Zelensky to Meet Trump Amid Fears for Continued U.S. Support for Ukraine

The gathering in New York is part of a nearly weeklong U.S. visit by the Ukrainian president in which he has made appeals to both Democrats and Republicans.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is set to meet with former President Donald J. Trump on Friday as concerns mount in Kyiv that a second Trump administration could spell the end of American support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

The meeting, which is scheduled to take place at Trump Tower in Manhattan, will be the first in-person encounter between the two men since 2019.

Mr. Zelensky is nearing the end of a nearly weeklong visit to the United States during which he has made appeals for increased financial and military aid to President Biden; Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee; and bipartisan groups of lawmakers.

Convincing American officials to sustain aid to Ukraine has become more complicated as fighting on the Ukrainian battlefield stretches further into its third year and much of the world’s attention is now focused on the conflicts in the Middle East.

Although Mr. Biden pledged on Thursday to increase military aid for Ukraine, he stopped short of authorizing Kyiv to fire Western-made long-range missiles into Russia, something the Ukrainians have long pleaded for.

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Persuading Mr. Trump to continue supporting Ukraine if he is re-elected might prove even more arduous. At several public events, the Republican candidate has vowed to end the war quickly, even if that means having Ukraine cede large swaths of territory to Russia.

“Any deal, even the worst deal, would have been better than what we have right now,” Mr. Trump said during a campaign event in North Carolina on Wednesday.

Mr. Trump has also long been skeptical about providing financial and military aid to Ukraine, saying that the contributions were draining American resources, a stance that the Republican Party has largely echoed.

Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House, did not meet with Mr. Zelensky during his visit to Capitol Hill on Thursday, and he demanded this week that Ukraine fire its ambassador to the United States, accusing her of meddling in American election affairs.

Yet some Ukrainian analysts say that Mr. Trump is a wild card when it comes to foreign policy, and that his potential return would not necessarily be bad news for Ukraine.

“There is a certain level of unpredictability about Trump,” Sergiy Solodkyy, the first deputy director of the New Europe Center, a Kyiv-based foreign policy think tank, said in an interview this summer. “He may say something publicly and act differently when he’s in power.”

Mr. Solodkyy noted that after Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, Mr. Trump reversed President Barack Obama’s policy of not providing weapons to Ukraine. He also approved a decision to send Javelin antitank missiles to Ukraine, which proved useful at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in early 2022.

He also pointed out that Mr. Trump soft-pedaled his opposition to additional American aid to Ukraine earlier this year, prompting some Republican members of Congress to vote in favor of the military package after months of holding back.

Analysts say Ukraine has been developing strategies to appeal to Mr. Trump’s key stated interests, such as shoring up the American economy.

Oleksandr Kraeiv, the head of the North America Program at Ukrainian Prism, a research institute, said that emphasizing the economic benefits for American arms manufacturers could resonate with Mr. Trump.

“We need to be practical and less ideologized,” Mr. Kraeiv said.

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

• Biden-Zelensky Meeting: President Biden will meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at the White House after announcing a new slate of weapons and nearly $8 billion of aid.
• Russia’s Nuclear Doctrine: President Vladimir Putin of Russia said that he planned to lower the threshold for his country’s use of nuclear weapons, an escalation in his efforts to deter the United States from expanding its aid to Ukraine.
• A National Icon Fights: Serhiy Zhadan is a beloved Ukrainian poet and rock star. Furious over Russia’s invasion, he enlisted in the army even as his band still plays and his readings fill halls.

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