Donald Trump has stated he will sit down with Volodymyr Zelenskyy after aggressively dissing the Ukrainian president during the campaign and questioning Ukraine’s capability of defeating Russia. The Republican candidate in the November 5 United States presidential election, Trump, said he would meet Zelensky in New York on Friday.

The statement was made only a few hours after Joe Biden announced over $8Bn in additional security aid to Kyiv and after Kamala Harris, Biden’s Democratic rival in November, met Zelensky and assured him of ‘unconditional’ support.

Trump has asked how much the United States contributes to Ukraine’s budget, and at a campaign rally this week, he said Ukraine should have made a deal with Russia when Russia started their big attack in February 2022.

Finally, on Thursday, he stood before the cameras repeating the same statements that he is capable of making the peace deal. “President Zelenskyy has asked to meet with me, and I will be meeting with him tomorrow morning at around 9:45 in Trump Tower,” said Trump in an interview with reporters in New York.

Laments the author, When a reporter asked Trump if Ukraine might have to surrender territory to reach a deal with Moscow – anathema to Kyiv – Trump did not refute it.“We’ll see what happens,” he said.

Before Trump’s statements, Harris promised Ukraine support and, referring to Trump, said that those who would like Ukraine to exchange territories for peace with Russia are promoting “surrender ideas”.

Harris’s seventh meeting with Zelenskyy was the third time this year when they both met at the White House. The two leaders have conversed only once since Trump’s departure from office in January 2021, on the phone in July this year.

Zelenskiy initially expected a meeting with Trump, and earlier in the week, things seemed like Trump was going to ignore Zelenskiy’s request.

Earlier, the Ukrainian leader declared that before the start of the annual session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, he planned to meet Biden, Harris, and Trump to present his plan for victory over Russia.

However, he enraged Trump’s campaign when he toured a munitions production facility at the weekend in the swing state of Pennsylvania with that state’s governor, Josh Shapiro, a Democrat and a Harris associate.

Even in the campaign, Trump has not stopped condemning the Ukrainian president. He said on Monday that Zelenskyy wanted Harris to win the election, and on Wednesday, he described the Eastern European nation as dead and demolished.

The Republican also seemed annoyed by Zelenskyy’s recent statement to The New Yorker magazine, in which Ukraine’s president said he thought Trump ‘does not really know how to stop the war’.When asked about those comments by a reporter at the news conference, Trump said, “The last thing I said was, ‘I do believe I disagree with him.’ He doesn’t know me.”