President Donald Trump is not holding back concerning several claims that he pressured Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian President to surrender part of his country to Russia during a heated White House meeting. On Sunday, he spoke to the reporters and simply denied the rumors surrounding these speculations. He said, “No, we never discussed it. We think that what they should do is just stop at the lines where they are, the battle lines,” dismissing all the claims concerning the talk of the US President urging Ukraine to give up the war-torn Donbas region to Moscow.
Earlier that day, several outlets, including the Financial Times, published reports suggesting that Trump had told Zelensky behind closed doors to “cede” the Donbas region, a move that would essentially mean bowing to Russian demands. The reports described a tense meeting in which Trump supposedly dismissed Ukraine’s maps of the battlefield, telling Zelensky, “This red line, I don’t even know where this is. I’ve never been there.”
On the contrary, Ukraine, handing over their land, which Donbas can definitely a hard no. The region, comes with important places of the country in the likes of Luhansk as well as Donetsk, and has been the central aim of the brutal conflict since Russia invaded in February 2022. As of August, Moscow controlled around 88 percent of the territory, according to Reuters. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly said that surrendering the east would expose the rest of the country to further Russian attacks. Meanwhile, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has reportedly made full control of Donbas a must-have condition for peace, a condition Kyiv refuses to accept.
Adding to the intrigue, Trump had just spoken with Putin on the phone one day before his sit-down with Zelensky. He later boasted on Truth Social that the call was “productive” and announced plans for a meeting in Budapest, Hungary, though no date has been set. The timing of all this raised eyebrows in Washington and abroad, fueling speculation that Trump might be leaning toward a softer stance with Moscow. In public, though, Trump’s tone has swung wildly. Just last month, after meeting Zelensky at the UN General Assembly, he sounded full of optimism, posting that Ukraine “is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.”
But by this weekend, he was singing a different tune. Speaking again to reporters, Trump called for an immediate end to the bloodshed. “They should stop right now at the battle lines,” he said. “Go home, stop killing people and be done.” He added that Donbas should “be cut up the way it is,” and that the two sides “can negotiate something later on.” Whether Trump’s change in tone signals a new peace push or just more political posturing remains to be seen. But one thing is clear, the former president wants the world to believe he never, ever told Zelensky to surrender a single inch of Ukraine to Vladimir Putin.
