Trump suggests a Ukraine deal on Russia's war could be close while meeting with Zelenskyy

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met Tuesday with his U.S. counterpart, Donald Trump, on Tuesday and expressed hope that the White House can help end Russia's war on his country — even as attacks from both sides keep escalating.

"I hope that we will end this war, and President Trump will help us help us end this war," Zelenskyy said, joining Trump at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, where the Ukrainian president was meeting with world leaders.

That meeting occurred after Russian missiles and drones struck at least four Ukrainian regions overnight, strikes that officials said killed five people.

Zelenskyy also said that his country’s forces had damaged two more Russian oil refineries in their latest long-range strikes. The continuing exchange of aerial attacks, even as front-line positions remain largely unchanged.

Trump previously had called on Zelenskyy to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries and other infrastructure used to produce and distribute diesel, saying the attacks are contributing to global shortages and higher prices. The supply crunch has also been aggravated by reduced oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz following the outbreak of the Iran war.

Trump and Zelenskyy briefly addressed reporters before heading behind closed doors. The U.S. president was asked about the Ukrainian strikes and called them “a serious hit on the Russians, but also a serious hit on the price of diesel” which he noted had “gone up quite a bit."

Trump added that he and Zelenskyy would further discuss the matter privately.

While seeking reelection in 2024, Trump once argued that he could in virtually no time broker an end to Russia's war in Ukraine, which instead has carried on. Russia invaded Ukraine more than 4½ years ago. Still, Trump said Tuesday, “I think we’re going to make a deal" to quell the fighting.

“We talked about it a lot, including with President Putin,” Trump said of a possible agreement, meaning Russian leader Vladmir Putin. “And I think something’s going to happen.”

Putin is not scheduled to attend the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting this year. Asked about the possibility of Zelenskyy, Putin and Trump meeting during the upcoming G20 gathering in Florida in December, Trump was noncommittal.

Kyiv began targeting Russian refineries after Moscow repeatedly attacked Ukraine’s power grid. Zelenskyy says his country could halt them should Russia end its attacks on energy infrastructure.

The war, which Western officials say has killed more than 500,000 Russian troops, has had global repercussions. Western analysts estimate that Ukraine has recorded more than 500,000 military casualties, including up to 140,000 deaths.

Zelenskyy also wants help to ensure the flow of Ukrainian grain and other farm products to world markets through the Black Sea. Russian attacks on cargo vessels have severely disrupted Kyiv’s exports, hurting its economy and threatening global supplies.

Russia and Ukraine have in recent years accounted for around 30% of the world’s wheat exports and 12% of corn exports, most of it shipped through the Black Sea. But last month, attacks slashed both countries’ agricultural exports by two-thirds, Thomas de Waal of the Brussels-based think tank Carnegie Europe said in a report Tuesday.

“The lack of that grain in world markets puts several African countries at risk of famine, while world cereal prices, already pushed up by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, could rise even higher,” de Waal said.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday that France would provide Ukraine with additional radar systems to help protect its power grid.

Macron said in a social media post that he had discussed with Trump a possible truce between Moscow and Kyiv that would halt strikes on energy infrastructure, as well as a “moratorium” on attacks in the Black Sea.

Zelenskyy began his visit to New York by meeting with U.S. senators. He thanked them for what he described as strong bipartisan support for Ukraine and for backing a tougher sanctions bill against Russia that Trump signed into law.

Peace and security would be closer once the legislation was fully implemented, Zelenskyy said. He said on social media that he had briefed senators on de-escalation proposals he was discussing privately with Trump.

In Kyiv, Iryna Panina awoke around 2 a.m. on Tuesday as a jet-powered Russian drone approached her home. The blast shattered a window and left her apartment covered in debris.

Panina, 36, said she had lost hope in international efforts to secure peace.

“As an ordinary person just trying to live and survive each day, I find it hard to believe they fully understand what’s actually happening, how hard it is, and how much ordinary people are suffering,” she told The Associated Press.

Zelenskyy also planned to press Trump for more U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems, which Kyiv says it urgently needs to intercept Russian ballistic missiles.

Zelenskyy said that Ukrainian special forces struck the Kuibyshev oil refinery in Samara, southeast of Moscow, and another refinery in the neighboring Bashkortostan region in overnight attacks.

One person was killed and four others were wounded in the Samara attack, regional Gov. Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said. He said that “the enemy targeted industrial facilities,” but didn’t specify which ones.

The Russian Defense Ministry on Tuesday said that its forces downed 297 Ukrainian drones over 14 Russian regions overnight, as well as the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula.

Russia’s overnight attack on Ukraine included anti-ship missiles, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and more than 200 drones, Ukraine’s air force said.

The strikes killed four people in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, said Oleksandr Hanzha, head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration. A drone also killed a woman in the northern Sumy region, local police said.

The strikes across Ukrainian regions damaged homes, businesses and storage facilities, wounding at least five people, authorities said. Five people were wounded in the capital, Kyiv, according to officials.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday that its forces struck metallurgical and chemical industries, the fuel and energy sector, and the military-industrial complex, as well as port infrastructure facilities in four regions of Ukraine.

Barry Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal and Hanna Arhirova from Kyiv. AP reporters Volodymyr Yurchuk and Srdjan Nedeljkovic in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Will Weissert in Washington also contributed to this report.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Oleksii, a Ukrainian war veteran, clears broken glass inside an apartment building damaged by a Russian drone strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Oleksii, a Ukrainian war veteran, clears broken glass inside an apartment building damaged by a Russian drone strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Services on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026, a rescue worker put out a fire of a infrastructure facility damaged after a Russian strike on Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukraine. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Services on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026, a building is seen damaged after a Russian strike on Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Three-way talks between Russia, Ukraine and the United States opened Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, the head of Kyiv’s delegation said.

