Key events
In response to a question on whether he is concerned that Russian president Vladimir Putin is trying to buy himself more time, Donald Trump said:
“Yes I am but you know, I’ve been played all my life by the best of them, and I came out really well, so it’s possible, yeah, little time. It’s all right. But I think that I’m pretty good at this stuff.”
He added: “I think that he wants to make a deal. I made eight of them. I’m going to make a ninth. I think he wants to make a deal.”
Donald Trump said: “I am the mediator president,” adding: “I love solving wars.”
“I’m mediating not an easy situation.. It’s a lot easier when people understand each other, when they get together, when they like each other. We don’t necessarily have that situation,” he told reporters.
Trump went on to talk about his mediating efforts across various conflicts around the world.
“This is number nine. Okay, this will be number nine for me. I’ve solved eight, including the Middle East… I didn’t get a Nobel Prize…so I don’t care about all that stuff. I just care about saving lives. But this will be number nine,” he said.
Trump hesitant on sending Ukraine Tomahawk missiles Zelenskyy is pushing for
Donald Trump showed hesitance on supplying Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles, saying: “One of the reasons we want to get this war over is…that it’s not easy for us to give you … massive numbers of very powerful weapons … Hopefully they won’t need it. Hopefully we’ll be able to get the war over with without thinking about Tomahawks.”
He went on to add: “We’re going to be talking about tomahawks and would much rather have them not need Tomahawks. [We] would much rather have the war be over, to be honest. Because, you know, we’re in it to get the war over… We’re selling a lot of different types of weapons, as you know, to the European Union. We’re not in it for that. We’re in it to get it over.”
Donald Trump said that said that Melania Trump’s push to help return displaced Ukrainian children in the war was her own decision.
“She wanted to do it. She just felt very strongly about the children. And she’s done a really good job,” Trump said.
“She felt very strongly about the children. She thinks about the children all the time,” he added.
Last week, the first lady announced that Ukrainian children who were displaced had been reunited with their families, adding that their return came after she had an “open channel of communication” with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
In response to a question on what concessions Ukraine is willing to make in order to achieve peace with Russia, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said: “First of all, I think we need to sit and speak. The second point, we need ceasefire… As I said previously said, we are ready to speak in any kind of format, bilateral, trilateral, doesn’t matter.”
“NATO, for Ukrainians, is very important. Of course, it’s our decision, decisions of allies, to decide where we are, yes, but the most important thing…for people in Ukraine, which are under each day’s attacks, to have really strong security guarantees,” he added.
“Weapons is very important. Allies on our side is very important. And between us, for us, bilateral security guarantees between me and president Trump is very important,” Zelenskyy continued.
Trump talks of a lot of ‘bad blood’ between Putin and Zelenskyy
Donald Trump said that there is a lot of “bad blood” between Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyyy and Russian president Vladimir Putin.
‘These two leaders do not like each other, and we want to make it comfortable for everybody. So one way or the other we’ll be involved in threes, but it may be separated,” Trump said.
“Well, let’s see what happens. I mean, you know what? I think he will. I think that president Putin wants to end the war, or I wouldn’t be talking this way,” he added.
In response to a question from a pool reporter on whether he thinks he will be able to convince Russian president Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine, Donald Trump nodded in agreement.
Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy then proceeded to head indoors to the White House.
President Donald Trump, left, gestures as he greets Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House, Friday, Oct. 17, 2025, in Washington. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has just arrived at the White House.
He was greeted by Donald Trump who patted Zelenskyy on the back as they posed for cameras.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is scheduled to meet with US president Donald Trump shortly after 1pm EST.
In a less formal arrangement than the previous two meetings in the Oval Office, the pair are set to spend a working lunch in the Cabinet Room.
Zelenskyy will ask Donald Trump for Tomahawk missiles and aim to persuade Trump to shift from diplomacy and instead towards greater military pressure on Putin’s Russia.
The day so far
-
Volodymyr Zelenskyy will ask Donald Trump for Tomahawk missiles on Friday but the surprise announcement that the US president will meet with Vladimir Putin in Budapest appeared to dim the Ukrainian president’s chance of securing the long-range weapons. Trump announced the summit after a more than two-hour phone conversation with Putin about Russia’s war in Ukraine on Thursday, which he said was productive.
-
Hungary’s government has made clear it will not arrest Vladimir Putin, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, if he arrives in Budapest for peace talks. Speaking to state radio on Friday, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán hailed the fact his country would host the meeting.
-
The US is supportive of a new IMF lending programme for Ukraine and the European Union initiative to extend a loan to Kyiv based on Russian central bank assets immobilised in the west, European economic commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said on Friday. Dombrovskis, who is in charge of the 27-nation EU’s economic policy, met with US treasury secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday to discuss support for Ukraine.
-
Russia and the United States should build a ‘Putin-Trump’ rail tunnel under the Bering Strait to link their countries, unlock joint exploration of natural resources and “symbolise unity”, a Kremlin envoy has suggested. The proposal by Kirill Dmitriev, President Vladimir Putin’s investment envoy and head of Russia’s RDIF sovereign wealth fund, envisages a construction project costing $8 billion, funded by Moscow and “international partners”, to build a 70 mile (112 km) rail and cargo link in under eight years.
