CaliToday (21/10/2025): A Financial Times report alleges the US president adopted Putin’s 'verbatim' talking points, demanding Ukraine surrender the Donbas and physically dismissing battlefield maps.
While President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky exchanged cordial public remarks at a luncheon on Friday, that diplomatic façade reportedly shattered the moment the two leaders were behind closed doors.
A new report from the Financial Times on Sunday paints a picture of a volatile and aggressive confrontation. Citing people familiar with the matter, the report claims the private meeting "descended many times into a ‘shouting match,’ with Trump ‘cursing all the time.’"
At the heart of the conflict, Trump reportedly abandoned diplomatic norms and delivered a stark, threatening message: accept Russia’s terms for ending the war immediately, or face annihilation.
The report alleges Trump explicitly warned Zelensky that Russian leader Vladimir Putin "will destroy" Ukraine if a deal was not struck.
Echoing the Kremlin’s Line
According to European officials briefed on the fiery encounter, Trump appeared to be channeling talking points directly from the Kremlin. This followed a White House call Trump held with Putin just the day before.
"During Friday’s meeting, Trump appeared to have adopted many of Putin’s talking points verbatim, even when they contradicted his own recent statements about Russia’s weaknesses," the FT reported.
One European official with knowledge of the meeting detailed the stunning alignment. Trump allegedly told Zelensky that Putin himself had dismissed the invasion as a "'special operation, not even a war.'" He then reportedly turned on the Ukrainian leader, telling him directly that he was "losing the war."
The official said Trump issued a chilling warning to Zelensky: "If [Putin] wants it, he will destroy you."
A Demand for Surrender and a Dramatic Dismissal
The core of Trump’s alleged demand was for Ukraine to surrender the entire Donbas region to Russia. This was precisely the deal Putin had reportedly pushed in his phone call with Trump on Thursday. In that call, Putin had offered to forfeit "some small areas of the two southern frontline regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia" in exchange for Kyiv ceding the entirety of the Donbas.
When Ukrainian officials seemingly tried to counter Trump’s demands with the realities on the ground, the meeting reportedly reached a dramatic and dismissive climax.
"At one point in the meeting, the US president threw Ukraine’s maps of the battlefield to one side," an official familiar with the encounter said.
According to the official, Trump declared he was "sick" of seeing the map of Ukraine's frontline "again and again."
The Public Fallout
The alleged private explosion stands in stark contrast to the leaders' public persona. On Sunday, as details of the meeting emerged, President Zelensky released a diplomatic but firm statement. He emphasized that "decisive steps are needed from the United States, Europe, the G20 and G7 countries" to end the war—a clear call for more support, not surrender.
Trump, meanwhile, seemed to confirm his private assessment in a separate interview with Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo on Sunday. He publicly signaled that Ukraine would have to make territorial concessions.
"[Putin] is going to take something," Trump said. "I mean they fought — he has a lot of property…he’s won certain property."
Furthermore, Trump told Bartiromo he would not commit to sending the advanced Tomahawk missiles Zelensky has requested to bolster Ukraine’s defense, justifying the refusal by stating, "We need them for ourselves, too." This public refusal of critical aid adds weight to the private confrontation, suggesting a significant and hostile shift in the US stance on Ukraine's survival.
