"How can we meet with a person who is pretending to be a leader?" Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told NBC News on Aug. 22.

The Kremlin has played down talk of an imminent summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky, as Donald Trump renewed his call for the two leaders to meet to discuss ending the war in Ukraine.

It was not the first time that the vice president had addressed Ukraine’s leader with words more commonly spoken to toddlers than heads of state.

The president is showing us yet again how a sober realism — not liberal internationalist fantasy — can yield results.

President Donald Trump made some false claims to the press while meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on Monday – including a long-debunked claim that the US has given Ukraine more than $300 billion in wartime aid.

Broadcast and cable networks went to special reports on Monday as Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke to journalists in the Oval Office in advance of talks of a peace deal to settle Ukraine ‘s war with Russia.

The Ukrainian leader's visit to the White House in February ended in a heated argument. Monday's meeting with President Trump was less fraught.

Ukrainian analysts watching their president’s return to the White House were braced for a “nightmare.” They took cautious encouragement from what they saw instead.