Donald Trump is betting that personal diplomacy can do what four and a half years of war have not: force Russia and Ukraine to the table before winter.
Meeting Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the 81st UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, the U.S. president said both leaders want the war ended and predicted a deal is coming.
“We have a very good relationship going, the two of us,” Trump said. “The president and I are trying to figure out the solution, and I think it's going to happen. I really do; I believe it's going to happen.”
Asked about the terms, Trump declined detail: “Well, I think they're going to make a deal and I don't want to say what the deal is. We talk about it a lot, including with President Putin, and I think something's going to happen.”
Zelenskyy set the timeline: “I hope that we will end this war and President Trump will help us to end this war. And I think that we needed to do as quick as possible, before winter.” Trump nodded along: “Before winter. Big thing, before winter.”
The exchange, first reported by IANS, ANI and TRT World, underscores how central the coming winter has become to diplomacy. Russia is expected to launch its fourth strategic winter bombing campaign against Ukraine's power grid. Ukraine, facing Patriot interceptor shortages after a month of relentless ballistic attacks on Kyiv, wants a halt before temperatures drop.
Trump also claimed — disputed by Kyiv — that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to halt strikes on energy infrastructure, calling Zelenskyy's offer to stop drone attacks on Russian refineries in exchange for Russia sparing Ukrainian power stations “a real deal.” Ukrainian officials told the Kyiv Independent they were unaware of any such agreement.
Budanov: No peace without Washington
Kyrylo Budanov, Zelenskyy's chief of staff and Head of the Office of the President, has become Ukraine's lead negotiator and most candid voice on the talks.
In interviews this month with http://Censor.net, the New York Times and Ukrainian YouTube project Moseichuk+, Budanov argued Ukraine could only achieve an end to the war with active U.S. involvement, citing Washington's economic and military power as giving Kyiv real leverage.
“Given the influence of the US, we have a chance of achieving peace,” he said.
Budanov confirmed Ukraine is preparing for a new round of trilateral U.S.-Ukraine-Russia technical talks in October, following a visit to Kyiv by Trump's envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — their first to the Ukrainian capital after several trips to Moscow.
But he was blunt about Moscow's stance: Russia's actions do not indicate readiness to end the war. As someone “deeply involved in this process,” he said Russia is effectively saying “we might want to but no” to a ceasefire.
Kyiv continues to call for an immediate ceasefire along the current front line, without legal recognition of occupied territory. Moscow calls a freeze “impossible” and demands full Ukrainian withdrawal from Donbas — which Budanov called “in principle, impossible. Completely, without any variants.”
Budanov does not expect conditions for a ceasefire to emerge before spring 2027, even as technical talks on Black Sea shipping and reducing strikes on civilian infrastructure resume.
For Trump, the window is political as well as humanitarian: U.S. midterms are Nov 3, and envoys Witkoff and Kushner are seeking “substantial progress” before winter sets in. Whether Putin and Zelenskyy — two leaders Trump himself recently described as “two people that hate each other” — can be brought to agree remains the central unanswered question.