The Ukrainian president received a bipartisan hero’s welcome in Washington, contrasting with tense previous visits.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky promoted his country’s anti-drone technology to President Donald Trump while renewing his appeal for American air-defense missiles, angling to find common cause between his resistance to Russia’s invasion and Trump’s standoff with Iran.
Zelensky said in a White House meeting Tuesday that Ukraine had extensive expertise in destroying Iranian and Russian drones, he later told reporters — a skill-set of intense interest to Washington as it contends with drone warfare in Iran. Zelensky also said he asked Trump for help by providing U.S.-made Patriot air defense missiles to intercept Russian attacks.
“Ukraine really can produce everything, we can destroy everything from Iranian Shaheds and Russian drones and etcetera,” Zelensky told reporters at the Capitol before lawmakers voted on Russia sanctions. “[The] real problem is antiballistic systems and antiballistic missiles. And of course I shared what we need, our needs, shared it with the president today.”
Zelensky’s private and, by all accounts, productive meeting at the White House — followed by a hero’s welcome on Capitol Hill — contrasted with earlier visits to Trump’s Washington, which had been marked by involved tension and, for the Ukrainians, disappointment.
This time, Zelensky arrived in Washington with momentum. The Senate rallied to advance fresh sanctions against Russia as a tribute to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) on the day of his funeral at Washington National Cathedral. And influential pro-Trump blogger Laura Loomer, who last week reversed years of criticism during a days-long trip to Kyiv, publicly embraced Ukraine ahead of Zelensky’s visit.
As a next step, Trump’s special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner planned to make their first trip to the Ukrainian capital, according to a person familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plans aren’t public. The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Ukrainian leaders have long sought a visit by Witkoff, who has made multiple trips to meet President Vladimir Putin in Russia. They have felt he would better understand the toll of the war the Kremlin has waged against Ukraine if he came and saw the damage himself, as well as the nation’s efforts to rebuild and prevail.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called Trump’s meeting with Zelensky “positive and productive,” and a senior Ukrainian official called it “very practical.”
“We’ve hit a real tipping point between the apparently very healthy meeting Zelensky had with Trump today, the sentiment and goodwill that surrounds Senator Graham’s death and the extremely successful operations of Ukraine,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) said Tuesday.
Zelensky’s stock in the White House has also risen as Washington confronts an adversary with extensive experience in the same drone technology that Ukraine has had to fight for more than four-and-a-half years. Iran supplies Russia with Shahed drones, and many Russian-made drones are now built using the Iranian technology.
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Iran has used the same drones against U.S. targets in the Middle East, and against oil tankers trying to traverse the Strait of Hormuz. And Washington has contended with the same struggle as Ukraine: It is challenging to respond to a $20,000 drone with a $5 million air defense missile whose stockpiles are rapidly dwindling.
Zelensky’s “main message was, thank you for the help you’re giving us, we need interceptors and other kinds of military aid, and we deeply need the sanctions bill,” Blumenthal said after the meeting. “He described in great detail, the help that they are providing in drone technology, which has been instrumental in defending our bases in Iran.”
In recent months, Kyiv also struck deals with several Persian Gulf states to share its anti-drone and antimissile technology and expertise, as nations realize that the lessons Ukraine has learned from defending against Russia can help them defend against Iran.
Underscoring how the two conflicts are intermingling, Ukraine last week struck an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea that it said was transporting military equipment between Russia and Iran. Iranian officials said it was a commercial ship. Ukraine didn’t say which direction the ship was traveling.
The senators’ applause for Zelensky, as they took up a bill Graham had championed to impose new sanctions on Russia and its allies to help Ukraine, was audible to reporters outside the historic Mansfield room. The upper chamber then voted 86-12 to advance the measure as Zelensky watched from the gallery, sitting between Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) and Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi).
“It’s an overwhelming show of support from senators representing east and west and north and south across this great country, Democrat and Republican,” Wicker said.
Trump campaigned promising to end the Ukraine war before even taking office, and as a resolution eluded him for years he has swung between frustration with Zelensky and Putin. Trump’s relationship with Zelensky has been fraught ever since he pressured the newly elected Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Biden in 2019, leading to Trump’s first impeachment.
He and Vice President JD Vance upbraided Zelensky for ingratitude in an February 2025 Oval Office meeting, scuttling a proposed minerals deal and briefly interrupted military and intelligence support. Last December, Zelensky received a warmer reception at Mar-a-Lago but left without the Patriot missiles he sought. Both leaders spoke positively of their interaction at the NATO summit in Turkey earlier this month.
Loomer, who has said she paid for her own travel to Ukraine, met with Zelensky, toured damage and experienced air raid sirens. On Tuesday she posted from the frontline city of Kharkiv, where she met with a Ukrainian commander 30 kilometers from the front.
“I feel like such an asshole for minimizing the struggle of Ukrainians for the last 5 years,” she posted online last week. “We have been so propagandized by Russia and we don’t even realize it.”
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