Trump and Zelensky will meet Friday after trading blows throughout the week

Top line

Former President Donald Trump said during a news conference Thursday that he would meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr on Friday at Trump Tower in New York. It would be the first meeting between the two since Trump left office and the war in Ukraine broke out. after a series of verbal jabs between them throughout the week.

The meeting will take place at Trump Tower. (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

AFP via Getty Images

Key facts

The meeting will take place around 9:45 a.m. EDT, according to Trump, who told reporters he would be able to reach a deal between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelensky “pretty quickly” to end the war in Ukraine, although that he refused to provide information. details of what the compromise would look like.

The relationship between Trump and Zelensky appears rocky ahead of the meeting, as the two have recently exchanged barbs, including criticism of Zelensky, who recently told the New Yorker: “Trump doesn’t really know how to stop the war, even if he thinks he knows. »

A reporter asked Trump about Zelensky’s comment, to which the former president joked that he should “immediately cancel” the next meeting before insisting that Zelensky knows he understands how to end the war.

The meeting will take place just days after Trump expressed doubts about Ukraine’s chances of winning the war and called Zelensky “the greatest salesman on Earth,” referring to the tens of billions of dollars in aid that the United States has supplied to Ukraine since 2022.

Trump said the war between Ukraine and Russia “would never have happened” if he had been president, repeating a claim he has made repeatedly when asked about the subject .

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Tangent

Zelensky drew the ire of Republicans who recently criticized him for visiting an ordnance manufacturing plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and claimed his visit was “a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats.”

Key context

The rocky relationship between Trump and Zelensky may be partly rooted in the former president’s comments about ending the war between Ukraine and Russia, as opposed to his support for a Ukrainian victory, although Trump’s relationship with the Ukrainian president dates back several years, with a controversial 2019 phone call between the two, in which Trump urged Zelensky to investigate then-Democratic candidate Joe Biden serving as the focal point for an impeachment inquiry Democrat against Trump. The former president was later impeached by the House, before being acquitted in a Senate trial. Trump has not provided details of his plan to end the war, which has lasted more than two years. Zelensky met with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday following Biden’s pledge to provide an additional $8 billion in aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia.

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