Trump and Zelenskyy signal stronger ties after UN meeting: 'Better relations than before'

Fox News ^ | September 23, 2025 | Jasmine Baehr

[MinorityRepublican]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Fox News anchor Bret Baier in an exclusive interview with "Special Report" that his relationship with President Donald Trump has grown closer, with more frequent communication and stronger alignment on how to handle the ongoing war with Russia.

Asked directly by Baier if his ties with Trump had improved, Zelenskyy said, "I think we have better relations than before. It’s good that we have often [had] phone calls and meetings, and the fact that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin was lying to President Trump so many times also made a difference between us."

Zelenskyy also said the intelligence shared between Kyiv and Washington is now more closely aligned, which he described as important for making decisions on the battlefield.

During the program, Baier read part of a Truth Social message where Trump said Ukraine, with European and NATO backing, could win back all its territory. Zelenskyy admitted the outlook surprised him, but called it encouraging.

"President Trump was more positive in it, and he showed that he wants to support Ukraine to the very end," Zelenskyy said. "I was very positive about signals from the side that Trump and America will be with us to the end of the war."

Zelenskyy said Trump understands the need for stronger measures against Moscow. He called for pressure directly on Russia’s energy sector and banking system and said more sanctions are expected from the U.S.

[Sacajaweau]

Trump is playing “Z” royally. “Z” is soooo ignorant. He really think Russia is gonna give up that land??

[Sacajaweau]

“Z” heard what he wanted to hear. He didn’t hear Trump say...”I’m outa here”.

[ansel12]

Trump on NATO increasing readiness.

“BUT, YOU KNOW, WE’RE VERY
STRONG TOWARD NATO. NATO HAS
STEPPED UP. YOU KNOW, WHEN THEY
WENT FROM 2% TO 5%, THAT WAS
GREAT UNITY.”

[ansel12]

What Ukraine heard is that the weapons are on the way and use them anyway that you choose.

[McGruff]

At least he stopped playing the mediator farce. He went all in for Ukraine. Good luck with that.

[Kazan]

That sure as hell better not mean wasting anymore taxpayer money on Ukraine.

[nathanbedford]

On September 18 I published this reply that I believe explains Trump's apparent volte face in his newly expressed "support" for Ukraine. Trump is changing because he has learned that his initial assessment of Ukraine's chances were flatly wrong. His new apparent support for Ukraine is not to be trusted, it too will change with any new belief about events on the ground.

Here is that reply:

Drone warfare has brought the Ukraine war to its present state. The initial stage of drone warfare has merged into a battle of countermeasures but the stalemate effect remains largely intact. That is, the Russians are unable to make meaningful geographical progress even at the cost of high casualties.

Recently, Russia has curtailed somewhat its policy of sacrificing shockingly high casualties in futile attempts to break through. Now, it is attempting to penetrate with small units but these operate largely without support and without effective combined arms.

In the absence of any realistic likelihood of Russia breaking through strategically, it appears that Putin has shifted emphasis to bombings deep within Ukraine, including civilian targets.

It is here that the war of countermeasures proceeds. The countermeasures are an attempt to nullify the effect of drones that have enabled Ukrainians to wage asymmetrical warfare against a theoretically superior foe with astonishing success. Defensively, Ukrainians have been less successful in preventing drone penetration into their interior.

However, it is clear that the Russians have been equally unsuccessful in preventing Ukrainian drone strikes deep within Russian territory. It is here that relatively tiny Ukraine is waging asymmetrical warfare by attacking Russian oil refineries and pipeline staging facilities.

Colonel McGregor, Professor Meersheimer, and President Trump, have all maintained that Ukraine is doomed to lose this war because they clearly analyzed the odds according to the old conventional war game model without reference to the asymmetrical reality on the ground. So, when Donald Trump humiliated President Zelinski on international television in the Oval Office and told him that Zelinski "had no cards," events have proven President Trump wrong.

