United States President Donald Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a meeting at the White House on Friday to accept Russian conditions for ending the war between Russia and Ukraine, warning that Russian President Vladimir Putin had threatened to "destroy" Ukraine if Zelensky did not agree, the British newspaper Financial Times (FT) reported today, as reported by Reuters.
During the meeting, Trump insisted that Zelensky hand over the entire eastern Donbas region to Russia, repeatedly repeating the views the Russian president expressed the day before during their phone call, the newspaper said, citing sources familiar with the talks.
According to the FT, Ukraine eventually managed to convince Trump to support a freeze on the current front line. After the meeting, Trump said that "the two sides should stop the war on the front line," while Zelensky said that it was "an important point."
The White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the FT report.
Zelensky arrived at the White House on Friday in search of weapons to help Ukraine continue the fight, but he was greeted by a US president who seemed more focused on reaching a peace deal.
In a phone call on Thursday, Putin, according to the FT, offered to give up smaller areas on the southern front line, in the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, in exchange for much larger parts of Donbass that are now under Ukrainian control.
That's less than his original demands from 2024, when he asked Kiev to hand over all of Donbas, as well as Kherson and Zaporizhia in the south - an area of almost 20.000 square kilometers.
A spokesman for Zelensky did not immediately respond to a request for comment, sent after business hours, about whether Trump pressured Zelensky to accept peace on Russian terms.
Trump and Putin agreed on Thursday to hold a second summit on the war in Ukraine in the next two weeks, currently planned in Budapest, following an August 15 meeting in Alaska, which failed to lead to a breakthrough in negotiations.
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