Former President Donald Trump said Thursday he will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky amid renewed speculation about the state of their relationship.
“As you know, President Zelensky has asked to meet with me, and I will be meeting with him tomorrow morning at around 9:45 in Trump Tower,” the 45th president told reporters at his eponymous Midtown skyscraper.
The meeting will take place one day after Zelensky met with both President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday in Washington — and as some in Republican leadership slammed the Ukrainian president for going to Pennsylvania, a key swing state, with Democratic governor and Harris surrogate Josh Shapiro over the weekend.
In a wide-ranging news conference, Trump reiterated his campaign pledge of wanting to he wants to “save lives” in Ukraine by making a peace deal to end the 31-month-old war with Russia.
“I don’t want to tell you what that looks like,” he told reporters in Trump Tower in response to questions about what a potential agreement would look like.
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Trump, 78, has said previously he doesn’t want to reveal the plan until he’s in office, but has claimed he would end the war before he gets into the White House, between the Nov. 5 election and the Jan. 20 inauguration
The Republican nominee took a somber tone when describing the atrocities Russia is committing in Ukraine.
“When you look at those cities, they’re all knocked down, those beautiful, gorgeous golden domes, they’re shattered and lying on their side never to be replaced again. You can’t ever replace that,” Trump said.
“When you look at the heritage of that really very vibrant country in so many different ways, and you see how it’s been so broken, the people, so many people dead where they have to use old soldiers, old men and young boys, because they’re running out of soldiers.”
Harris, speaking alongside Zelensky moments earlier, vowed to continue supporting Ukraine and accused Trump of wanting to cede land to Russia in an effective surrender by Kyiv.
“I want to save lives. Millions of people are dead, millions more than they even think about,” the 45th president responded to his rival, “and it’s not my fight, but it is a fight to save humanity.”
Asked whether he would advise Ukraine to cede land to Russia in negotiations, Trump declined to commit either way, but only “we’ll see what happens.”
