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After Trump and Zelensky meet in New York, Ukrainian president says he hopes war will end ‘before winter’

Source: Meduza

Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky met on September 22 on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, holding talks that lasted about 40 minutes. The two leaders discussed, among other things, prospects for negotiations with Russia, military aid to Ukraine, and a possible energy truce between Kyiv and Moscow.

Even before the meeting, Trump said from the U.N. podium that he expects the war to end soon: “We are working very closely with the leaders of Russia and Ukraine, and we will see this through to the end. It will happen, I think, sooner than people realize.”

After the talks, Zelensky also spoke about when the war might end:

Zelensky’s hopes are shared elsewhere in Europe. “People are looking for a partial ceasefire come winter,” Finnish President Alexander Stubb said in an interview with Bloomberg.

Just two weeks earlier, speaking to Trump’s special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Kyiv, Zelensky had said he expected the war to continue into winter.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal after the meeting, Zelensky suggested that Trump would now try to reach an agreement with Moscow on an energy truce. Putin, he said, is unlikely to go along without additional pressure from Washington, such as increased sanctions. He added that Ukraine is willing to accept any format of truce and that he is ready for a three-way meeting with Putin and Trump.

The talks also covered a “winter package” of military aid. Zelensky asked Trump to give Ukraine Patriot missiles from American stockpiles, offering in exchange to later hand over to the United States part of the missiles Kyiv expects from a future delivery under an agreement with Germany. Trump did not agree, but Zelensky called the fact that he did not immediately reject the idea a “good step.”

The Kremlin said there are currently no preconditions for peace talks, though Putin is ready to meet with Trump. Presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called a meeting with Zelensky without prior expert-level preparation a waste of time and reiterated that it could only take place in Moscow.

Discussions about the energy truce are expected to continue on September 23, when U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in New York, where he arrived for the U.N. General Assembly session. The U.S. State Department announced the meeting after the Trump–Zelensky talks.

The war in photographs. Kyiv