discuss his “victory plan”, which he hopes will pressure Russia into agreeing a diplomatic end to the war.
“President Zelensky has asked to meet with me, and I will be meeting with him tomorrow morning,” Trump told reporters in New York.
“And it’s a shame what’s happening in Ukraine. So many deaths, so much destruction. It’s a horrible thing.”
Trump said he believed he would be able to “make a deal” between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelensky “quite quickly”.
When pushed to provide details of such a deal, he replied: “I don’t want to tell you what that looks like”.
The former US president was speaking after Zelensky had earlier met Biden and Harris. Hours before, Biden had announced a further $7.9bn (£5.9bn) package of military assistance to Ukraine.
Speaking alongside the Ukrainian president after their meeting, Harris said there are “some in my country” that would “force Ukraine to give up large parts of its sovereign territory”.
“These proposals are the same of those of Putin,” she said, calling them “proposals for surrender”.
Asked at the news conference by a reporter whether Ukraine should cede land to Russia to end the war, Trump did not answer directly.
“Let’s get some peace,” he said. “We need peace. We need to stop the death and destruction.”
Friday’s meeting comes amid tension between Zelensky and the Republican party ahead of November’s US presidential election.
Some Republicans were angered by Zelensky’s visit to an arms factory in Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, with top Democrats this week, including its governor Josh Shapiro.
Zelensky’s visit to the key swing state was labelled by leading Republicans as a partisan campaign event.
In a public letter, speaker of the US House Mike Johnson said the visit was “designed to help Democrats” and claimed it amounted to “election interference”.
Trump and Zelensky have a complicated relationship.
In 2019, Trump was impeached by the US House over accusations that he pressured Ukraine’s leader to dig up damaging information on a political rival. A rough transcript of the call revealed Trump had urged Zelensky to investigate Biden, as well as Biden’s son.
Trump has also grown increasingly critical of continued US funding for Ukraine, and in recent days has sharpened his attacks against Zelensky, calling him the “greatest salesman on Earth”.
Zelensky recently told the New Yorker magazine that he believe Trump “doesn’t really know how to stop the war”.
When asked about Zelensky’s comments on Thursday, Trump replied: “I do believe I disagree with him. He doesn’t know me.”
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