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Volodymyr Zelenskyy held talks with Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday amid growing confidence in Kyiv that the US president has become more supportive of Ukraine’s position.
The Ukrainian president’s advisers and a person close to the White House said the meeting offered Zelenskyy his best chance since Trump began his second term to secure fresh military backing and revive efforts to end Russia’s full-scale war.
After the talks, Zelenskyy posted on social media: “A good meeting with President Trump @POTUS at the Oval Office. Thank you for everything we do together to protect the lives of Ukrainians and advance peace.”
He added the two had “discussed licences for Patriot interceptor production and several other ideas”.
In a sign of how relations with Washington had improved, Zelenskyy said: “We also spoke about diplomacy . . . our teams will arrange the details of their further communication. I am grateful to the United States for its firm support.”
US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner have agreed to visit Kyiv for the first time as part of efforts to end the war, said people familiar with Tuesday’s discussions in the Oval Office.
The talks mark a sharp shift from the tensions that once defined the relationship, with Zelenskyy privately crediting months of direct adviser-level engagement for changing Trump’s view of the war and Ukraine’s prospects.
His challenge, people close to both presidents said, was to convince Trump that backing Ukraine served US interests and to appeal to the president’s desire to be associated with success, an argument that has gained traction in recent months.
Zelenskyy told the FT ahead of the Nato summit earlier this month that Trump had lauded Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign against Russia’s energy sector — the lifeblood of its war machine — saying it was “doing very well”.
Asked whether that would be enough to bring Trump firmly on to Ukraine’s side, Zelenskyy said he felt the American leader was now viewing the war in a new light.
“President Trump wants to be where there’s success,” Zelenskyy said. “That’s tied to many things — not only to his personality, but to the approaching elections, to his status, to his belief in how this war can be ended.”
Trump told Zelenskyy at the Nato summit in Ankara that the US would grant Ukraine a licence to produce Patriot surface-to-air interceptor missiles, agreeing to a significant request from Kyiv.
Zelenskyy’s most senior advisers told the FT that, for better or worse, he had always believed he was at his most persuasive with Trump when the two men were face to face.
Ukraine’s president has acknowledged how far relations have come since the disastrous Oval Office meeting in February 2025, crediting a brief encounter with Trump at Pope Francis’s funeral in St Peter’s Basilica on April 26 last year with helping to turn the relationship around.
Zelenskyy attended a memorial service for US senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch supporter of Ukraine who died suddenly on July 11, just hours after arriving back from Kyiv, his tenth visit to the country since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022.
After his meeting at the White House, Zelenskyy said he had “offered President Trump our condolences on the passing of Lindsey Graham”, adding that “he was a true friend of Ukraine”.
Some Republicans believe Graham’s death could nudge Trump closer to Kyiv’s side and help revive a bipartisan Russia sanctions bill that the late senator had championed in Congress.
Zelenskyy’s visit comes at a politically tricky moment for both leaders. The Ukrainian president is under growing pressure at home after a sweeping reshuffle of his government and top military ranks, including the replacement of his popular defence minister and controversial army chief.
The moves were intended to inject new momentum into Ukraine’s war effort but have also raised questions about Zelenskyy’s judgment, just as Ukrainian strikes on Russian targets have appeared to shift the battlefield narrative in Kyiv’s favour — and catch Trump’s attention.
The US president entered the talks balancing competing pressures within his own administration. He has become more critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intransigence and more receptive to Ukraine’s military gains, but parts of his “America First” base remain deeply sceptical of long-term support for Kyiv.
One unlikely marker of that shifting debate is Laura Loomer, the far-right activist who remains in regular contact with Trump. Once a vocal opponent of US military aid who echoed Kremlin narratives, Loomer has spent the past week in Kyiv, meeting Zelenskyy and senior officials, studying Ukraine’s history and witnessing Russian missile attacks first-hand.
Her visit was embraced by Zelenskyy, senior government figures and energy executives, with officials even unearthing the birth certificate of her paternal great-grandfather, Pinkus Loomer, born in Vinnytsia, west-central Ukraine, in 1895, in the hope that her conversion will impress Trump.
She now argues that influential figures on the American right have been taken in by Russian propaganda — a change Ukrainian officials hope could further reinforce Trump’s increasingly favourable view of Kyiv.
The effort may be working. After Loomer interviewed Zelenskyy, Trump shared the exchange on his social media site, calling it “Very good!!!”
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