A Trump-Zelensky meeting and another exercise in futility

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine met President Donald Trump for a brief 40 minutes on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York on Tuesday. According to reports, both looked optimistic and shared comments to that end.

“I hope we will end this war, and President Trump will help us end this war,” Zelensky said during the meeting. “I think we need to do this as quick as possible — before winter.”

According to the New York Times, “the U.S. president nodded and repeated his words with approval.”

But a closer look reveals that there was no breakthrough, just more suggestions that a face-to-face meeting between Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin might be on the horizon. Although both expressed a desire to see the war end, there is little evidence that it will.

Right now, all the big foreign policy tickets in town make Trump look like a failure. If he wants to roll into the midterms with a fighting chance of avoiding the loss of both chambers, then something has got to give.

While I believe his intentions to be sincere, he has failed to bring peace to Ukraine, despite saying he would do so within 24 hours. His war of choice in Iran has made the U.S. military look weak and left the global economy staggering towards a depression.

Moreover, the late Lindsey Graham bequeathed to him the hot potato of risking another tariff war against China and India just weeks before the midterms.

In the face of resistance from Zelensky and his European sponsors,Trump has been flailing when it comes to muscling through a peace deal for Ukraine. Indeed, in the teeth of rising diesel prices, he has begged Zelensky not to bomb Russian oil refineries. His entreaties have fallen on deaf ears. At the presser after their meeting, Zelensky suggested that the issue wasn’t discussed.

The Ukraine war is stuck in a retaliation loop in which Russia will always respond in kind to Ukraine’s attacks on its infrastructure.The only difference is that Russia has the strategic capabilities, specifically the economic weight, readily available energy, deep industrial base, and population size to continue slugging away for much longer than Ukraine.

Because of this, Ukraine’s energy infrastructure will once more get battered by massive strikes over the winter months. Hot on the heels of the September Yalta Economic Security Conference in Kyiv, Zelensky wants one thing: continued Western support – weapons and money — to keep fighting at least through to April 2026.

That is foolhardy in the extreme. Trump cannot will the U.S. defense industrial sector to produce more interceptors overnight. America has burned through 80% of its THAAD stock since the Iran war started, as well as two-thirds of its own Patriots.

While Trump touched on the idea of an energy ceasefire in his meeting with Zelensky, it is unlikely that Russia will get on board. Disrupting Muscovites’ access to gasoline is far less damaging politically than starving people in Ukrainian cities of heat and light. Why would Russia agree to give Zelensky some winter respite only for Ukraine to come out swinging again in the spring? Pause and reload has become predictable.

Moreover, Trump seems unable to extricate himself from the war against Iran. No matter the positive spin he puts on it, like in his remarks at the U.N. on Tuesday, the conflict in the Middle East is taking a new and more dangerous turn with the Houthis now occupying the east bank of the Bab al Mandeb. The U.S. Navy has a base on the opposing shore in Djibouti, but then so does China, its only foreign military outpost.

With the new sanctions bill, Trump can choose to sign a national security or he can re-impose tariffs of up to 100% on China and India, which would no more likely to succeed than in 2025. Such tariffs would, however, de facto impose an additional tax on ordinary Americans who have seen gasoline prices shoot up. This, on the basis of analysis from 2025 that up to 90% of the cost of tariffs imposed on Chinese exporters was passed on to U.S. consumers.

That leaves Trump with no good options, staring down the barrel of becoming a lame duck President in early November.

The cold truth is that Trump is deeply tied up in all of the foreign policies which have failed and he can no longer distance himself from them. For as much as he talks peace in Ukraine, the U.S. is still selling billions of dollars worth of weapons to the Ukrainians with European money to keep the fight going.

For his part, Zelensky has proven remarkably effective in shuttling around the world cajoling, brow beating, and occasionally shaming his interlocutors into providing the money and military materiel that Ukraine needs. Yet the truth is that no amount of support for Ukraine, four and a half years into this terrible war, will ever be enough.

I align myself with John Mearsheimer’s assessment that the Ukraine war will be settled by Russia on the battlefield. Zelensky seems incapable of accepting that Ukraine will eventually lose Donetsk, come what may.

For him, the end of the war likely means the end of his political career in Ukraine, at least for the foreseeable future. He is expected to lose a future Presidential election.

The next Ukrainian president in peacetime will face different, though no less formidable challenges than Zelensky has faced in wartime. Their country will be bankrupt and European sponsors may feel more coy about providing the level of financial assistance that they provide now. The demographic picture looks terrible in a country where around half of the adult population still in the country is a pensioner.

The Canadian move to explore Associate Membership of the EU in the future may offer a troubling harbinger of what may lay in store for Ukraine. Subsidy rich states like Poland and France will not be willing to share the European budget with new members, however much they suffered in war.

But these are Ukraine’s problems, not America’s. Zelensky showing up again and insisting that Ukraine really can win, with a few more weapons and a bit more money, is the last thing that Trump needs right now. The U.S. president needs a diplomatic success if he holds any hope of avoiding a shredding in the midterms. The Greenland deal won’t be enough. And Zelensky isn’t budging, perhaps because he sees that Trump may have even less leverage over him from November.