Trump urged Zelenskyy to cut a deal with Putin or risk facing destruction, FT reports

U.S. President Donald Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to accept Russia’s terms for ending the war between Russia and Ukraine in a White House meeting on Friday, warning that President Vladimir Putin threatened to “destroy” Ukraine if it didn’t comply, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

During the meeting, Trump insisted Zelenskyy surrender the entire eastern Donbas region to Russia, repeatedly echoing talking points the Russian president had made in their call a day earlier, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Ukraine ultimately managed to swing Trump back to endorsing a freeze of the current front lines, the FT said. Trump said after the meeting that the two sides should stop the war at the battle line; Zelenskyy said that was an important point.

The White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the FT report.

Zelenskyy arrived at the White House on Friday looking for weapons to keep fighting his country’s war, but met an American president who appeared more intent on brokering a peace deal.

In Thursday’s call with Trump, Putin had offered some small areas of the two southern frontline regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in exchange for the much larger parts of the Donbas now under Ukrainian control, the FT report added.

That is less than his original 2024 demand for Kyiv to cede the entirety of Donbas plus Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south, an area of nearly 20,000 square km.

Zelenskyy’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside business hours on whether Trump had pressured Zelenskyy to accept peace on Russia’s terms.

Trump and Putin agreed on Thursday to hold a second summit on the war in Ukraine within the next two weeks, provisionally in Budapest, following an Aug. 15 meeting in Alaska that failed to produce a breakthrough.

Read the complete Financial Times report here.