Donald Trump has shifted his tone dramatically on Ukraine in meetings at the UN in New York, suggesting the country can win all of its territory back. He also has a crunch meeting with Arab leaders. Watch and follow live – and submit a question for our next Q&A using the form below.
Tuesday 23 September 2025 21:01, UK
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By David Blevins, US correspondent
When he’s in front of a microphone, it’s Donald Trump versus the world.
But even by his headline-grabbing standards, the last three days have been remarkable.
Every day has brought bold remarks on:
All reveal the extent to which he thrives on controversy.
At a memorial service for the assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the president departed from holy worship to launch an unholy attack.
“I hate my opponents,” he declared, just moments after Kirk’s widow Erika had publicly expressed forgiveness for her husband’s killer.
The president then turned the order of service into a list of his political achievements – talking crime, immigration, tariffs, and touting “one of the biggest announcements in medical history”.
The following day, he sensationally claimed to have “found an answer on autism”.
His assertion that the use of acetaminophen (marketed as Tylenol or Paracetamol) during pregnancy increases the risk of autism is highly contested.
There were countless jaw-dropping moments, from his inability to pronounce acetaminophen to his claim that Cuba has “virtually no autism” because people there can’t afford the drug.
In 2023, Cuba’s autism rate was around 83.3 per 10,000 children, slightly higher than the US rate of 80.9 in 10,000.
Then, today, the president went to the UN General Assembly to deride its effectiveness, dismiss climate change as a “con job” and telling members their countries were “going to hell”.
Taken together, these three episodes reveal an emboldened president – who’s feeling less constrained than ever.
His combative style energises his base, dominates the conversation, and shifts the Overton window – forcing debate on emotive issues like autism and climate change.
But it comes with risk. It deepens polarisation, risks credibility loss when the claims lack evidence, and leads to strain in international relations.
For his MAGA base, his loose tongue signals authenticity and defiance of elites; for critics, it signals recklessness.
Either way, his bold and brash approach is causing quite the stir, and we’re only nine months into his four-year term in the White House.
Donald Trump is ready to give Ukraine security guarantees after the war has finished, Volodymyr Zelenskyy says.
Our US correspondent Mark Stone then asks Ukraine’s president what they look like.
“We understand we don’t know all the details of a backstop today,” Zelenskyy says.
“We don’t have specific details but [it is] good that we will work on some types of it and some types of drones and some types of weapons that we need for security guarantees.
“It is good that our teams will work.”
As the news briefing wraps up, Stone asks Zelenskyy if Trump’s stance is a big shift.
“It is a big shift,” Zelenskyy replies, saying “this post of Trump is a big shift”.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy is now speaking to the media after his meeting with Donald Trump in New York.
“I think this is a very important moment, but I hope that president Trump will deal with this,” he says.
“And the European leaders, I think they will also have dialogue with the EU countries on this.”
As reporters shout their questions at Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president jokes that he now knows how it feels to be US president.
The first question is about whether Trump has a new understanding on the war, considering his notable change in tone today.
“Trump is a gamechanger by himself,” Zelenskyy tells reporters.
“I think that he is more closer now to this situation, there are not too many players in the world who can be game changers, but he is the closest to this.”
Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy is speaking to the media at the UN.
Watch live in the stream at the top of the page.
Next up for Donald Trump is a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in New York.
The US president is continuing with his newly found warm tone towards Ukraine, saying Russia should have stopped the war.
He says his relationship with Vladimir Putin, which he hoped would help end the war, unfortunately didn’t mean anything.
Speaking about his French counterpart, Trump says Macron is fighting hard for Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Macron tells reporters that peace is a common objective.
Turning to the war in Gaza, Trump says he expects his meeting with Middle East leaders this evening to be successful.
Macron adds that France’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state doesn’t mean forgetting the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023.
Qatar is one of the nations we expect to be meeting with Donald Trump in New York shortly.
Yesterday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump would be holding talks with representatives of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia and Pakistan.
Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani strongly condemned Israel in his speech at the UN General Assembly.
“Israel is not a democratic country surrounded by enemies, but in fact, it is an enemy to its surrounding neighbours, and it’s engaged in a genocide, and its leader is proud of preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state,” he said.
He also accused Netanyahu of “preventing peace”.
Israel attacked a site in Qatar’s capital Doha in an attempt to kill Hamas leaders earlier this month.
Donald Trump has posted on Truth Social after meeting Volodymyr Zelenskyy in New York.
The US president is taking his warm tone towards Ukraine over to social media, saying the country, with support from the EU, “is in a position to fight and win all of Ukraine back in its original form”.
Read his full post below:
At the UN earlier today, Donald Trump repeated his regular claim that he’s “solved” seven wars.
We asked our military analyst Michael Clarke to comment on the claim and he didnt hold back, starting his answer by saying “that’s not true”.
But Trump has had an impact on some conflicts, with Clarke saying his boasts are not entirely “without substance”.
That said, Gaza and Ukraine have got worse under Trump, Clarke argues.
Watch Clarke explain what he makes of the president’s claim to be a peacemaker in the video below…
More reaction from the Middle East to Donald Trump’s speech at the UN General Assembly now – after the US president said Hamas was the one rejecting ceasefire offers in Gaza.
“Hamas has never been an obstacle to reaching a ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip,” Hamas said in a statement.
“It has offered all the necessary flexibility and positivity to achieve this goal.”
Hamas points the finger at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, labelling him as the “sole obstructor of all attempts to reach an agreement”.
“We call on the US administration to uphold the values of justice and to intervene positively to compel the terrorist occupation government to halt its crimes of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced displacement against our Palestinian people, and to lift its political and military cover for this brutal war,” the Hamas statement added.
Israel, for its part, repeatedly reminds the world of Hamas’s terrorist atrocities on 7 October 2023, which killed around 1,200 Israelis and saw about 250 people taken hostage in Gaza.
The Gaza health ministry says at least 65,382 Palestinians have been killed in the war which followed those Hamas attacks, without saying how many were civilians or combatants.
The health ministry is part of the Hamas-run government. However, its figures are seen by the UN and many independent experts as the most reliable estimate of wartime casualties.
The ground offensive on Gaza City that Israel launched last week is “tantamount to ethnic cleansing”, the UN Human Rights office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory said in a statement earlier today.
UK Foreign Secretary has just been condemning the same offensive as “inhumane” and “utterly unjustifiable” at the UN Security Council (see previous post).
The Israeli approach was escalating from tactics deployed in recent weeks, the UN office said.
Israel has targeted civilians and homes, seeing the number of civilians killed “sharply increase”, the regional branch of the UN’s human rights department warned.
It pointed to reports that 51 Palestinians – likely “almost all” civilians – were killed last weekend in Gaza City, compared to eight who were killed the weekend before.
The methods appear to be “focused on causing a permanent demographic shift”, the UN Human Rights Office warned.
Israel had launched its controversial expanded ground operations in Gaza City on Wednesday, following last month’s announcement that it was planning to capture the previously most populous city in the occupied Gaza Strip.
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