Donald Trump held separate White House meetings with Volodymyr Zelensky and Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, as Washington struggled to accomplish its goal of ending the major conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.
The Ukrainian president and Israeli prime minister were both in Washington to attend the funeral of Republican senator Lindsey Graham, who died last month.
While details on the closed-door meetings remain sparse, Zelensky was expected to press Trump on his promise to grant Ukraine a licence to produce Patriot interceptor missiles to strengthen Kyiv’s air defences.
Ukraine has continuously requested Patriot air defence systems since the early months of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.
Speaking to reporters afterwards, the Ukrainian president confirmed that Trump had agreed to grant Ukraine licences to produce Patriot interceptor missiles domestically.
"He accepted that he will give us licences," Zelensky told Fox News. "I hope that we will do co-production."
The Patriot is one of the few air defence systems that is able to intercept ballistic missiles, which Russia has increasingly used to bombard Ukrainian cities.
The system can catch rockets with flight ranges of up to 1,000km (620 miles), where one battery can simultaneously track up to eight targets and detect more than a hundred.
But it comes with a hefty price tag — each missile for the Patriot is estimated to cost from $3m to $5m.
Zelensky and the Ukrainian army have previously insisted that Ukraine needs 25 Patriot interceptor systems.
For Zelensky, the licensing agreement comes at a critical time, where recent protests over his decision to oust popular defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, have seen his approval rating drop.
The Ukrainian president also met a bipartisan group of US lawmakers before the Senate voted overwhelmingly in favour of sanctions targeting buyers of Russian oil and gas.
He described the move as "a big signal to Europe, a big signal to Ukraine, a big support of our people".
In a post on Truth Social, the US president said that the meeting with Zelensky "went very well!"
Later in the day, Trump welcomed Netanyahu to the White House for talks expected to focus on Iran and broader regional security.
The meeting came at a sensitive moment in US-Israel relations. Despite continued US military and diplomatic support for Israel, Trump has also publicly criticised continued Israeli aggression in Lebanon, and what he has described as failures to uphold ceasefire agreements.
Afterwards, Trump posted on Truth Social that it had been "a very good meeting!"
Netanyahu told Israeli media the two leaders shared "an understanding of a shared goal, to ensure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons, and other goals as well".
He described the meeting as "one of the best conversations I have had with the president of the United States."
The back-to-back meetings highlight the competing crises facing the White House, as both conflicts fail to show any sign of easing.
Hours after Netanyahu's meeting with Trump, Iran targeted a US military base in Jordan, according to the US military.
Later in the evening, US and Saudi forces attacked Iranian proxies in eastern Iraq which had allegedly fired drones at Saudi energy infrastructure, according to the US military.
The events mark a re-eruption of the US-Iran conflict after Trump paused military operations against Iran in June.
