{"id":22270,"date":"2026-07-29T07:44:06","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T07:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/22270\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T07:44:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T07:44:06","slug":"trump-meets-with-key-players-in-ukraine-iran-wars-but-offers-no-update-on-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/22270\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Meets With Key Players In Ukraine, Iran Wars, But Offers No Update On Progress"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 President Donald Trump<\/a> met Tuesday with key players in two wars \u2014 one of which he promised to stop by his first day back in office; the other he himself began on his own five months ago \u2014 but gave little indication of progress on ending either.<\/p>\n

Trump spent a little more than an hour each with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy<\/a>, whose country was invaded by Russia four years ago, and immediately afterward with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who along with Trump attacked Iran five months ago to the day.<\/p>\n

Neither meeting was open to the White House press corps, which Trump normally does to let him elaborate on his various views or publicly scold his guest, as he famously did to Zelenskyy 17 months ago.<\/p>\n

It was not immediately clear whether Zelenskyy presented Trump with evidence that Russia was helping Iran target US military bases in the Mideast, as Zelenskyy has said<\/a> is occurring. Trump has said in recent days that he trusted that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin would not do such a thing and that he did not believe it was happening.<\/p>\n

It was also unclear whether Netanyahu pushed his case for renewed attacks on suspected Iranian nuclear research sites based on purported Israeli intelligence. Trump on Tuesday morning expressed irritation that Netanyahu had released the information publicly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t need Bibi to tell me that. Bibi is telling me that because he wants me to stay involved,\u201d Trump told<\/a> Fox News. \u201cI heard Bibi announce that. I said, \u2018Why didn\u2019t you just tell it to me? Why do you have to announce it to the world?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The White House did not release specifics regarding either meeting, although press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement<\/a>: \u201cPresident Trump has concluded his meetings in the Oval Office with President Zelenskyy and Prime Minister Netanyahu. Both meetings were positive and productive!\u201d<\/p>\n

Zelenskyy posted photos from his meeting with Trump, including one with both men smiling as they posed. He included a statement thanking Trump and his anticipation of follow-up talks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president and I discussed licenses for Patriot interceptor production and several other ideas that could help. We also spoke about diplomacy \u2014 it\u2019s important that the diplomatic process be reinvigorated. Our teams will arrange the details of their further communication. I am grateful to the United States for its firm support,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

The relatively upbeat message follows a similarly optimistic meeting with Trump at the NATO summit in Turkey earlier this month. Both stand in contrast to the public humiliation Trump heaped on Zelenskyy soon after returning to office early last year when he told Zelenskyy that he lacked \u201cthe cards\u201d to negotiate a favorable end to the war.<\/p>\n

Trump has in recent months praised Zelenskyy for being able to turn the tide against Russia, even as Trump withdrew US military assistance, after Ukraine, with the help of allies in western Europe, built up a domestic defense industry centered around drones and cruise missiles. Russia\u2019s territorial advance has essentially stopped and Ukraine is now hitting Russian defense factories and oil infrastructure on a near-nightly basis, even as Putin continues his assaults on civilian targets, primarily with ballistic missiles.<\/p>\n

Ukraine does not yet have the ability to produce interceptors to stop that weapon and has been requesting help from the United States. Trump recently agreed to let Ukraine build Patriot interceptors for itself.<\/p>\n

While most US allies \u2014 who were never consulted prior to the start of Trump\u2019s air attacks on Iran on Feb. 28 \u2015 distanced themselves from Trump\u2019s war, Zelenskyy has been able to use it to his advantage by tying Russia to Iran. The latter country sold Putin<\/a> thousands of its Shahed drones that were used to attack Ukraine and later even helped Russia build its own Shahed factory. His allegation that Russia is now providing Iran with information it is using to target and kill American service members could drive a wedge between Trump and Putin.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s first conversation with Zelenskyy came in 2019 after the former comedian was elected and Trump tried to extort him into announcing an investigation into his 2020 opponent, Joe Biden. The episode led to Trump\u2019s first impeachment in late 2019.<\/p>\n

Trump, who had already long admired Putin, appeared to allow the incident to color his view of Zelenskyy and Ukraine going forward. When Putin first invaded his neighbor in 2022, Trump initially called it \u201cgenius\u201d and \u201csavvy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump even welcomed Putin to a summit last year, rolling out a red carpet for the accused war criminal on American soil in Alaska. While Trump claimed that he would pressure Putin to agree to a ceasefire, that did not happen. Instead, Russian officials have referred to \u201cAlaska agreements,\u201d although Trump and his aides have never acknowledged the existence of any.<\/p>\n

Listen to Commons People, <\/a>the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week\u2019s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what\u2019s going on at Westminster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 President Donald Trump met Tuesday with key players in two wars \u2014 one of which he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6654,43,42,26,152],"class_list":["post-22270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-donald-trump","tag-iran","tag-ukraine","tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}