Volodymyr Zelensky will ask Donald Trump for Tomahawk missiles but the surprise announcement that the US President will meet with Vladimir Putin in Budapest appeared to dim the Ukrainian president's chance of securing the long-range weapons.
Trump announced the summit after a more than two-hour phone conversation with Putin about Russia's war in Ukraine on Thursday, which he said was productive.
It was unclear what Putin had told Trump that prompted him to agree to the meeting, as their August summit in Alaska ended early with no major breakthrough.
"My whole life, I've made deals", Trump told reporters at the White House. "I think we're going to have this one done, hopefully soon". The Kremlin said much needed to be decided and that the summit might take place "a little later" than within the two-week period mentioned by Trump.
Friday's meeting with Zelensky was scheduled to be a relatively low-key lunch in a cabinet meeting room as opposed to a public gathering in the Oval Office. Trump's conciliatory tone after the call with Putin raised questions over the near-term likelihood of assistance to Ukraine and reignited European fears of a deal that suits Moscow. A spokesperson for the European Union said it welcomed the talks if they could help bring peace to Ukraine.
The US president, who has campaigned for the Nobel Peace Prize, is eager to add to the list of conflicts he says he has been instrumental in ending.
More than three and a half years after its full-scale war in Ukraine, Russia has ground out some territorial gains this year, but Ukraine's top military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said that the Russian offensive had failed. Putin earlier this month said his forces had taken almost 5,000 square kilometres of land in Ukraine in 2025 — equivalent to adding 1 per cent of Ukraine's territory to the nearly 20 per cent already held. Both sides have also escalated attacks on each other's energy systems and Russian drones and jets have strayed into Nato countries.
The White House had seemed in recent days to be increasingly frustrated with Putin and leaning towards granting Zelensky fresh support, including the Tomahawk missiles that Ukrainians say would help them inflict more damage to Russia's war machine.
"We need them, too", Trump said of the missiles on Thursday in his remarks to reporters after his call with Putin. Zelensky, who has had an up-and-down relationship with Trump, said Putin, who pressed ahead with assaults on Ukraine after meeting with Trump in Alaska, was again playing for time.
"We can already see that Moscow is rushing to resume dialogue as soon as it hears about Tomahawks", he wrote on X.
Ukrainians held out little hope for Zelensky's talks with Trump. "We have already gone through this and we have not seen any tangible results", said Olena Puchilo, 54, a social worker from Mykolaiv, adding that there was still room for miracles.
Putin's move was meant to make the US transfer of such weapons less likely, said Max Bergmann, a Russia expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
"It does seem that Putin's outreach is perhaps designed to thwart the potential transfer of Tomahawks to Ukraine, so Putin is wanting to put that back in the box", Bergmann said. "It strikes me as sort of a stalling tactic."
Mykola Bielieskov, a senior analyst at Come Back Alive, a Ukrainian non-governmental organisation that is a major procurer of military equipment for the Ukrainian armed forces, said Tomahawk missiles would level a playing field that is tipped towards Russia, but that they would not be a silver bullet.
"We don't expect Russia to crumble after one, two or three successful strikes", Bielieskov said. "But it's about pressure, constant pressure. It's about disrupting the military-industrial complex". — Reuters
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