Zelensky says ‘of course’ Ukraine trusts the US, hopes Trump will ‘change his decisions’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday said “of course” his country trusts the U.S. but hopes President Trump will “change his decisions” after greenlighting a diesel deal with Russia.

“Of course we trust America,” he told “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker on NBC News. “We trust bipartisan support and we trust President of the United States. We want to trust him and I hope that he will change his decisions because I think that it’s all mistakes and it will not help us and it will not help United States, I’m sure.”

He said he hopes Trump will “change his attitude to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” later telling Welker that he hopes Trump is an ally to Ukraine. Zelensky said it would be “very difficult” to win the war without U.S. support and that if the U.S. allies with Russia, Ukraine “will not prevail.”

“But if United States will support Putin, I mean, it’s unbelievable,” he said. “It’s tragedy. It’s historic mistake and big tragedy. That’s why I think I don’t want to live in illusions, but I think that we have to be pragmatic … That’s why we hope that [Trump], his team, will be on our side, minimum in the middle.”

Zelensky’s pushback to the diesel deal led Trump to bash the leader as “not a good guy for us to deal with” and said the war will likely end with a settlement and that it will end “soon.”

“I think they actually both would like to see it end, but I think I find Zelensky to be more difficult to deal with than Putin,” Trump said in an interview with Newsmax.

The Ukrainian president said his government was ready to negotiate for a peaceful end to the nearly five-year-long war with Russia since its invasion. He wrote on social media that he’s counting on the U.S. to put pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin, “not on us. Otherwise, it’s simply unfair.”

Top U.S. envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff traveled to Russia and Ukraine last month to meet with each country’s leader in hopes of jumpstarting talks to end the war. Trump last week announced an energy ceasefire amid both countries’ strikes on each other’s energy infrastructure , placing an even greater strain on global energy supplies already tightened amid the Iran war.

Zelensky said last week the energy ceasefire was “news for me” but accepted it before the diesel deal. On Thursday, he said the ceasefire was “done” and resumed drone attacks on Russian refineries.

The Ukrainian leader has said the U.S. was “working” to set up a trilateral meeting with Putin, potentially to be held at the Group of 20 summit in Miami in December. Nothing has been confirmed but Zelensky said the meeting could be held in Europe.

“I know that the Europeans are starting contacts about this,” Zelensky said on the social platform X on Saturday. “We’ll see how things turn out a little later.”