US president, shouting and swearing, pressures Zelensky to surrender the Donetsk region
An angry Donald Trump is said to have thrown aside Ukrainian battlefield maps and pressured Volodymyr Zelensky to give up territory Credit: AFP via Getty Images
Memphis Barker Senior Foreign Correspondent
19 October 2025 9:01pm BST
Donald Trump demanded that Ukraine submit to Vladimir Putin’s peace terms or face destruction in an angry meeting at the White House last week, it has emerged.
The US president, who spoke with his Russian counterpart shortly before hosting Volodymyr Zelensky, warned that Putin would “destroy” Ukraine unless a peace deal was in place.
Shouting and swearing, Mr Trump threw aside Ukrainian maps of the battlefield and pressured Mr Zelensky to surrender the Donetsk region to Russia.
Putin is demanding the withdrawal of Ukraine’s army from the crucial eastern territory as a precondition for peace.
However, the surrender of Donetsk is a red line for Ukraine, which has long refused to cede the territory, which Russia has failed to capture despite fighting since 2014.
Kyiv still holds about a quarter of Donetsk province. The land makes up part of the so-called “fortress belt”, a string of heavily defended towns that blocks Russia from making rapid westward advances towards the capital.
In the White House meeting, Mr Trump echoed Putin’s talking points, despite them contradicting his own recent assessment that Moscow was a “paper tiger”, European officials briefed on the meeting told the Financial Times.
The US president told Mr Zelensky he was losing the war and said: “If [Putin] wants, he will destroy you.”
Mr Trump is keen to secure another peace deal following the success of his intervention in the war between Israel and Hamas.
In recent months, he has swung between Russian and Ukrainian positions, often cooling on sanctions or further military pressure on Moscow after phone calls with Putin.
At the White House, Mr Zelensky held his ground and refused to cut a deal that would leave Ukraine badly exposed. But the Ukrainian president left in a bitter mood, dashed in his hopes that Mr Trump would authorise deliveries of long-range Tomahawk missiles.
On Saturday, Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, said the visit “had not gone as Zelensky hoped”.
On Sunday, Mr Zelensky told NBC News that “I don’t know the dialogue between President [Trump] and Putin,” adding only that he believed Tomahawks could pressurise Moscow into serious peace negotiations.
Asked whether Mr Trump needed to get tougher on Putin, following his decision to turn the screws on Israel and Hamas, Mr Zelensky said: “Yes… because Putin is something similar but more strong than Hamas. It’s more bigger war and he is the second [largest] army in the world.”
He denied that Russia was winning the war and said that Putin was after more than just a further tranche of territory, in remarks that appeared to reflect his discussion with Mr Trump.
‘This is not about territory for Putin’
Russia’s “army now [is] in a weak position,” he said, with 1.3 million Russian servicemen reportedly killed or wounded and just 1 per cent of Ukrainian land captured since near the start of the war.
“And really I don’t understand why the leader of the country which has the biggest territory in the world needs some more kilometres – that’s why I think that this war is not about the land and not about territory for him. It’s about our sovereignty and about our independence.”
Mr Trump is set to meet Putin in Budapestwithin the next fortnight in an attempt to make progress on a peace deal.
During their phone call, Putin told Mr Trump he was willing to cede small parts of the southern Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions under Russia’s control in exchange for the rest of the Donbas. Moscow has struggled to control the territory and made almost no progress on the southern frontline since 2022.
A European diplomat told the Washington Post that Ukraine would never accept such a deal. “It’s like selling them [Russia] their own leg in exchange for nothing,” they said.
On Sunday, Mr Zelensky said he told Mr Trump he was ready and willing to attend the Budapest summit, but cast doubt on whether Putin was seriously prepared to make peace.
Comment from :
Michael Isaacson
Putin is scum. No surrender.
Robin Wilcox
Unfortunately Ukraine are highly unlikely to win against Russia without a lot more support from other countries. Probably that means acrtual involvement in the war. No country wants to get involved. So it’s either take the deal or death by 1000 cuts and likely lose everything.
Alex Walker
It’s up to the EU, they want to hide behind Trump and let him do the dirty work.
Trump sees it as their war, not his, he also sees the uneven balance of weaponry and numbers. Russia wants to show the EU that they cannot continue to spread their influence and territorial ambitions into what Putin regards as Russia’s influence.
Poland, Hungary, Italy and others are all growing stronger than their sick EU parent. They are fed up with the war and the EU, they will not go to war for Ukraine.
In the big league Ukraine cannot win without a backer, but Russia can. Trump knows this from his intelligence operations.
The Art of the Deal is to know when to accept the best you can get….