Since then, the Ukrainians have stopped the much vaunted Russian summer offense cold while extracting great losses. The idea, advanced by those noted above, holds that Russia's manpower resources are inexhaustible while Ukraine's are limited and near exhaustion. But attacks on refineries deep inside Russia suggests that the parties are not necessarily in a race to exhaust the others manpower limits, but in a race to bankrupt the foe, a race that in many respects favors Ukraine.

Russia's heavy dependence on oil exports to fund its war has been clearly affected by both sanctions and by Ukrainian missile attacks. The degree of damage to the Russian economy has been difficult to assess but the effects are clearly cumulative: the country is suffering from double-digit inflation, banks are failing, shelves are emptying, businesses are failing, gasoline shortages are appearing in the hinterlands and now, evidently, in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

The chances of Ukraine breaking through on the countermeasures war front are bright. It has recently demonstrated the effectiveness of its new 1-ton payload 1800-mile drone that threatens, if it can evade detection at its slow speed, to annihilate the Russian oil industry. Just today, Israel announced a new miracle anti-drone weapon that, if deployed by Ukraine, could effectively stop Russian drone warfare against civilians and military targets in the interior of Ukraine.

The idea that the war is lost, or inevitably will be lost, is rank propaganda by those who have seized upon a misshapen analysis of history to concoct a perverse policy that, in effect, and in intent, undermines Ukraine.

[one guy in new jersey]

thx nb

[ansel12]

We have always been on Ukraine’s side against our enemy Russia and now North Korea as it joins them on the battlefield, there was never any question about which side we and the rest of NATO are on.

[Salohcin]

That’s an excellent analysis.

[Chad_the_Impaler]

We need to quit having our foreign policy influenced by people who think a thousand dollars is a lot of money.

[Veto!]

Why do we need to take sides in this war? What has Ukraine ever done for us besides cost us billions of $?

Anti Russia doesn’t necessarily mean pro Zelenskyy, does it.?
Anti Put and anti Z makes perfect sense to me.

[DesertRhino]

Once upon a time....

[DesertRhino]

You just summed up the Republican party in a nutshell.

[USA-FRANCE]

NATO weapons are now flowing into Ukraine, with no restrictions and in large quantities. This is a game changer. Trump has been very Churchillian today.
Ukraine will never surrender because they are in their own country.
Russia though has everything to lose... 30% of their gas production eliminated by Ukraine in less than a month. The war inside Russia has only started. And winter is coming...

Advice to the Kremlin: Save your country! Retreat from Ukraine before your entire energy sector is destroyed.

Russia go home !

[ansel12]

It doesn’t matter who the president of Ukraine is, it never has and trying to make it seem like it matters is part of the Russian propaganda effort, and you can see the results in countless posts here by Putin’s people.

America and the rest of NATO exists to protect themselves from this Russian empire building, that is why we of course are a part of the opposition to Russia’s and North Korea’s European war, and so far it has been very effective in turning what was supposed to be a giant leap forward for Russia in returning to empire, into a strategic debacle for Putin.

[USA-FRANCE]

Why do we need to take sides in this war? What has Ukraine ever done for us besides cost us billions of $?

>>>>>>>>>><

Ukraine gave up 30% of the world’s nuclear missile arsenal to please America and make it feel safer. In Return America gave security assurances to protect Ukraine’s borders against Russia or any other enemy. It was signed by America in 1994 in the Budapest Memorandum.

Ukraine respected its side of the deal.
America is now respecting its side of the deal as well, by arming Ukraine to the teeth via NATO.

Excellent.

PS.
Ukraine also helped America with 6000 Ukrainian troops in Iraq and bled for America. Did you know that?

[KittyKares]

The U.S. has more than enough problems of its own to clean up — the Deep State, Antifa, Congresspeople who hate America, deporting criminal illegals, treating mentally ill trans people, rehabilitating drug addicted homeless, fixing election fraud, eliminating the national debt, and on and on. I am not interested in tossing money into the bottomless pit of Ukraine. All it does is convince other countries to get out of using the Dollar as the primary reserve currency.

[ansel12]

We can’t just abandon Israel.