President Trump denied discussing Ukraine surrendering the eastern region to Russia during a closed-door meeting Friday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, following reports of a tense White House encounter in which Trump pushed Moscow's maximalist demands.
“No, we never discussed it. We think that what they should do is just stop at the lines where they are, the battle lines,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One Sunday.
Multiple reports earlier Sunday said that the president urged Zelensky to cede the Donbas region during a tense meeting at the White House on Friday. As of August, Russia occupied roughly 88 percent of the eastern region, according to Reuters.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has reportedly made full control of the Donbas a key condition to ending the war; it's a non-starter for Ukraine, which views withdrawal from its heavily fortified frontlines in the east as opening the rest of the country to Russian aggression.
Prior to meeting with Zelensky, Trump spoke via phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday. In a post on his Truth Social platform, the president called the conversation with Putin “productive” and said they agreed to meet in Budapest, Hungary. A date for the meeting has not been set.
According to the Financial Times, Trump told Zelensky on Friday that “if [Putin] wants it, he will destroy you” and at one point tossed aside Ukraine’s maps of the battlefield, saying, “This red line, I don’t even know where this is. I’ve never been there."
In addition to the Donbas, which includes the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, Russia also controls parts of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. It also has held Crimea since 2014.
After meeting with Zelensky at the United Nations General Assembly last month, Trump said on Truth Social that Ukraine “is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.”
On Sunday, though, the president changed his tune, calling for a swift end to the war that began when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The president said Donbas should “be cut up the way it is,” and the two sides “can negotiate something later on.”
“They should stop right now at the battle lines,” Trump said. “Go home, stop killing people and be done.”
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