Since President Trump returned to the White House this year, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has stuck to one rule: Never miss a chance to meet with the U.S. leader to try to pull him into Kyiv’s corner.
On Tuesday, he will have his latest opportunity. Mr. Zelensky will meet with Mr. Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Monday.
For Mr. Zelensky, a sit-down with Mr. Trump could deliver more results than his speech to the General Assembly, a forum where Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has gradually slipped down the agenda after more than three years of war. This year, debates are set to be dominated by other topics, including the wars in Gaza and Sudan.
The last time the two leaders met, at the White House last month, Mr. Zelensky came away with a win. He secured a U.S. commitment to participate in security guarantees for Ukraine as part of a peace deal aimed at deterring future Russian attacks.
Since then, Ukraine and its European allies have been working on drafting the specifics of those guarantees, but America’s exact role in that arrangement remains uncertain.
Mr. Trump has said Washington may provide air support to European troops stationed in Ukraine in a postwar settlement, without releasing specifics. Analysts say the absence of clarity has kept Kyiv and its European partners from publicly announcing the guarantees or moving forward with the next stage of peace talks with Russia.
“These matters will be discussed in our bilateral meeting in New York,” Mr. Zelensky told reporters on Friday. “I want to gauge how close we are to understanding that security guarantees will meet our needs.”
For all of Mr. Zelensky’s efforts to win over Mr. Trump, the American president has done little to increase pressure on Russia, repeatedly stalling or missing his own deadlines for imposing new economic sanctions on Moscow. None of the measures that Mr. Trump predicted at his summit in Anchorage with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia have materialized.
Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Trump will hold their talks a day after a fractious U.N. Security Council meeting, where a number of NATO countries accused Russia of violating their airspace and warned against further actions.
Britain and Poland said that they were prepared to challenge any further Russian violations of NATO airspace, nearly two weeks after the alliance shot down Russian drones over Poland. Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, warned that any further violations of its airspace could be met with force. “If another missile or aircraft enters our space without permission, deliberately or by mistake, and gets shot down and the wreckage falls on NATO territory, please don’t come here to whine about it,” Mr. Sikorski said.
Russia’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyanskiy, hit back and accused Europe of “spreading blatant lies.”
The Security Council meeting was convened by Estonia after Russian fighter jets were detected flying through its airspace on Friday. The Russian Defense Ministry has denied that its jets entered Estonian airspace.
Days earlier, Russian drones entered the airspace of Romania, another NATO member.
Mr. Zelensky also said the American and Ukrainian first ladies would meet, with the issue of Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia on the agenda. Last month, Melania Trump appealed to Mr. Putin over the well-being of children in a personal letter.
Olena Zelenska, Mr. Zelensky’s wife, who has played a prominent international role in pushing for the return of the children, followed up with a letter to Ms. Trump. Mr. Zelensky said a summit on the return of kidnapped children would be organized during the U.N. meetings this week.
Part of Mr. Zelensky’s time in New York is also likely to be devoted to securing additional funding for purchases and production of weapons.
Under Mr. Trump, the United States has stopped donating weapons to Kyiv, leaving the Ukrainian government scrambling to secure funding to boost domestic production and buy military equipment. Kyiv’s goal is to obtain $1 billion per month to purchase heavy weaponry from the United States.
Constant Méheut reports on the war in Ukraine, including battlefield developments, attacks on civilian centers and how the war is affecting its people.
Marc Santora has been reporting from Ukraine since the beginning of the war with Russia. He was previously based in London as an international news editor focused on breaking news events and earlier the bureau chief for East and Central Europe, based in Warsaw. He has also reported extensively from Iraq and Africa.
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