How the Trump-Zelensky meeting became acrimonious over demands for territorial concessions

President Donald Trump’s working lunch with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday turned acrimonious when the U.S. leader insisted that Ukraine make territorial concessions to Russia to end the war, according to European officials briefed on the meeting.

Trump, who would later endorse freezing the current battle lines as part of a peace deal, became frustrated and raised his voice several times, the officials said.

The episode marks the latest chapter in the strained relationship between the two men and represents a new shift in Trump’s approach to how the war will be settled. Last month, after meeting with Zelensky in New York, Trump claimed that Ukraine might be able to reclaim all of its territory lost to Russia. But Trump is now preparing for another high-stakes meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, this time in Budapest.

It was after a phone call with the Russian leader on the eve of Zelensky’s meeting that Trump again insisted that kyiv must cede swaths of territory to end the conflict.

On Monday, Trump ignored this apparent change of heart.

“I never said they would win. I said they could win,” he said of Ukraine at the White House, where he was meeting the Australian prime minister. “Anything can happen. You know, war is a very strange thing. A lot of bad things happen. A lot of good things happen.”

He added that he still believed Ukraine could win, but he didn’t think it would.

Zelensky emerged from that meeting to brief European leaders about a call in which he sounded pessimistic about Trump’s position, European officials said.

A Ukrainian source separately described the White House meeting as “tense” but said there had been “no shouting,” downplaying reports of a volatile meeting between the two leaders. Overall, the source called the meeting constructive, as Trump ultimately declared that a ceasefire would apply along the current front line. Zelensky later endorsed the idea in remarks to journalists.

Asked about the European qualification of the meeting, the White House highlighted the comments made on Sunday by Trump on Air Force One. “We think what they should do is just stop at the lines where they are, the battle lines,” he said. “The rest is very difficult to negotiate if you say, ‘You take this, we take that.'”

For Trump, ending the war between Russia and Ukraine is now a top priority after brokering a truce between Israel and Hamas to end the conflict in Gaza. He stressed the need to end the war quickly during Friday’s negotiations, European officials said.

In his phone call with Trump the day before, Putin proposed a plan in which Ukraine would return the eastern Donbass region in exchange for parts of the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia under Russian control, the European official said.

The proposal, which officials called a slightly less radical demand than the one Putin raised during his August summit with Trump in Alaska, would nonetheless amount to a significant loss of territory for Ukraine.

Trump then managed to end the war along current battle lines.

Trump denied Sunday that he had asked Zelensky to concede the entire Donbas region, which Ukraine considers strategically important.

“It’s cut off right now, I think 78% of the territory is already occupied by Russia,” he said on Air Force One. “They should stop at the battle lines immediately. … Go home, stop killing people and get it over with.”

On Monday, Trump told reporters that he had asked Putin in their phone call to stop attacks on civilian areas, but then brought up the number of dead soldiers.

Several people familiar previously told CNN that last week’s Trump-Zelensky meeting was tense, frank and, at times, “uncomfortable” with the two leaders divided over the future of the war.

Trump made it clear to Zelensky in a “direct and honest” conversation that – for now – the Ukrainian leader would not receive the long-range missiles that could reach far into Russia that he was seeking. A U.S. official said Trump felt Ukraine was seeking to escalate and prolong the conflict and was concerned about potential losses during a harsh winter ahead.

According to European officials, Zelensky and his delegation came to the White House with maps showing the current battle lines, hoping to convince the U.S. president to maintain and expand American support. Trump seemed uninterested in the arguments and forcefully insisted that Ukraine accept land concessions to end the war, they said.

In a recorded interview last week, Trump said that to end the war, Putin was “going to take something, he gained some properties.”

Trump told his inner circle that his call for a ceasefire along the current battle lines was due to the “realities of where the conflict is,” arguing that there was too much devastation and too much killing, according to a U.S. official.

“Both parties must reach an agreement,” says another American. one official said, saying conditions would only get worse.

Zelensky called the meeting a “sharp conversation” in a social media post, but said its outcome “can really help end this war.”

This story has been updated with additional comments from President Donald Trump.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Kristen Holmes and Victoria Butenko contributed to this report.