WARSAW (Reuters) -Poland’s president will meet Donald Trump in Washington on Saturday, state news agency PAP reported, after he urged Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy to maintain calm and constructive cooperation with the U.S. leader.
Polish President Andrzej Duda’s visit comes amid a widening rift between Trump and Zelenskiy that has alarmed Kyiv’s European allies.
“I suggested to President Zelenskiy to remain committed to the course of calm and constructive cooperation with Donald Trump,” Duda wrote on the X social media platform.
“I have no doubt that President Trump is guided by a deep sense of responsibility for global stability and peace,” he added.
Duda, whose term in office expires in 2025, was one of Trump’s preferred international partners during his 2017-2021 presidency and they have described themselves as friends.
Trump described Zelenskiy as a “dictator” on Wednesday and warned he had to move quickly to secure peace with Russia or risk losing his country.
Zelenskiy responded by saying Trump was trapped in a Russian “disinformation bubble” but later toned down his statements and said he was hoping for American pragmatism.
He said on Friday he had a call with Duda to discuss the dialogue with the U.S. team led by Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg.
“It is important that the United States stand with us. A strong and lasting peace can only be achieved through unity,” Zelenskiy said on X.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski met U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington on Friday.
Asked after the meeting whether he understood Washington’s negotiating tactics regarding Ukraine, he said that was a question for the U.S. side but that he “got the impression that the United States was committed to lasting peace”.
He refused to comment on what Rubio had told him about talks with Russia in Saudi Arabia.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish and Yuliia Dysa;Editing by Helen Popper, Giles Elgood and Sandra Maler)
