President Donald Trump on Sunday shared some of the contents of his conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of Pope Francis’ funeral in Rome.
“I think the meeting went well. We’ll see what happens over the next few days, we’ll probably learn a lot,” Trump told reporters.
The two men spoke one-on-one on Saturday inside St. Peter’s Basilica for the first time since their tense Oval Office exchange in late February, during which Trump accused the wartime leader of “gambling with World War III.”
Asked if he believes their relationship has improved since that historic clash, Trump replied: “I think so.”
“We had a little dispute because I disagreed with something he said, and the cameras were rolling, and that was OK with me,” Trump said.
Zelenskyy now appears “calmer,” according to Trump.
“I think he understands the picture, and I think he wants to make a deal,” he said.
Trump said one of the things Zelenskyy asked him for during the chat was additional arms.
“He told me that he needs more weapons, but he’s been saying that for three years,” Trump said. “I want to see what happens with respect to Russia.”
Since his meeting with Zelenskyy, the president seems to have adopted a harsher tone against Russia.
Trump said he was “surprised and disappointed” that Moscow launched major attacks on Ukraine amid talks with the U.S., including its biggest assault on Kyiv since last summer, adding that he still plans to talk to Putin again.
“Well, I want him to stop shooting, sit down and sign a deal,” he said of Putin. “We have the confines of a deal, I believe, and I want him to sign it and be done with it and just go back to life.”
Earlier this weekend, Trump said Russia’s attacks on Ukraine perhaps showed that Putin may not actually be serious about being ready to make peace.
“It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through ‘Banking’ or ‘Secondary Sanctions?’” Trump warned in a post on his Truth Social platform.
Still, Trump claimed that Ukraine has already agreed to offer Russia a major concession by ceding control of Crimea, even though Zelenskyy publicly said last week he has no plans to give up the peninsula that was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday reiterated that the U.S. wants to see a deal happen sooner rather than later.
“This week is going to be a really important week in which we have to make a determination about whether this is an endeavor that we want to continue to be involved in, or if it’s time to sort of focus on some other issues that are equally, if not more, important in some cases, but we want to see it happen,” he told NBC’s “Meet The Press.”
“There are reasons to be optimistic, but there are reasons to be realistic, of course, as well. We’re close, but we’re not close enough” on a deal, Rubio added.