Zelenskyy has 'good meeting' with Trump at White House as he seeks more cooperation with US

WASHINGTON — U.S.

President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met Tuesday ahead of Sen.

Lindsey Graham's funeral , with the two leaders discussing ways for Ukraine to produce its own powerful weapons and “other ideas that could help” in its ongoing war against Russia.

The sit-down in the Oval Office, which was closed to the media, followed a consequential meeting at the NATO summit earlier this month in Ankara, Turkey, where Trump announced that the U.S. will give Ukraine a license to make Patriot defense systems — a long-running request from Kyiv to counter Russian missile attacks.

Taken together, those meetings underscore how much the U.S. president, once a major skeptic of continued assistance to Kyiv, has warmed to Zelenskyy as Ukraine continues to withstand the Russian barrage more than four years after Moscow's invasion in 2022.

The Ukrainian leader, whose relationship with Trump in his second term was marked by a raucous White House visit in which he was denigrated for being ungracious, has worked to court the Republican administration while relyin ...