U.S. envoys were expected to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Norway on Tuesday, as Kyiv scrambles to respond to an American pressure campaign that has been allied with moves aimed at courting the Kremlin.
President Donald Trump’s negotiators, son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff, have so far had little success finding a diplomatic solution to the war. Their latest meeting comes with Washington’s backing for Kyiv in doubt as Zelenskyy accused the U.S. of withdrawing support crucial to his country’s defense against Russia — a suggestion that Secretary of State Marco Rubio called “scandalous.”
Witkoff will be meeting with Zelenskyy in Oslo on Tuesday, with Kushner joining via videoconference, the Norwegian government said. Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and Finnish President Alexander Stubb will also join the talks, it added.
Officials from the U.S. and Ukraine had been expected to meet in Norway this week for another round of negotiations, sources familiar with the matter told NBC News, as a series of recent actions by Trump in favor of Russia left both Congress and U.S. allies questioning U.S. mediation efforts.
Trump has waived sanctions and agreed a diesel deal with Russia, in an apparent bid to lower fuel prices ahead of the Midterm elections. He called Monday for Zelenskyy to “get somebody else to negotiate,” his latest rebuke of the Ukrainian president.
Trump also appeared to downplay the impact of Russian attacks on Ukraine, a near-daily reality for the last 4 ½ years that have killed scores of civilians and flattened towns.
“Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine,” Trump told reporters. “They haven’t been doing much.”
It was the latest public sign of his shift away from Ukraine.
Kyiv said it had once again received no early warning from the U.S. before the capital came under attack by Russian ballistic missiles on Sunday, the third time in recent days.
In addition to the withholding of intelligence, Ukraine said it was still facing speed restrictions on Starshield, the military version of the SpaceX service, with no explanation from the American side.
“All of this suggests that some political decision has been made to slow down support for us,” Zelenskyy said Monday in a virtual address to a bipartisan Congressional delegation. He also said the U.S. was delaying the delivery of crucial ballistic missile interceptors.
Zelenskyy said early Tuesday he held “a substantive conversation” with Rubio, focusing on missile interceptors, early warnings of ballistic attacks and Starshield restrictions. He thanked Rubio and “everyone in America who supports fair approaches.”
Rubio told reporters later that he told Zelenskyy in the 45-minute call that nothing had changed in U.S. support for Ukraine.
“There’s nothing being deliberately denied to Ukraine,” he added, speaking at the start of a trip to India.
Ukrainian officials including Zelenskyy have made clear their accusation that the U.S. has imposed restrictions that have disrupted military operations and hampered its ability to intercept Russian missiles, making the attacks more deadly.
“That’s scandalous, that’s outrageous, that’s just simply not true. That’s not accurate,” Rubio said Tuesday.
Officials in the eastern Kharkiv region shared images Monday of a dead child in a stroller — a one-year-old girl they said was killed alongside her mother in a Russian attack on a public park in the region.
“The world has enough strength to stop the war. That strength must finally be used — against the murderers,” Zelenskyy said in a post decrying the strike.