Trump says he will meet Zelensky despite campaign criticism

Donald Trump has agreed to a last-minute meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky despite repeatedly criticising him on the US campaign trail.

The Republican presidential nominee told a news conference that the Ukrainian leader will visit Trump Tower on Friday, just days after Trump criticised him for refusing to “make a deal” with Moscow.

The former US president appears to have changed his mind after earlier reports from his campaign said a meeting between the two was extremely unlikely.

The pair have endured a tumultuous relationship. Trump was impeached in 2019 over accusations that he pressured Zelensky to dig up damaging information on the Biden family.

A rough transcript of the call revealed Trump had urged Zelensky to investigate Biden, as well as Biden’s son.

Since Russian launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Trump has frequently repeated Moscow’s talking points about the war. During September’s presidential debate he sidestepped a question on whether he wanted Ukraine to emerge victorious in the conflict.

Announcing the meeting with the Ukrainian leader, Trump repeated his long-standing claim that he he would be able to “make a deal” between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelensky “quite quickly”.

But the former president declined to delve into the specifics of his plan. He also refused to elaborate when asked whether he believes Ukraine should cede territory to Russia as a means of ending the war.

“It’s a shame what’s happening in Ukraine. So many deaths, so much destruction. It’s a horrible thing,” Trump told reporters in New York on Thursday.

On Thursday night, Trump posted a screenshot of a text message from President Zelensky, passed on by Ukraine’s deputy ambassador to the US. In it, the Ukrainian leader requested a meeting with the ex-president and said it was “important for us to have a personal contact and to understand each other 100%”.

Friday’s meeting comes amid tension between Zelensky and the Republican party ahead of November’s US presidential election.

Some Republicans were angered by Zelensky’s visit to an arms factory in Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, with top Democrats, including state Governor Josh Shapiro, earlier this week.

Zelensky’s trip to the key swing state was labelled by leading Republicans as a partisan campaign event. In a public letter, House Speaker Mike Johnson said the visit was “designed to help Democrats” and claimed it amounted to “election interference”.

Trump has grown increasingly critical of continued US funding for Ukraine, and in recent days has sharpened his attacks against Zelensky, calling him the “greatest salesman on Earth”.

In contrast, Zelensky recently told the New Yorker magazine that he believes Trump “doesn’t really know how to stop the war”.

When asked about Zelensky’s comments on Thursday, Trump replied: “I do believe I disagree with him. He doesn’t know me.”

On Thursday, Zelensky met US President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris at the White House to discuss his “victory plan”, which he hopes will pressure Russia into agreeing a diplomatic end to the war.

Hours before, Biden had announced a further $7.9bn (£5.9bn) package of military assistance to Ukraine.

As Zelensky visited the US, drone attacks continued in Ukraine. On Thursday night, three people were killed and 14 others wounded in a Russian drone attack on Izmail, a port city on the River Danube.

Russia has targeted Izmail’s grain export facilities in the past, however prosecutors say two boys aged three and 13, and a girl aged 14, were among those wounded in the latest attack.

Romania’s defence ministry said it was possible that one of the Russian drones involved in the attack had crossed the border into Romania, a Nato member state, for a very short period.