DID Press: US President Donald Trump reportedly asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to accept Russia’s conditions for ending the war, including ceding the eastern Donbas region to Moscow, according to sources cited by the Financial Times.
The request was made during a meeting between Trump and Zelensky at the White House on Friday, October 17. According to Reuters and the Financial Times, Trump warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin had threatened the “complete destruction of Ukraine” if Kyiv refused to comply with Moscow’s terms.
Sources familiar with the talks said Trump repeatedly echoed positions similar to those recently voiced by Putin. However, Zelensky reportedly managed to persuade the U.S. president to back away from the idea of “full surrender of Donbas” and instead support a ceasefire along the current front lines.
The Financial Times further reported that a day before the Trump–Zelensky meeting, Putin had proposed in a phone call with Trump that Moscow would return parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions to Ukraine in exchange for formal control over parts of Donbas.
Trump and Putin have reportedly agreed to hold a follow-up meeting on the future of the Ukraine war within the next two weeks, tentatively in Budapest.
Their first meeting in Alaska last August ended without concrete results