Washington (AFP) – Ukrainian President Volodyr Zelensky meets Donald Trump at the White House on Friday, seeking US-made Tomahawk missiles even as the US president readies for a fresh summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Zelensky will be making his third trip to Washington since Trump returned to office, following a disastrous televised shouting match in February and a make-up meeting in August, as the US leader’s stance on the war blows hot and cold.
Trump’s latest pivot came on the eve of Zelensky’s visit. He announced that he would be meeting Putin in Budapest, in a fresh bid to reach a peace deal and end Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine launched in 2022. Ukraine had hoped Zelensky’s trip would be more about adding to the pressure on Putin, especially by getting American-made long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles that can strike deep into Russia.
But Trump, who once said he could end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours, appears set on pursuing a new diplomatic breakthrough to follow the Gaza ceasefire deal that he brokered last week. Trump said on Thursday he had a “very productive” call with Putin and that they would meet in the Hungarian capital within the next two weeks. He added that he hoped to have “separate but equal” meetings with both Putin and Zelensky but did not elaborate.
Zelensky said as he arrived in Washington on Thursday that he hoped Trump’s success with the Gaza deal would bring results to end the war that has left swaths of his own country in ruins. “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,” Zelensky said on social media platform X. Zelensky insisted that the threat of Tomahawks had forced Moscow to negotiate. “We can already see that Moscow is rushing to resume dialogue as soon as it hears about Tomahawks,” he said.
The Ukrainian leader said on Friday he had met officials from US defense firm Raytheon, which produces the Tomahawk missiles and Patriot systems, to discuss cooperation and “the prospects for Ukrainian-American joint production.” Zelensky said he also held talks with Lockheed Martin, which makes F-16 fighter jets.
However, Trump cast doubt on whether Ukraine would ever get the coveted weapons, which have a 1,000-mile (1,600-kilometer) range. Trump told reporters on Thursday that the United States could not “deplete” its own supply. “We need them too, so I don’t know what we can do about that,” he said. The US president said the Russian leader “didn’t like it” when he raised the possibility of giving Tomahawks to Ukraine during their call.
The Kremlin said on Thursday it was making immediate preparations for a Budapest summit after what it called the “extremely frank and trustful” Putin-Trump call. But Putin told Trump that giving Ukraine Tomahawks would “not change the situation on the battlefield” and would harm “prospects for peaceful resolution,” the Russian president’s top aide Yuri Ushakov told journalists.
Trump’s relations with Putin — a leader for whom he has repeatedly expressed admiration over the years — and Zelensky have swung wildly since he returned to the White House in January. After an initial rapprochement, Trump has shown increasing frustration with Putin, particularly since he came away from meeting the Russian president in Alaska with no end to the war in sight. Zelensky, meanwhile, has gone the opposite way, winning back Trump’s support after the disastrous Oval Office encounter when the US president and Vice President JD Vance berated him in front of the cameras. The Ukrainian returned in August — wearing a suit after he was mocked for not wearing one in the first meeting — and accompanied by a host of Western leaders in solidarity.
© 2024 AFP