“We have moved to a trilateral negotiation format involving Ukraine, the United States and Russia” after initial Ukrainian discussions with NATO and European envoys, Rustem Umerov, the head of Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service, said on social media.

The U.S. is renewing a push to end the war between Moscow and Kyiv after three rounds of negotiations earlier this year. The conflict, Europe's biggest since World War II, began after Russia's all-out invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.

The two-day session in Abu Dhabi, the first such meeting since February, will focus on security guarantees.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, said on X that he and fellow envoy Steve Witkoff were working on a “negotiated solution that can deliver lasting peace and create the conditions for a sovereign, secure, and prosperous Ukraine within a more stable European security environment.”

Umerov said that the day began with a meeting between the Ukrainian team, the U.S. envoys and representatives from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, NATO and the European Commission.

“Next, we will move to a trilateral format involving Ukraine, the United States and Russia,” Umerov said in a social media post.

Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported Tuesday that the Russian delegation had arrived at the site of the talks.

The Russian and Ukrainian governments remain far apart on key elements of any prospective deal to end the full-scale war, now nearing its five-year mark.

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine to pull its troops back from Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — the four regions that Moscow illegally annexed in September 2022 but never fully captured. He also demands that Ukraine abandon its bid to join NATO, accept strict limits on its military and drop restrictions on the Russian language and the Moscow-affiliated Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

Putin wants a comprehensive peace deal on those conditions and won’t agree to a general halt in hostilities, arguing that it would only allow Ukrainian troops to rest and replenish their weapons stockpiles. He has warned that Russia will achieve its goals by force if Kyiv refuses to meet its conditions for peace.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was visiting Denmark on Tuesday, rejects Putin’s demands to voluntarily cede territory that Russia hasn't been able to take on the battlefield. Zelenskyy also rejects any limits on Ukraine's military or its arrangements with Western partners, which Kyiv sees as essential security guarantees to stop Moscow from invading again.

Ukraine argues that an immediate ceasefire is the necessary first step toward negotiating a wider settlement and says a direct meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy is the only way territorial issues can be settled.

The Russian and Ukrainian delegations include senior officials who have attended previous rounds of talks.

Russia’s chief negotiator is Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky, who has led Moscow’s team since the first direct peace talks with Ukraine in Istanbul in March 2022. The Russian delegation also includes deputy foreign ministers Sergei Ryabkov and Mikhail Galuzin, military intelligence chief Igor Kostyukov and deputy chief of the General Staff’s operational department, Yuri Zhigarlovsky.

Apart from Umerov, the Ukrainian delegation also reportedly includes Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov, his deputy, Sergiy Kyslytsya, and Davyd Arakhamia, the parliamentary faction leader of Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party.

Last week, Trump declared that some kind of grand deal about European security was in the works, describing it as “a big agreement” that is “going to involve more than Ukraine.”

Kushner said Monday on X that a “comprehensive and lasting settlement will also require direct engagement between Russia and our European partners on the broader security arrangements that affect them.” The discussions in Abu Dhabi will set the stage for “that engagement to begin in the near future, as part of a broader multilateral process,” he said.

Moscow has praised the broad approach.

“We can only welcome the (U.S.) negotiators on President Donald Trump’s request proposing to put the issue of collective security on top of the agenda of the talks on a Ukrainian settlement,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

Just before Moscow launched the all-out invasion in 2022, it demanded that NATO roll back its deployments in the alliance’s member countries in Central and Eastern Europe, seeing their presence as a security threat. Similar demands will likely be part of any comprehensive peace deal proposed by Russia.

Kushner said that before the start of the three-way talks, he and Witkoff will meet separately with envoys from Ukraine, the European Union, NATO, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy to “continue the close consultation and coordination we have undertaken on European security and Ukraine’s postwar future over the past several weeks.”

Some in the EU see Washington's proposals as too accommodating to Moscow.

Russia has objected to the Europeans’ involvement in the three-way talks, but said that EU representatives could join at a later stage.

While the ground battles have morphed into a war of attrition along the 1,200-kilometer (about 750-mile) front line, Russia and Ukraine have ramped up their long-range strikes with drones and missiles.

Russia has intensified its air campaign against Ukraine’s power grid, seeking to weaken the country’s resolve as winter sets in. Moscow has relied on ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones, taking advantage of Ukraine’s shortage of U.S.-made Patriot interceptors.

Ukraine, meanwhile, has escalated its drone strikes on Russian oil refineries.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, right, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attend a press conference in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, chairs the Security Council meeting in Moscow, Friday, Nov. 6, 2026. (Alexei Babushkin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

First lady Melania Trump speaks as Russia's Commissioner for Human Rights Yana Lantratova, from left, Ukraine's human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets, Davyd Arakhamia, lawmaker with President Zelenskyy's Servant of the People's party, and Russian Presidential Envoy Kirill Dmitriev listen during a meeting with Russian and Ukrainian representatives in the Grand Foyer of the White House, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Family members cry beside the coffins of police officers Dmytro Besedin, Mykhailo Buzhenko, Mykola Balanda and Mykhailo Romanov, killed in a Russian airstrike that destroyed an underground school, and Serhii Berezhko and Oleg Dubetskyi, killed in an FPV drone attack in Komyshuvakha, during a farewell ceremony on Khortytsia Island in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Crosses bearing the names of Viktor Fomenko, Natalia Karapetian and Andrii Anikin, killed in a Russian airstrike that destroyed an underground school in Komyshuvakha, lie in a cemetery in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)