Analysis-Zelenskiy goes to Trump for more support as Ukraine war escalates

By Tom Balmforth and Dan Peleschuk

LONDON/KYIV (Reuters) -Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy meets Donald Trump on Friday to push for more military support at a time when Kyiv and Moscow are escalating the war with massive attacks on energy systems and NATO is struggling to respond to a spate of air incursions.

Since Trump's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in August failed to yield a breakthrough in the U.S. peace push, Kyiv has been hammering Russian oil refineries with drones while Russian strikes have caused major power outages across Ukraine.

NATO's eastern flank is also on edge after Poland and Estonia said Russia had violated their airspace with drones and jets last month, eliciting denials from Moscow. There have since been other drone incidents in Germany and Denmark.

A former senior Ukrainian official said Russia and Ukraine were both trying to ramp up pressure and improve their hands ahead of any new window for negotiations, and that they lacked the resources to keep up the current intensity for long.

"I think two (more) months is quite enough for this round of escalation," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Zelenskiy is expected, among other things, to press Trump for long-range U.S. Tomahawks that would put Moscow and other major Russian cities within range of missile fire from Ukraine.

Trump has said he could supply the weapons to Ukraine if Putin fails to come to the negotiating table.

Russia, meanwhile, is seeking to revive momentum in U.S.-Russian relations that has been lost since the Alaska summit by underlining shared values, while at the same time vowing a tough response to any U.S. action that might harm it.

POST-GAZA HOPES

Trump's rhetoric shifted in Ukraine's favour last month, after weeks of voicing frustration with Putin and the lack of Russian movement towards a peace deal.

Having previously suggested that Kyiv should give up land to cut a deal, Trump said that Kyiv's military was capable of expelling Moscow's forces from all its territory and mocked Russia as a paper tiger.

He also praised Ukrainians, in a striking change of tone just over half a year since he and Zelenskiy clashed publicly in the White House. Even so, many Ukrainians greeted the change in tone with a shrug and doubted it would be backed with action.

Since then, two officials told Reuters on Oct. 1 that the United States would provide intelligence for Ukrainian long-range attacks on Russian oil infrastructure.

A senior government official in Kyiv also said that Ukraine hoped the ceasefire in Gaza would reinvigorate Trump's peace push in Ukraine and train Trump's focus more closely on ending Russia's war.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser in Zelenskiy's office, said a delegation of senior Ukrainian officials was in Washington DC ahead of the Zelenskiy trip to present to U.S. officials a "strategy to raise the costs of war" for Russia.

"The tools are well known: cruise missiles, joint drone production, and strengthened air defences," he wrote on X. "We want peace, so we must project power deep into the heart of Russia."

Zelenskiy arrives in the United States on Thursday where he is expected to meet representatives from U.S. energy and defence companies, according to Ukrainian media.

'MEGA DEAL' 

Despite Trump's shifting stance, the U.S. president has not committed to new arms supplies to Ukraine, instead overseeing the creation of a new mechanism known as PURL that allows Washington's allies to purchase U.S. arms for supply to Ukraine.

At NATO's Brussels headquarters on Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sought to keep up the pressure on Moscow, warning of "costs on Russia for its continued aggression" and urging Kyiv's allies to increase purchases via PURL.

Trump and Zelenskiy could also discuss finalising a deal for Ukraine to share drone technology with the United States, one of several agreements aimed at giving Trump a bigger stake in Ukraine's survival.

The U.S. Tomahawks, Zelenskiy suggested this week, could be supplied to Ukraine as part of a "Mega Deal" that he floated late last month as a way for Ukraine to procure $90 billion of U.S. weapons.

The Ukrainian delegation in Washington met officials from Raytheon, which manufactures the Tomahawk, as well as Lockheed Martin Corp, Zelenskiy's top aide Andriy Yermak wrote on Telegram.

Sergiy Solodkyy, director of the New Europe Center think tank in Kyiv, said particular weapons like Tomahawk missiles are less important for Kyiv's defence than establishing a long-term plan with allies to keep Ukraine armed.

"The U.S., with its pauses in arms deliveries and changes in approach to supplying or selling weapons, had allowed Putin to dream about the fact that help was always just about to end," he said.

(Editing by Mike Collett-White)