Trump urged Ukraine’s Zelenskiy to compromise with Russia, sources say

By Gram Slattery and Tom Balmforth

Washington (Reuters) – President Donald Trump pushed Ukrainian President VolOdymyr (

Trump also refused to provide tomahawk missiles for the use of Ukraine, and established by providing security guarantees to Kyali and Moscow, the views of which it is unknown, who requested anonymity to discuss a private meeting.

After his meeting with Zelenskiy, Trub asked the audience to limit the current activities, the position that the President of Ukraine will be accepted in the future. A third person said Trump made the request during the meeting after Zelenskiy said he would not seek a challenge from Moscow.

Still, the meeting was clearly disappointing for Zelenskiy, who hoped to convince Trump to supply his government with long-range Tomahawk missiles capable of striking deep inside Russia.

Details of the talks were first reported by the Financial Times on Sunday.

In recent weeks, there were indications that Trump could undermine efforts to force an agreement on Kyiv and Moscow, allowing him to throw his full support behind the Ukrainians.

But Friday’s meeting shows Trump may back away from hanging on to the deal. US officials have repeatedly raised the issue of territorial exchanges between Ukraine and Russia – an idea that Trump had embraced earlier this year – and the US President has said the deal is important.

“It was bad,” said one of the sources. “The message was, ‘Your country is cold, and your country will be destroyed'” if Ukraine does not make a deal with Russia.

Trump resorted to swearing several times throughout the meeting, the source said.

Two sources were left with the opinion that Trump was influenced by the call on Thursday by Vladimir Putin. With that agreement, the Washington Post reported that Putin proposed that Ukraine would establish the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk by returning small parts of Zaporizhia and Kherson.

One of the sources said that US officials are directly proposing to replace Zelenskiy on Friday. But Ukrainians see a huge value in Donetsk and Luhansk they still have to hold — they believe giving up that territory would make the rest of Ukraine more vulnerable to Russia, the person said.

“We will not give anything to the attacker, and we will not forget anything,” Zelenskiy said during his video address on Sunday night. “We clearly see that this Russia is a long-term threat.”

On Thursday, before meeting Zelenskiy, Trump said he would soon meet Putin in Budapest. The Kremlin Aide said not long after that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Russian Foreign Minister were talking about the coming days to prepare for the summit.

The White House and the office of the President of Ukraine did not respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Gram Slattery in Washington and Tom Balmforth in London, Anusha Shah in Bengaluru; Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Diane Craft)