Ukraine’s Zelensky says he trusts Donald Trump but wants to meet as US pushes peace talks with Russia
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky detailed his recent phone call with President Donald Trump and his take on a possible peace agreement with Russia during an interview Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press.
A trio of Trump advisers — Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz, and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff — are set to meet with Russian officials in Saudi Arabia next week to begin negotiations aimed at ending the war, according to multiple news reports. Ukrainian officials have not yet confirmed whether they will be represented at the meeting.
Zelensky, meanwhile, is in Washington, D.C., and has met with the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as well as Vice President JD Vance in the past week. He also spoke with Trump on the phone.
The Ukrainian leader told NBC’s Kristen Welker that he trusts Trump to negotiate an end to the war, but cautioned that the president should not exclude Ukrainians from the conversation.
“I trust President Trump because he’s the president of the United States, because your people, your people voted for him, and I respect their choice, and I will work the President Trump with trust, which I have to the United States,” Zelensky said.
“But of course I want to have real meeting, productive, without just words,” he added.
Trump needs “to hear us” and work with Zelensky to “make common plan, and to share it with allies, then with Russians, and stop this war,” he said.
“I think we need it urgently,” added Zelensky, who said that his team was working with the White House on setting up a meeting. But he did not say whether the president had directly invited him.
In the same interview, he seemed to lay out his country’s red line for peace negotiations: a refusal to cede any territory to Russia, including Crimea and all territory seized by Russian-aligned forces dating back to 2014. It’s a strategic goal that Trump and his secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, both said in the past week was an “unrealistic” demand.
“[I]t’s out of constitution [unconstitutional] to recognize our occupied territory [as the] territory of Russia. We will never do it. It’s not about – it’s not about any negotiations. We will never speak about it,” said Zelensky in his interview Sunday.
“Even Crimea, we will never recognize it,” he added.
Trump, in his remarks to reporters on Wednesday after his phone call with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, also stated that he did not believe Ukraine should join the NATO alliance at the conclusion of the war.
“The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement,” said the president, before adding that any security guarantees for Kyiv “must be backed by capable European and non-European troops.”
“I don’t see any way that a country in Russia’s position could allow them, just in their position, could allow them to join NATO. I don’t see that happening,” Trump added at a press gaggle.
