US President Donald Trump has said it is time for someone other than Volodymyr Zelensky to negotiate on Ukraine’s behalf, hardening a rift with Kyiv that has run through October.
Speaking to reporters outside the White House on October 19, Trump said the Ukrainian President did not know what he was talking about and should have settled the war long ago. “Maybe it’s time for Zelensky to get somebody else to negotiate,” he said.
He added that Zelensky was not helping matters and claimed a million more people would be alive had Kyiv followed his advice. He offered no evidence for the figure.
The quarrel began on October 9, when Trump announced a diesel-supply agreement that eased sanctions on Moscow in exchange for Russian fuel. Zelensky called the arrangement unfair and Trump said the next day that Ukraine needed a new president.
On October 12 the US President told reporters that Putin wanted a deal more than Zelensky did, as Kyiv reported fresh Russian strikes on its energy network.
Trump also said he would join a three-way meeting with Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, most likely in China. The agenda would be nuclear weapons and denuclearisation rather than the Ukraine War, he said, adding that Russia had been “fine on Ukraine”.
The Kremlin has floated such a meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen in November. Beijing has not said whether it would host one.
Asked whether he would discuss a settlement without Ukraine present, Trump said he would do anything to end the war, whether or not Kyiv was in the room.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said a Russia-China-US format would only encourage Putin to fight on, and that only a meeting including Ukraine could shorten the war.
Trump was also asked about the throttling of Starshield, the military version of Starlink, on Ukrainian drones and vehicles moving faster than about 160km/h. He said he did not know who had ordered it but would like to find out. Reuters reported on October 16, citing unnamed officials, that the instruction came from inside the White House.
The exchanges leave EU governments watching a negotiating track they do not sit on. Leaders met in Brussels on October 15 and 16 without new decisions on Ukrainian funding or on the €210 billion in immobilised Russian assets held mostly at Euroclear in Belgium.
The bloc has committed a €90 billion loan for 2026 and 2027, financed by joint borrowing. Draft summit conclusions recorded that less than €15 billion of the €45 billion earmarked for this year had been paid out, partly because Kyiv has yet to adopt anti-corruption and tax reforms Brussels requires.
