Nothing personal between me and Trump, Zelensky tells CNN

By Christiane Amanpour, Ivana Kottasová, CNN

(CNN) — After a bitter rift with Donald Trump left many in Ukraine fearing that the US president had swung behind Russia again, President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the dispute head on: there’s nothing personal between me and Trump, he told CNN, but cozying up to Vladimir Putin would only “make him stronger.”

Ties between the US and Ukraine have badly deteriorated in recent weeks.

Zelensky said Trump was “on the wrong side of history” after he announced a deal to buy Russian fuel, upending international efforts to isolate Russia. Trump then waived some sanctions against Russia, drawing criticism even from his own party. Ukraine’s forces found their access to the Elon Musk-run Starlink service restricted.

Speaking to CNN from Kyiv on Thursday, Zelensky took a conciliatory tone, saying the tensions were “not about personalities” – but warned that Putin had no intention of stopping the war.

“My attitude to Putin is very clear. I think that if we lift sanctions, we will make him stronger. It’s not something personal between me and President Trump, and of course I’m against of any lifting of sanctions.”

Zelensky spoke to CNN amid a renewed diplomatic push from Trump’s envoys to find a resolution to the four-and-a-half-year conflict.

On Wednesday, US special envoy Steve Witkoff spent three hours talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg, controversially describing him as a “humanitarian” for his decision to release 74-year-old American prisoner Stephen Hubbard. Witkoff had met with Zelensky in Norway a day earlier.

Trump insisted on Wednesday that tightening sanctions on Russia would have meant Hubbard stayed imprisoned. “You could forget about him, you’d never see him again, he’d be back in jail for 25 years,” he said in response to a question from CNN’s Kaitlin Collins.

He added that tighter sanctions would imperil the chances of a deal over Ukraine: “When you’re close to a deal and you have delicate negotiations, you don’t put sanctions on.”

Putin ‘plays’ with lives

Zelensky said his meeting in Norway’s capital Oslo was productive, but that he wasn’t convinced of Putin’s commitment to peace. Following the visit from Witkoff Putin agreed to talks in November while giving few firm details.

“Putin is playing, you know, he is a player,” Zelensky said.

“It’s a pity because he plays with the lives of other people, and of course he doesn’t want (to stop the war). So what we want from our partners (is) not to give him a possibility to be stronger and break us.”

Trump said on Wednesday his administration is “the closest we’ve been” to settling the war in Ukraine – only for Russia to launch hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles against its neighbor overnight.

So far, Putin has also maintained his maximalist demands from Ukraine – including territory. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Wednesday that “the fight now is really concentrated on what happens in the remainder of Donbas,” the eastern Ukrainian region that is mostly under Russian control. He said “there’s been some creative ideas that have been put out there about how to resolve that difference.”

Freeze the front lines?

Speaking to CNN, Zelensky alluded to the possibility of freezing the current frontlines in order to “ceasefire, stop the killing, sit and speak.” However, he made it clear the idea of Ukraine giving up territory currently under its control to Russia is a non-starter, and Kyiv would never recognize occupied areas as part of Russia.

“Our land is very important because it’s about people. It’s not about kilometers,” he said. “A lot of people died defending this land, defending our independence, our country.”

“Nobody will recognize these territories, which are temporarily occupied, as Russian territories, and I think Russia understands it. It’s a pity if somebody doesn’t understand, but it’s up to them,” the Ukrainian president added.

There have been some signs of tensions easing after Kyiv accused the US of limiting intelligence sharing on incoming Russian missiles, slowing down vital Starlink services and delaying weapon supplies.

Zelensky said earlier this week that intelligence sharing has been restored, but he told CNN Starshield, SpaceX’s military-grade service is not yet fully restored.

But Ukraine’s critical shortage of interceptor missiles means that even though its military now gets a warning of an incoming Russian ballistic missile, it has nothing to shoot it down with.

Zelensky also told CNN Thursday that while Ukraine’s European allies have provided some air defense missiles to Ukraine, “it’s not enough to defend ourselves.”

Ukraine, Zelensky said, now mostly needs two things from its allies: “Not to lift sanctions from Putin … (and) to give us better missiles.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

CNN’s Zoe Cantley and Ben Kirby contributed to this report.