Remarks Prior to a Meeting With President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine and an Exchange With Reporters in New York City

President Trump. Thank you very much, everybody. We appreciate it. And we've had an interesting day—I think, a very productive day.

And we're now meeting with—we're going to start a meeting with the President, who we all know very well, and he's a brave man. And he's putting up one hell of a fight. And we'll see how that all turns out.

But we're going to have a meeting, and we have about 30 meetings scheduled today. We have a lot of meetings scheduled today, going pretty late into the night. But this is an important one.

And we have great respect for the fight that Ukraine is putting up. It's pretty amazing, actually.

So, Mr. President, please.

President Zelenskyy. Thank you so much, Mr. President. First of all, thank you for this meeting. Thank you for your personal efforts to stop this war just now, Mr. President.

And I'm happy to say that just now, our First Ladies—First Ladies of Ukraine, First Ladies of the United States——

President Trump. Yes.

President Zelenskyy. ——just now will have meeting about Ukrainian children. Thank you for Melania's personal involvement to this topic.

President Trump. Thank you.

President Zelenskyy. And this is very important. I will brief Mr. President and his team what's going on on the battlefield. We have good—good news.

Of course, we want to stop the war and with your help—[inaudible]. And it's good that our soldiers occupied 360 kilometers this month.

And, of course, we will speak about how to finish the war and about security guarantees. A lot of work to discuss.

Thank you.

President Trump. Would you like to say how you are doing on the battlefield——

President Zelenskyy. Yes.

President Trump. ——while they're here?

President Zelenskyy. Yes, I——

President Trump. Please.

President Zelenskyy. Yes. Yes. It's a—we—thanks to our soldiers and to possibility—to PURL, the program with NATO countries, by the way, thanks to your support——

President Trump. Mm-hmm.

President Zelenskyy. ——they can buy weapon from the United States.

So our soldiers in these months, they occupied 360 kilometers, and they encircled 1,000 soldiers. And of course, we want to exchange, because we need our soldiers, in any case. But thanks to our soldiers, we have this possibility, this opportunity, and we'll continue until Russia will stop this war. And I hope that they will stop, in any case.

The—we know that the economy of Russia is not doing well with this—during this war. We need more pressure and more sanctions. And I hope with the United States, first of all, and Europe. But I—we support, Mr. President, your idea, and I want to discuss it—how to stop some countries from Europe—how to stop the possibility to buy Russian oil and gas.

President Trump. That's right.

President Zelenskyy. Yes. I had conversation, by the way, with the President of Slovakia.

Head of the Office of the President Andriy Yermak of Ukraine. Prime Minister.

President Zelenskyy. Prime Minister. Sorry. We had good conversation. I think that they need some alternative ways, and they will support this idea. I'm not sure that Hungarians are ready, but everything is in the future.

President Trump. Thank you very much.

President Zelenskyy. Thank you.

President Trump. Any questions, please?

Russia/Regional Military Activity

Q. Mr. President, do you think that NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft if they enter their airspace?

President Trump. Yes, I do.

President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin of Russia

Q. Mr. President, what—any update on your talks with President Putin? And do you still trust him?

President Trump. I'll let you know in about a month from now. Okay?

Q. President Trump, your message to——

Ukraine/U.S. Security Assistance

Q. Mr. President, are you willing to provide Ukraine with the security guarantees the same way as European allies do?

President Trump. Well, that's later down the road. We'll be talking about that. Hopefully, we'll be in a position to talk about that a little bit later on. It's a little bit too early to answer that question.

Q. Why do you think Mr. Putin is not——

President Trump. Yes, go ahead, please.

Q. ——willing to meet with both of you at the same time?

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary/Russian Oil and Gas Supply

Q. President Trump, your message to President [Prime Minister; White House correction] Orbán, who is refusing to stop buying Russian oil?

President Trump. Well, he's a friend of mine. I have not spoken to him, but I have a feeling if I did, he might stop, and I think I'll be doing that.

Russia/Ukraine

Q. What progress do you think has been made on ending Russia's war against Ukraine since the last time you saw President Zelenskyy?

President Trump. Well, the biggest progress is that the Russian economy is terrible right now. It's—as you know, it's crashing. And that, frankly, Ukraine is doing a very good job of stopping this very large army. It's pretty amazing.

You know, this is a war that should have ended in 3 days, 4 days. People said it was going to be very quick. And you've got to hand it to the Ukrainian soldiers and everybody involved. It's still going on.

And that's not a good thing for Russia. This was supposed to be quick. And so, you know, Russia doesn't look very distinguished, having taken 3½ years now, right?

President Zelenskyy. Yes. Yes, that's true.

President Trump. It's about 3½ years of very hard fighting, and it looks like it's not going to end for a long time.

Denmark/Russian Military Activity

Q. Mr. President—Mr. President, have you been briefed on the latest alleged drone incursion into Denmark? What do you think of that? And——

President Trump. Where? Where are they?

Q. Into Denmark—Copenhagen. Denmark is saying that there were some drones that shut down an airport, possibly Russian sabotage. What's your response to that? Will the U.S. have a material response to that?

President Trump. Well, I have no response until I find out exactly what happened. I know about it, but they haven't—they don't know what happened, but we're going to find out very soon.

Q. Sir——

North Atlantic Treaty Organization/Ukraine/U.S. Security Assistance

Q. Would you back up NATO allies? You said that you thought that they should shoot down the air—Russian aircraft. Would you back them up? Would the United States help them out in some way?

President Trump. Depends on the circumstance, but you know, we're very strong toward NATO. NATO stepped up. You know, when they went from 2 percent to 5 percent, that was great unity. Trillions of dollars is being pumped in, and they're paying us for the weapons that we send.

But that was a big day that—nobody thought a thing like that could happen. You had countries that weren't paying 2 percent, and now they're all paying 5 percent.

That's a lot of money. It's a lot of weapons they're buying, and they're buying them from us. They're buying them from the U.S.

You know, in the old days, Biden gave them everything. Gave them 350 billion dollars' worth of money and weapons. That's a lot of money and a lot of weapons. And we got really not much for it.

We gave the money to Ukraine to fight, and we've—they've proven they're very brave. I mean, look, they're fighting, and—this is a war going on 3½ years. And people thought it would be over quickly, because Russia is a big military power. And Ukraine—I'll tell you, they are good fighters. Got to hand it to—they have a lot of courage, a lot of guts.

Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.