President Volodymyr Zelensky says he and Donald Trump will meet in New York this week on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, after a phone call the two leaders described as a step toward reviving peace efforts.
President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on September 20 that he and U.S. President Donald Trump have agreed to meet in New York this week, most likely on Tuesday, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. The announcement followed a phone call between the two leaders in which, Zelensky said, "we managed to discuss a lot." He described the planned meeting as one that "could change a lot," pointing to what he called renewed diplomatic momentum after months of stalled negotiations. Volunteers Support Ukraine welcomes any genuine step toward ending the suffering the war has caused for millions of Ukrainians.
The New York meeting is the latest step in a renewed U.S. push to broker an end to the war. It follows an earlier visit to Kyiv this month by Trump's special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — their first trip to the Ukrainian capital since the full-scale invasion began — where they held talks with Zelensky and European officials on a "winter package" covering air defense, protection of the energy grid, and access to American liquefied natural gas. Ukraine's chief negotiator, Rustem Umerov, has been coordinating with the White House team to arrange the New York meeting. Volunteers Support Ukraine tracks these diplomatic developments closely, since their outcome shapes what kind of humanitarian and material support Ukrainians will need in the months ahead.
Zelensky said the discussions with Trump's team now center on concrete measures: de-escalation steps, energy security for Ukrainian civilians heading into winter, food security, and the protection of civilian lives. Trump has separately pressed Kyiv to halt long-range strikes on Russian oil refineries, citing disruption to global fuel markets, while Zelensky has signaled conditional openness to that if Moscow reciprocates with guarantees not to target Ukraine's own energy infrastructure. Neither side has described a breakthrough as guaranteed, and Zelensky himself has cautioned in the past that the war could continue through the winter regardless of the talks' pace. Still, he called the peace track "our number one priority" heading into the New York meeting.
The meeting is expected to take place on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly's high-level week, which draws heads of state and government from around the world to the organization's New York headquarters every September. That setting gives both leaders the chance to meet without a dedicated bilateral trip, and it comes just days after Trump signed a sweeping new sanctions law targeting Russia's oil trade — a move Kyiv had lobbied for and welcomed as added leverage heading into the talks.
Diplomacy moves on its own timeline, and whatever comes out of the New York meeting, the needs of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers on the ground remain immediate. Volunteers Support Ukraine keeps supplying the aid it can — from equipment for defenders to support for displaced families — while following political developments closely, because understanding where the war is headed helps the organization decide where help is needed most.
