Trump urged Zelenskyy to accept Putin’s terms or be ‘destroyed’ by Russia

Donald Trump urged Volodymyr Zelensky to accept Russia’s terms for ending its war in a volatile White House meeting on Friday, warning that Vladimir Putin said he would “destroy” Ukraine if it did not agree.

People familiar with the matter said that the meeting between the US and Ukrainian presidents several times turned into a “screaming match,” with Trump “cursing the entire time.”

They added that the US president abandoned maps of the frontline in Ukraine, insisted that Zelensky hand over the entire Donbas region to Putin, and repeatedly repeated the talking points raised by the Russian leader in his call the previous day.

Although Ukraine was eventually able to convince Trump to back his support for freezing the current front lines, the acrimonious meeting appeared to reflect the volatile nature of Trump’s position on the war and his willingness to support Putin’s extreme demands.

The meeting between Trump and Zelensky came amid a new effort by the US President to end the Russian war in the wake of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

Zelensky and his team went to the White House hoping to convince Trump to provide them with long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, but the US president ultimately refused to do so.

The tense meeting echoed a similarly difficult confrontation at the White House in February, where Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance criticized Zelensky for what they described as a lack of gratitude toward the United States.

During Friday’s meeting, Trump appeared to adopt many of Putin’s talking points verbatim, even when they contradicted his recent statements about Russia’s vulnerabilities, European officials familiar with the meeting said.

According to a European official familiar with the meeting, Trump told Zelensky that the Ukrainian leader needed to reach an agreement or face destruction.

The official said Trump told Zelensky that he would lose the war, warning: “If… [Putin] If he wants to, he will destroy you.”

At one point in the meeting, the US President tossed aside Ukraine’s maps of the battlefield, the official familiar with the meeting said.

The White House and the Ukrainian president’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Trump told Fox News on Sunday that he was confident of reaching an end to the conflict, adding that Putin “will take something. He won certain property.”

Putin presented a new offer to Trump on Thursday, under which Ukraine would hand over parts of the eastern Donbas region under its control in exchange for some small areas in the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.

The Russian proposal represents a small concession from the one made during Putin’s last meeting with Trump in Alaska in August, where he said he would agree to freeze a line of communication elsewhere on the front line if Ukraine surrenders Donbass.

That meeting also ended acrimoniously after Putin rejected Trump’s push for an immediate ceasefire and went on at length about Ukraine’s medieval history, prompting the United States to explore increased support for Kiev, including by supplying Tomahawk missiles.

But ceding the rest of the Donbas region that remains under Ukrainian control would not be a good start for Ukraine, because it would hand Moscow territory it has only partially occupied for more than a decade and has failed to seize despite its efforts since Putin ordered its invasion in 2022.

Russian forces are struggling to hold on to the territory in Kherson and Zaporizhia that Putin offered in return, and have made virtually no progress on the battlefield there since 2022, the year the war began.

“To give [the Donbas] “Returning to Russia without a fight is unacceptable for Ukrainian society, and Putin knows this,” Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the Ukrainian parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said.

He said that Putin might push the controversial idea “with the aim of creating division within Ukraine and undermining our unity.”

“It’s not about getting more territory for Russia, it’s about how to destroy us from within,” Merezhko added.

Trump’s aggressive reiteration of Putin’s rhetoric on Friday dashed hopes among many of Ukraine’s European allies that he could be persuaded to increase support for Kiev.

This hope has risen after Trump in recent weeks expressed frustration and impatience with the Russian president’s refusal to actively participate in bilateral peace negotiations with Zelensky.

Three other European officials briefed on the White House discussions confirmed that Trump spent most of the meeting lecturing Zelensky, repeating Putin’s arguments about the conflict and urging him to accept the Russian proposal.

“Zelensky was very negative” after the meeting, one of the officials said, adding that European leaders “were not optimistic but realistic about planning next steps.”

Zelensky said in a statement on Sunday that “decisive steps are needed from the United States, Europe, the G20 and the G7” to end the war.

Additional reporting by Claire Jones in Washington