Trump to Hold Phone Call With Zelenskyy on Thursday

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump is set to speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy via phone on Thursday, a White House official confirmed to The Epoch Times.

The call comes as Trump’s two-week deadline for a bilateral meeting between Zelenskyy and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin nears, straining the president’s patience.

Trump told reporters on Sept. 3 that he has no message for Putin but hinted that new sanctions could be on the way.

“I have no message to President Putin. He knows where I stand,” Trump said during a meeting with Poland’s newly elected president, Karol Nawrocki, at the White House.

“And he’ll make a decision one way or the other. Whatever his decision is, we’ll either be happy about it or unhappy. And if we’re unhappy about it, you’ll see things happen,” he added.

Trump held a summit with Putin in Alaska on Aug. 15, followed by another meeting a few days later with Zelenskyy and several European leaders at the White House.

After these discussions, Trump said that he would give both sides two weeks to explore the possibility of holding a bilateral meeting and making progress toward a peace deal in Ukraine.

Speaking during a press conference in Beijing on Wednesday, Putin said he was ready to meet with Zelenskyy in Moscow.

“If a meeting in question is well-prepared and may potentially lead to positive results, we can have it, and I never turned this idea down,” Putin said.

“By the way, Donald [Trump] asked me, if possible, to hold such a meeting. I told him it was possible. After all, if Zelenskyy is ready, he can come to Moscow, and we will have such a meeting.”

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, however, rejected the idea of a meeting in Moscow.

“Putin continues to mess around with everyone by making knowingly unacceptable proposals,” he wrote on X on Wednesday in response.

During his meeting with Nawrocki, Trump said that he also plans to speak with the Russian president in the coming days.

The U.S. president rebutted claims that he has not taken any action against Moscow, citing the recent tariffs on India for buying sanctioned Russian oil.

“Would you say there was no action that cost hundreds of billions of dollars to Russia? You call that no action? And I haven’t done phase two yet or phase three,” Trump told a reporter.

Trump recently imposed an additional 25 percent tariff on imports from India, raising the total tariff rate to 50 percent, in response to New Delhi’s continued purchases of Russian oil.

China’s Military Parade

On Tuesday evening, Trump accused Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Putin, and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un of conspiring against the United States as they gathered for a military parade in Beijing marking the anniversary of China’s defeat of the Japanese in World War II.

“Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against the United States of America,” Trump wrote in a message to Xi on Truth Social.

When asked to clarify, Trump told reporters that he was not concerned about the three leaders gathering in Beijing, but said he would learn more about their relations with the United States within the next two weeks, without offering details on his plans.

“I understood the reason they were doing it, and they were hoping I was watching, and I was watching,” Trump said, referring to the military parade.

“My relationship with all of them is very good. We’re going to find out how good it is over the next week or two.”