Donald Trump has said he will meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy in New York on Friday, despite a Republican backlash against the Ukrainian president’s lobbying efforts in the US this week.
Zelenskyy had been trying to soothe US Republicans including Trump and House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson who had reacted furiously to the Ukrainian president’s courting of Democrats this week in an attempt to secure more support for Kyiv’s position against Russia.
“I hate to see the carnage,” Trump said on Thursday while claiming he would “quite quickly” strike a peace deal between Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“As you know President Zelenskyy has asked to meet me and I will be meeting with him tomorrow morning at around 9:45 in Trump Tower,” the Republican former president added in a press conference in New York.
Trump’s comments came after Zelenskyy wrote to Trump asking for a meeting to discuss Ukraine’s pursuit of a “just peace”.
The Republican presidential candidate posted Zelenskyy’s letter on his social media platform earlier on Thursday.
“You know I always speak with great respect about everything connected to you,” Zelenskyy wrote. “I would really like for our meeting to take place as part of our efforts to end this war in a just way.”
The exchange marked an attempt by the Ukrainian leader to regain his footing after Trump and others expressed anger at Zelenskyy for focusing his diplomacy on Democratic politicians in the middle of the US election campaign.
The furore erupted after the US announced another $8bn package of aid for Ukraine backed by Republicans.
The Republican backlash caused consternation in Kyiv, where Zelenskyy’s allies accused officials of bungling the US trip at a crucial moment for Ukraine, which has lost ground to Russian forces in the eastern Donbas region.
A former Ukrainian official said: “It looks like the Republicans were looking for ways to create a scandal but we should have avoided giving them the opportunity. The Republicans will still be strong in Washington. They can block everything.”
Ukraine’s president earlier on Thursday expressed his gratitude to “Joe Biden, US Congress and both its parties, Republicans and Democrats, as well as the entire American people” for the fresh aid.
“We have always valued the strong bipartisan support in the United States and among Americans for Ukraine’s just cause of defeating Russian aggression,” he wrote on social media.
Trump lashed out at the Ukrainian leader on Wednesday, accusing him of refusing any negotiation with Russia and claiming Zelenskyy had cast “aspersions” about him.
Johnson demanded the resignation of Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, Oksana Markarova, who organised Zelenskyy’s visit to an arms factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he was accompanied only by Democrats. Pennsylvania is a swing state in November’s presidential election.
“The tour was clearly a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats and is clearly election interference,” Johnson wrote in a letter to the Ukrainian leader.
Zelenskyy had intended to use his US trip to present his so-called victory plan for strengthening Ukraine’s military and diplomatic position to Biden, Trump and Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate.
He met Harris and Biden at the White House on Thursday, where the vice-president took veiled aim at Trump and his running mate JD Vance, implying they would “force Ukraine to give up large parts” of its land and “require Ukraine to forgo security”.
Speaking alongside Zelenskyy, she added: “They are proposals for surrender, which is dangerous and unacceptable”.
Trump on Thursday denied his vision for ending the war amounted to surrender.
“It’s not a surrender . . . my strategy is to save lives,” he said, adding that his message to Zelenskyy would be: “We need peace. We need to stop the death and destruction.”
The $8bn package unveiled by the White House comprises $2.4bn in new assistance and $5.6bn already earmarked for Ukraine and includes a first pledge of “joint stand-off weapons” or glide bombs, which could be used for long-range strikes.
But the package falls well short of the needs Zelenskyy presented to Biden later on Thursday. The US has rebuffed Kyiv’s repeated requests to use long-range weapons to strike targets inside Russia, an important element in his plan.
The Republican backlash over Zelenskyy’s US visit has triggered recriminations in Kyiv.
“Going to Scranton was a mistake,” said Oleksandr Merezhko, chair of the foreign affairs committee in the Ukrainian parliament. “The president has been let down either by someone in the embassy or in his office.”
He added: “It would have been better not to have made that visit at all.”
David Arakhamia, leader of Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party in parliament, played down the significance of Trump’s comments, describing them as “campaign rhetoric and manipulation, which everyone is doing”.
He conceded the timing of Zelenskyy’s visit was not very good, but said Ukraine’s leader needed to press for more funding.
“Whatever you do, you risk becoming part of the election debate,” Arakhamia said. “But we cannot afford to just sit and wait until the elections are done.”
A person close to Zelenskyy said the “optics” of his visit to Scranton looked bad in hindsight and blamed Ukraine’s ambassador for a “lapse of judgment”.
But Arakhamia defended Markarova, calling her one of Ukraine’s most effective envoys. “Why would we fire her just because Speaker Johnson doesn’t like her? It was very rude, frankly.”
Additional reporting by Steff Chavez in Washington