Trump will have a conversation with Putin today, right before Zelenskiy's visit to Washington, the White House confirms / What new strategy does Kiev want to propose
Donald Trump will talk with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Thursday, the White House announced, a day before the American president meets in Washington with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, AFP and Reuters write.
The conversation between Trump and Putin was confirmed by two White House officials to NBC News, after the initial information was published, based on sources, by the American publication Axios.
The Trump-Putin conversation will take place on Thursday, before the US president receives Zelenskiy at the White House on Friday. Trump and Zelensky are expected to discuss the possibility of Ukraine receiving long-range Tomahawk missiles.
The US leader told reporters on Sunday that he “may have to talk to Russia first” before giving Ukraine access to Tomahawk missile systems, suggesting he would use the threat of deploying these long-range missiles to Ukraine as a kind of bargaining chip.
Last week, Trump said he told Zelenskiy that he could give Putin a new ultimatum: Either Russia initiates serious peace talks or Ukraine receives Tomahawk missiles.
The White House leader has become more hostile to Moscow in recent months, showing growing frustration with Putin while expressing sympathy for Ukraine, which is seeking, from 2022, to repel the Russian invasion.
Zelensky will propose a new strategy against Russia to Trump
The Ukrainian president will present to Donald Trump at the White House on Friday a new pressure strategy against Russia based, among other things, on increasing long-range attack capabilities by supplying Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, according to Ukrainian presidential adviser Mihailo Podoliak, quoted by EFE and Agerpres agencies on Wednesday.
This is “a strategy to increase the cost of war for the aggressor”, the Ukrainian official wrote on the social platform X. “The tools are well-known: cruise missiles, joint production of drones and strengthened air defense”, Mihailo Podoliak indicated some topics that a Ukrainian delegation, led by the head of the presidential administration, Andrii Iermac, and the head of the government, Yulia Sviridenko, is already discussing them in Washington in preparation for the Trump-Zelensky meeting.
The same Ukrainian presidential adviser explicitly mentioned that the long-range weapons requested by Kiev are meant to “project power far into the heart of Russia”, thus suggesting the intensification of the attacks that the Ukrainian military already carries out almost daily on Russian military factories and refineries.
According to recent revelations published by the Financial Times, the US has been helping Ukraine with intelligence and other planning elements since July.
He also pointedly referred to the Tomahawk missiles, which have been requested by Kiev and which Trump has said he is studying the possibility of supplying, believing that this would probably lead Russia to negotiate and accept concessions to end the war.
“Yes, Tomahawk missiles are not a universal weapon and have technical limitations. But it's not about whether something is possible or not. It's about what's necessary,” said Mihailo Podoliak. In his opinion, Ukraine proposes “a fair agreement”, whereby Kiev “reduces the risk for the entire West, Europe pays for its own security and the US benefits by supplying weapons”.
President Zelenskiy's advisor thus referred to the program through which the US supplies Ukraine with weapons and ammunition paid for by European countries. In this program, called PURL, according to the English acronym for “List of Priority Requirements for Ukraine”, Kiev is now demanding that Tomahawk missiles be included.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned the US that the possible delivery of Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine would irreparably damage Russian-American relations, insisting that such missiles, which Kiev requires to strike deep into Russian territory, cannot be operated by the Ukrainian military without American assistance.
Long accused of benevolence or even complicity with Russia, President Trump has repositioned himself on the side of Ukraine after his efforts to bring these two countries to peace have failed.
After saying until recently that Ukraine must make peace with Russia because it does not have the military capacity to recover the lost territories, after a meeting with Zelensky in September, Trump estimated that, on the contrary, Ukraine can recapture all its territories occupied by Russia, and even go beyond them.
Moreover, Trump urged Ukraine to act now to take advantage of Russia's economic difficulties, which he described as a “paper tiger”, but to do so “with the support of the European Union”, implying again that Washington no longer wants to contribute financially to aid to Ukraine and that Kiev's European supporters must pay more for this financial aid. and military, including buying American weapons.