Axel Antoni
The same people who celebrate Trump for his peace plan on here are the ones who despise Chamberlain and celebrate Churchill. Putin’s tyranny in Europe will not end until he is found dead in his bunker I am afraid.
Christopher Barr
Why is it crucial to Putin, it is Ukrainian territory? Putin is just planning to take Ukraine in as many phases as necessary. Putin is a psychopath. There is zero justification for Putin stealing Ukrainian territory, including Crimea!
Joe Williams
Reply to Christopher Barr
Where have you been all your life? Right from the start Russia said it would not have NATO and its nukes in its border. Just as the US wouldn’t accept Soviet nukes in Cuba. NATO nukes are an existential threat. A red line was crossed.
David R Crawford
Reply to Joe Williams
So what if Putin had a redline? Or a blue line? Or a purple line with yellow spots?
Putin himself enquired whether Russia could join NATO, so why can’t Ukraine think about it?
AND Finland has not been invaded.
Which means your post is quite simply regurgitated Putin Lies.
Toby Pateman
Maybe Trump could consider gifting Alaska to Russia if Russia leaves Ukraine. It’s in his gift and I’m sure Putin would be happy.
Deal, deal boom!
Grand Panjandrum
I’m under the impression that Mr Putin has some rather incriminating information or evidence that chairman Trump was not necessarily a gentleman in his past visits to Russia. A miss Olga or someone similar may be involved.
Kremtroll shit :
Thom Son
Donald Trump has said he will do whatever it takes to stop the dying. His proposal is unpolished but stark: President Zelensky must yield a small part of the Donetsk region to end the war. Land will always be land. But a land without people is nothing.
It’s easy to sneer at Trump as the “orange man,” to mock his ambitions or his talk of a Nobel Peace Prize. But for once, it’s worth pausing on the substance rather than the style. The simple fact is this: if he can bring an end to this war, even through an imperfect deal, he will save not just lives, but generations of lives yet to be born.
Let’s look at the arithmetic of tragedy
The Second World War extinguished tens of millions of young Europeans, When we project their lost descendants — their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren we find that Europe today would have roughly 145 million more people.
Europe’s “depopulation crisis” began not with falling birth rates, but with the wars that slaughtered its youth.
Now, history is repeating itself. Zelensky recently cited 1.1 million Russian dead, and Western analysts estimate 600 thousand Ukrainian. Take those numbers as they stand and project them forward: at Europe’s current fertility rate, that equates to another 8 to 13 million missing souls across the next few generations. Entire family lines, unbegun.
Ukraine and Russia are not strangers; they are cousins What they need now is not more artillery, but reconciliation, a process to mend what can still be saved. Yielding a few kilometres of earth may feel like loss, but it is nothing compared to the loss of another million lives and the millions more never to be born.
If Trump’s intervention can stop that cycle — whether for ego, legacy, or peace — then so be it.
Peter Johnstone
Reply to Thom Son
Too many words, Thom. Russia illegally and without provocation attacked and invaded Ukraine and needs to withdraw, apologize and make payment for reparations.
A Snashall
Reply to Thom Son
The sentiments are entirely plausible. Unfortunately rendered irrelevant by the fact that Putin has no intention of stopping, even if there is some sort of ceasefire he will use it to rebuild and start again.
Both in America and Russia you have leaders in each other’s pockets who don’t have Ukraine or Europe’s interests at heart.
David R Crawford
Reply to Thom Son
Why should Putin be rewarded for his brutal violence?
And it is clear give him land today and he goes for Kyiv soon enough. Appeasement never stops a sociopathic mass murderer
Alan Hogg
Very clear that Trump has been on Putin’s side from the beginning. When he said he would impose sactions if all EU countries stopped buying oil from Russia he knew full well that one or two countries simply could not do that as they had no other means of powering their countries. He is probably correct in saying Russia could destroy Ukraine as they have the missiles big enough to do that. NATO needs to realise that nobody can rely on America so long as this President is in post (and of course his militant sidekick), I think that the union between America and the rest of the West is broken forever, time to build an independent defence (and exclude Orban).
“In recent months, he has swung between Russian and Ukrainian positions, often cooling on sanctions or further military pressure on Moscow after phone calls with Putin.”
In reality Krasnov has a 40 year + link to ruZZia. His closest friends are the type of verminous putinoid scum that normal people would run a mile from :
Roger Stone and Paul Manafort.
1/ Krasnov’s desire to make putlerstan great again won’t go away.
2/ there is more than one putinaZi agent working in kremlin west.
3/ there is more than one putinaZi agent working in US media.
4/ more putinaZi agents are being activated in Poland.
5/ OrbanaZi works for putler.