Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will meet with his American counterpart Donald Trump at the White House today. He hopes to receive approval from the United States to sell him long-range "Tomahawk" cruise missiles, which would allow Ukraine to act more offensively in repelling the Russian invasion, DPA reported, BTA reported.
The exact time of today's meeting is 20:00 Kyiv time (coincides with Bulgarian time), Ukrinform specifies. The negotiations will be held during dinner in an informal setting and will be closed to the press. After the meeting, Trump is expected to leave for Florida at 22:00 (Kyiv time).
Zelensky also hopes the momentum gained with the ceasefire agreement between the Palestinian group „Hamas“ and Israel in the war in Gaza, to give new impetus to the negotiations to end the Russian war in Ukraine.
„We expect that the momentum to limit terror and war, which has succeeded in the Middle East, will help to end Russia's war against Ukraine“, Zelensky wrote on the social network „Ex“. „Putin is certainly no braver than „Hamas“ or any other terrorist. The language of force and justice will inevitably work against Russia. We can already see that Moscow is in a hurry to resume dialogue as soon as it hears about „Tomahawk“, he added.
It is still unclear whether Zelensky will receive such missiles for Ukraine. The day before the meeting, Trump spoke with Putin by phone and said he wanted to meet the Russian president in Budapest “maybe in the next two weeks”. It is not yet clear whether Ukraine will have any role in the summit in the Hungarian capital.