Transcript of a bilateral meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, focused on the ongoing war in Ukraine, military progress, sanctions/energy policy, and possible security guarantees. Zelensky reports recent battlefield gains (mentions "360 km" regained and comments on prisoner exchanges) and urges continued U.S. and European pressure on Russian oil and gas; Trump praises Ukrainian resilience, emphasizes NATO burden-sharing and increased defense purchases, and responds cautiously on specific security-guarantee commitments. The Q&A covers NATO rules of engagement (shooting down aircraft), an alleged drone incident in Denmark, and diplomatic outreach to leaders like Hungary's Viktor Orbán and Slovakia's prime minister.
Chapters
We've had an interesting day, I think a very productive day. And we're now meeting with. We're going to start a meeting with the President, who we all know very well, and he's a brave man and he's putting up one hell of a fight, and we'll see how that all turns out. But we're going to have a meeting and we have about 30 meetings scheduled today. We have a lot of meetings scheduled today, going pretty late into the night. But this is an important one and we have great respect for the fight that Ukraine is putting up. It's pretty amazing, actually. So, Mr. President, please.
Thank you so much, Mr. President. First of all, thank you for this meeting. Thank you for your personal efforts to stop this war just now, Mr. President. And I'm happy to say that just now our first ladies, first ladies of Ukraine, first ladies of the United States. Yes, just now we'll have a meeting about Ukrainian children. Thank you for Melania's personal involvement to this topic. And this is very important. I will brief Mr. President and his team what's going on on the battlefield. We have good, good news, of course we want to stop the war and with your help, first of all. And it's good that our soldiers occupy the 360km this month. And of course we will speak about how to finish the war and about security guarantees. A lot of what to discuss. Thank you.
Would you like to say how you are doing on the battlefield, please?
Yeah, yeah. So we. Thanks to our soldiers and to possibility to furl the program when NATO countries, by the way, thanks to your support that they can buy weapon from the United States. So our soldiers these months, they occupied 360km and they in so called 1000 soldiers. And of course, of course we want to exchange because we need our soldiers in any case. But thanks, thanks to our soldiers, we have this possibility, this opportunity. We will continue until Russia will stop this war. And I hope that they will stop. In any case, we know that the economy of Russia is not doing well with this during this war. We need more pressure and more sanctions and I hope with United States first of all and Europe. But we support, Mr. President, your idea and I want to discuss it. How to stop some countries from Europe, how to stop the possibility to buy, to buy Russian oil and gas. I had conversation, by the way, with President of Slovakia, Prime Ministers or Prime Minister of Slovakia. We had good conversation. I think that they need some alternative ways and they will support this idea. I'm not sure that Hungarians are ready, but everything is in the future.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Any questions?
Mr. President, do you think that NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft if they enter their airspace?
Yes, I do. Mr. President, any update on your talks with President Putin, and do you still trust him? I'll let you know in about a month from now. Okay. President, are you willing to provide Ukraine with the security guarantees in the same way as European allies? Well, that's later down the road. We'll be talking about that. Hopefully, we'll be in a position to talk about that a little bit later on. It's a little bit too early to answer that question. Why not? Even Mr. Putin is not with both of you.
President Trump, your message to President Orban, who is refusing to stop buying Russian oil.
Well, he's a friend of mine. I have not spoken to him, but I have a feeling if I did, he might stop, and I think I'll be doing that.
What progress do you think has been made on ending Russia's war against Ukraine since the last time you saw President Zelensky?
Well, the biggest progress is that the Russian economy is terrible right now. As you know, it's crashing, and that, frankly, Ukraine is doing a very good job of stopping this very large army. It's pretty amazing. You know, this is a war that should have ended in three days, four days. People said it was going to be very quick. And you got to hand it to the Ukrainian soldiers and everybody involved, it's still going on. And that's. That's not a good thing for Russia. This was supposed to be quick. And so, you know, Russia doesn't look very distinguished, having taken three and a half years now. Right? It's about three and a half years of very hard fighting, and it looks like it's not going to end for a long time. Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President,. Have you been briefed on the latest alleged drone incursion into Denmark? What do you think of that? Where. Where are they to Denmark? Copenhagen. Denmark is saying that there are some drones at the airport, possibly Russian sabotage. What's your response to that? Will the US Have a material. Well, I have no response until I find out exactly what happened. I know about it, but they have it. They don't know what happened, but we're going to find out very soon.
Would you back up NATO allies? You said that you thought that they should shoot down the Russian aircraft. Would you back them up? Would the United States help them out in some way?
Depends on the circumstance. But, you know, we're very strong toward NATO. NATO stepped up you know, when they went from 2% to 5%, that was great. Unity. Trillions of dollars is being pumped in, and they're paying us for the weapons that we send. But that was a big day that nobody thought a thing like that could happen. You had countries that weren't paying 2%, and now they're all paying 5%. That's a lot of money. It's a lot of weapons they're buying, and they're buying them from us. They're buying them from the U.S. you know, in the old days, Biden gave them everything, gave them $350 billion worth of money and weapons. That's a lot of money and a lot of weapons. And we got really not much for it. We gave. We gave the money to Ukraine to fight. And we've. They've proven they're very brave. I mean, look, they're fighting, and this is a war going on three and a half years, and people thought it would be over quickly because Russia is a big military power. And Ukraine, I tell you, they are good fighters. Got to hand it to them. They have a lot of courage, a lot of guts. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you. Thank you so much.