-
Fifteen members of a Ukrainian militia group were convicted by a Russian military court on Friday of taking part in “a terrorist organisation” and sentenced to between 15 and 21 years in a maximum security penal colony, Russia’s prosecutor general said. The men were members of Ukraine’s Aidar Battalion who were captured in 2022.
-
Russia said on Friday it had captured three villages in Ukraine’s eastern Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions, including areas Kyiv had retaken three years ago in a surprise counteroffensive. The Russian army said its forces had captured the villages of Pishchane and Tykhe in Kharkiv and Pryvillia in Dnipropetrovsk.
-
German foreign minister Johann Wadephul said on Friday the planned Budapest talks between US president Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin are a second attempt to get Putin to negotiate seriously, but stressed that Ukraine must be involved in any decision. Wadephul made the remarks during his visit to Ankara, where he met his Turkish counterpart.
-
Two Ukrainian men pleaded not guilty on Friday to plotting fires earlier this year at properties linked to UK prime minister Keir Starmer. Roman Lavrynovych and Petro Pochynok are accused of conspiracy to commit arson with intent to endanger life between April and May. They are charged along with Stanislav Carpiuc, a Ukraine-born Romanian national, who did not enter a plea.
-
Portugal’s parliament approved on Friday a bill to ban face veils used for “gender or religious motives” in most public spaces that was proposed by the far-right Chega party and effectively targets burqas and niqabs worn by Muslim women. Under the bill, proposed fines for wearing face veils in public would range between 200 euros and 4,000 euros.
-
Giorgia Meloni has condemned the boss of Italy’s biggest trade union after he referred to the prime minister as the “courtesan” of Donald Trump. Maurizio Landini, the leader of CGIL, which organised several pro-Palestinian protests before the Gaza ceasefire deal, made the remarks on TV on Tuesday, the day after world leaders, including Meloni, met in Egypt for a Middle East peace summit.
-
France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor has opened a formal probe into four men arrested by police on suspicion of plotting to attack an exiled Russian opposition figure, his office said on Friday. A prosecutor’s spokesperson declined to identify the Russian opponent allegedly targeted, though Biarritz-based Vladimir Osechkin, who is Russian, said on his Telegram account the plot was directed against him, Reuters reported.
-
France imposed a ban on cattle exports and events such as bullfighting, the agriculture ministry said on Friday as it tries to contain the highly contagious lumpy skin disease sweeping through farms in the country for the first time. Lumpy skin disease is a virus spread by insects that affects cattle and buffalo, causing blisters and reducing milk production.
-
German finance minister Lars Klingbeil and Bundesbank president Joachim Nagel have both backed chancellor Friedrich Merz’s call for a European stock exchange to support European companies and growth. Nagel, speaking on a panel with Klingbeil on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington on Friday, said it would send a strong signal in support of Europe as a business location.
-
A Polish court on Friday blocked the extradition to Germany of a Ukrainian man suspected of involvement in the 2022 attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines, a handover that Poland’s prime minister has said isn’t in his country’s interest. The 46-year-old suspect, who has been identified only as Volodymyr Z in line with local privacy rules, was arrested near Warsaw on 30 September on a German warrant.
Russia and the United States should build a ‘Putin-Trump’ rail tunnel under the Bering Strait to link their countries, unlock joint exploration of natural resources and “symbolise unity”, a Kremlin envoy has suggested.
The proposal by Kirill Dmitriev, president Vladimir Putin’s investment envoy and head of Russia’s RDIF sovereign wealth fund, envisages a construction project costing $8 billion, funded by Moscow and “international partners”, to build a 70 mile (112 km) rail and cargo link in under eight years.
Dmitriev, who has helped spearhead a Russian charm offensive designed to revive US-Russia ties, floated the idea late on Thursday after Putin spoke to US president Donald Trump by phone and agreed to meet in Budapest to seek a way to stop the war in Ukraine.
The US is supportive of a new IMF lending programme for Ukraine and the European Union initiative to extend a loan to Kyiv based on Russian central bank assets immobilised in the west, European economic commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said on Friday.
Dombrovskis, who is in charge of the 27-nation EU’s economic policy, met with US treasury secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday to discuss support for Ukraine.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings in Washington, Dombrovskis said the US had for now no clear position at this stage on whether to join the EU Reparations Loan project.
“There is now constructive engagement from the US side as regards questions related to Ukraine support,” Dombrovskis said.
“The US is broadly supportive and welcoming our initiative as regards reparation loan,” he added.
France imposed a ban on cattle exports and events such as bullfighting, the agriculture ministry said on Friday as it tries to contain the highly contagious lumpy skin disease sweeping through farms in the country for the first time.
Lumpy skin disease is a virus spread by insects that affects cattle and buffalo, causing blisters and reducing milk production. It does not pose a risk to humans but often leads to trade restrictions and severe economic losses.
The measures will take effect on 18 October and be valid until 4 November. They will be lifted on 5 November, if the health situation allows, the ministry said.
