By Rfe/rl

Copyright rferl

When Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets with US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Ukraine’s leader will be hoping for signs of support on at least two key issues: stronger sanctions against Russia and security guarantees in the event of a peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow.

In New York, Zelenskyy may have to compete for the attention of Trump, who has a busy schedule on September 23: He is addressing the UN General Assembly, meeting with Argentina’s Javier Milei, and holding multilateral talks with the leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan.Zelenskyy, who is to address the assembly on September 24, also is due to attend a UN Security Council session on the war in Ukraine on September 23 in addition to his meeting with Trump.Crucially, Zelenskyy will want to avoid two turns of events: the possibility that Trump might pressure him to make major concessions to Russia or lay a big portion of the blame on Ukraine for the lack of progress toward a peace pact more than 3 1/2 years since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The latter is what happened in February, when Trump called Zelenskyy a “dictator,” blamed him for the war, and berated him in a disastrous Oval Office meeting.With European leaders present, a Trump-Zelenskyy meeting in the same setting in August went much better. But it came after Trump met with Putin in Alaska and dropped his push for a cease-fire — a step Ukraine favors but Russia has rejected — and instead said the sides should aim for a peace deal.

The August meetings produced a glimmer of hope that movement toward peace might begin, with Trump speaking of possible one-on-one talks between Zelenskyy and Putin and a trilateral meeting in which he would advance the goal he set before taking office in January: ending the biggest war in Europe since 1945.But the Kremlin quickly threw cold water on the prospect of a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy in any location other than Moscow, which is unacceptable to Ukraine.

The past few weeks have brought no discernable progress toward peace and plenty of belligerence from Russia, which has pressed forward on the front lines, hit civilians in Ukraine with massive bombardments, and challenged NATO with drone and warplane incursions.

“Putin has shown no interest in a negotiated way out of the war, other than on his totally unrealistic terms,” Lawrence Freedman, an analyst and emeritus professor of war studies at Kings College London, wrote in a blog post published on September 23.While solid security guarantees backed by the United States are a must-have for Ukraine in the event of an agreement to end the war, the lack of progress toward peace makes the prospect of tougher US sanctions against Russia a more immediate issue for Kyiv.Trump has voiced growing frustration with Russia’s recalcitrance and has repeatedly said he might hit Moscow with new sanctions, including secondary measures that target countries and companies buying Russian energy or delivering technology it can use in the war against Ukraine, and bipartisan groups of US lawmakers have proposed sanctions legislation in Congress.Asked on September 7 whether ready to move to a “second phase” of sanctions, he answered, “Yeah, I am.” And on September 18, Trump said of Putin, “He’s really let me down.”On September 13, he conditioned the imposition of sanctions on similar actions by allies, saying he would be “ready to do major sanctions on Russia when all NATO nations have agreed, and started, to do the same thing, and when all NATO nations stop buying oil from Russia.” He said NATO nations should impose tariffs of 50-100 percent on Chinese imports.

So far, other than increasing tariffs on Indian imports by 25 percent over its purchases of Russian oil, Trump has refrained from slapping new punishments on Russia and the countries it trades with. At times, he has voiced concern that imposing new sanctions would hamper his efforts to bring Putin to the table.US Secretary of State Marco Rubio reiterated that stated concern in comments on September 15, suggesting that walking away or imposing new sanctions on Russia could further damage the prospects for peace.“If somehow [Trump] were to disengage from this or sanction Russia and say, ‘I’m done,’ then there’s no one left in the world that could possibly mediate the end,” Rubio said. “Now, maybe we get to that point. We hope not, because it’s a really bad war and he wants it to end.”