US President Donald Trump is set to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky on the side-lines of the World Economic Forum on Thursday, he told an audience in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday.
Trump had earlier said that he would meet his Ukrainian counterpart on Wednesday – even telling the conference in Davos that Zelensky “might be in the audience.”
In fact, the president’s social media accounts showed that he was still in Kyiv, where he said roughly 4,000 buildings were without heat as of Wednesday morning. Zelensky had held a “special energy coordination call” with the prime minister and Ministry of Internal Affairs among other attendees to discuss ongoing blackouts across the country.
Shortly after the president’s office confirmed that Zelensky was not in Davos, Trump responded to a reporter’s question about the time and date of the meeting by saying “I believe it’s tomorrow,” as per AFP.
Before Christmas, the US president said on many occasions that he was committed to negotiating an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Since his abrupt deposal of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in early January, he has appeared more preoccupied with the US acquiring Greenland – a mineral-rich, Arctic, and autonomous territory of Denmark, his NATO ally.
Although discussion of Greenland (and the threat Trump’s demands pose to the international rule-based order) has dominated the agenda at Davos so far, Trump did have a few words to say about Ukraine – reiterating once again that he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelensky are close to a deal to end the fighting, as per AFP.
“I believe they’re at a point now where they can come together and get a deal done. And if they don’t, they’re stupid – that goes for both of them,” he said.
Also on Thursday, during Trump and Zelensky’s planned meeting in Davos, Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff is set to travel to Moscow at Putin’s request. Witkoff, like Trump, has repeatedly said he believes Putin wants peace in Ukraine – despite the Kremlin’s public unwillingness to engage with much of the contents of a US-backed peace plan.
Trump also repeated another of his frequent assertions about Russia’s war in Ukraine, which is that he is intervening despite it being “very far away” from the US – and suggesting that NATO and Ukraine’s European allies are insufficiently grateful for his efforts to resolve it in light of this.
“We have a big beautiful ocean separating us. We have nothing to do with it,” he said.
Zelensky once pushed back against this claim, during their infamous Feb. 28 meeting at the White House – causing Trump to become visibly angry.