At 9:30 a.m. Washington time on Tuesday, Volodymyr Zelensky walked into the White House for what both sides have described as a pivotal meeting with Donald Trump. The timing could hardly be more charged: just hours earlier, more than 390 Ukrainian drones had struck the Moscow region overnight, causing damage to residential buildings and drawing condemnation from Russian authorities.

Kyiv's largest aerial assault on the Russian capital in months landed on the same morning its president was boarding a flight to seek American backing. The visit is Zelensky's latest attempt to rebuild a relationship that has been visibly bruised. In February 2025, the two leaders clashed in the Oval Office in front of rolling cameras — Trump accusing Zelensky of "gambling with World War Three" and of ingratitude. A subsequent meeting in Washington in October that year ended without Kyiv securing the Tomahawk cruise missiles it had requested.

Yet the atmosphere has shifted. At an encounter in Turkey earlier this month, Trump told Zelensky he had done an "amazing job," a striking change of tone from a president who had previously questioned the value of continued US support. What Zelensky wants from Tuesday's meeting is both symbolic and concrete. He has said publicly that he hopes Washington will "continue to support Ukraine" and that the two sides "can end this war with a dignified peace.

" Since returning to power in January 2025, Trump has largely halted direct US arms deliveries to Kyiv, replacing them with the PURL programme — a mechanism that lets European allies purchase American weapons and forward them to Ukraine. The US nevertheless remains central to Ukraine's war effort, supplying intelligence and the Starlink satellite network that keeps frontline units connected.