Photo by: Presidential Office of Ukraine/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky were relatively cordial at a luncheon meeting in front of reporters Friday, but the goodwill reportedly devolved into a “shouting match” when the two leaders disappeared behind closed doors.
The Financial Times reported Sunday that Trump warned the Ukrainian president to accept Russia’s terms for ending the war lest Russian leader Vladimir Putin “destroy” Ukraine.
“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,” according to the report.
Trump, in addition, reportedly insisted that Zelensky surrender the entire Donbas region to Russia, a point pushed by Putin during a White House call the day before. Putin reportedly told Trump on Thursday that he would forfeit “some small areas of the two southern frontline regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia” in exchange for it.
“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,” the report said, continuing:
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.
Zelensky said in a statement Sunday that “decisive steps are needed from the United States, Europe, the G20 and G7 countries” to end the war.
Trump told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo Sunday that Putin was “going to take something” from Ukraine. “I mean they fought — he has a lot of property…he’s won certain property.”
Trump would not commit to sending Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine as requested by Zelensky, he told Bartiromo, because, “We need them for ourselves, too.”
