Trump also refused to provide Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine and considered giving security guarantees to kyiv and Moscow, comments the Ukrainian delegation found confusing, added the two sources, who requested anonymity to discuss a private conversation.
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After his meeting with Zelenskiy, Trump publicly called for a ceasefire on the current front lines, a stance the Ukrainian president later took in comments to reporters. A third person said Trump made the proposal during the meeting after Zelenskiy said he would not voluntarily cede any territory to Moscow.
“The meeting ended with (Trump’s) decision to make ‘a deal where we are, on the dividing line,'” the third source said.
Trump has not decided whether or not to release Tomahawks, US Vice President JD Vance told a group of reporters on Sunday evening.
The White House and the Ukrainian presidency did not respond to a request for comment. Elements of the discussions were first reported by the Financial Times on Sunday.
But Friday’s meeting indicates that Trump may once again push for a deal as quickly as possible, even if the conditions are unpleasant for kyiv.
U.S. officials have repeatedly raised the possibility of a territorial swap between Ukraine and Russia — an idea Trump embraced earlier in the year — and the U.S. president said during Friday’s meeting that a quick deal was essential, according to the sources.
EFFECTIVE BY PUTIN?
“It was pretty bad,” one of the sources said of the meeting. “The message was: ‘Your country will freeze and your country will be destroyed'” if Ukraine does not reach a deal with Russia.
Another source denied that Trump said Ukraine would be “destroyed.”
Both sources, however, said Trump resorted to profanity on several occasions.
Two sources were left with the impression that Trump was influenced by a phone call Thursday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. During that call, according to the Washington Post, Putin proposed a territorial swap in which Ukraine would cede the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in exchange for small parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
One of the sources said U.S. officials proposed precisely that exchange to Zelenskiy on Friday.
The Ukrainians see major strategic value in the part of Donetsk and Luhansk they still hold: They believe ceding that territory would make the rest of Ukraine much more vulnerable to Russian offensives, said one of the people briefed on the meeting. This source argued that abandoning western Donetsk and Luhansk would amount to an act of “suicide.”
At Friday’s meeting, U.S. officials said Rubio planned to meet with Lavrov next Thursday, one of the sources said. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reporting by Gram Slattery in Washington and Tom Balmforth in London, Anusha Shah in Bangalore; Additional reporting by Ronald Popeski and Humeyra Pamuk; edited by Philippa Fletcher, Diane Craft and Sergio Non
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
