Efforts underway for Zelenskyy-Trump meeting at UN next week

Ukrainian and American diplomatic teams are "actively" coordinating to secure a substantive meeting between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and President Donald Trump at next week's 81st United Nations General Assembly in New York, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi said. Zelenskyy's trip is expected to include numerous bilateral talks and meetings with U.S. legislators, business figures and the Ukrainian diaspora. The planned encounter would follow a July White House meeting between the two leaders and a notably tense Oval Office session in 2025 that ended abruptly amid criticism from U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance. Ukrainian officials are positioning the UN visit as a concentrated round of diplomacy to press Kyiv's case and seek international support. The visit comes as the human cost of the war has risen: a Russian drone strike on a bus in Nikopol killed at least five people and wounded seven, and the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission reported 1,396 civilians killed and 7,978 wounded in the first half of 2026, a 37% increase in civilian fatalities compared with the same period the previous year. Energy concerns are threaded through the diplomatic exchanges. The International Energy Agency has linked the Ukraine war, alongside tensions in the Middle East, to upward pressure on diesel prices. President Trump has publicly urged Zelenskyy to stop strikes on Russian diesel infrastructure, arguing those attacks are contributing to global fuel shortages, and Zelenskyy has said Ukraine would be willing to halt attacks on Russian territory if the United States could secure a Russian commitment not to target Ukrainian infrastructure.