President Trump met with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Tuesday at the White House as tensions between the U.S. and Russia, which annexed a Ukrainian territory in 2014, continue to rise.
“It’s a great honor to be with President Poroshenko of the Ukraine, a place that we’ve all been very much involved in and we’ve been seeing it and everybody’s been reading about it,” Trump said ahead of his meeting with Poroshenko, which the White House described as a “drop-by.”
“And we’ve had some very, very good discussions. It’s going to continue throughout the day and I think a lot of progress has been made,” Trump added. “And it’s a great honor to have you, Mr. President.”
Trump’s Treasury Department issued a fresh round of sanctions on Russian and Russian-backed Ukrainian individuals on Tuesday before Poroshenko met extensively with Vice President Mike Pence and briefly with President Trump.
Russia warned the United States Monday that it would hit coalition aircraft and drones in western Syria in response to the downing of a Syrian warplane.
Critics accused Trump during the presidential race of arguing for policies that would be too soft on the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin for his treatment of Crimea, the Ukrainian territory his forces overtook during the Obama administration.
But Trump has not lifted sanctions imposed on Russia under his predecessor and has not yet scheduled an in-person meeting with Putin, although the two leaders have spoken on the phone since Inauguration Day.
Several of Trump’s associates are under investigation by the FBI and several congressional committees over allegations that the campaign colluded with Russians during the presidential race. No evidence has surfaced in the nearly year-long FBI investigation to suggest any such collusion took place.
