Zelensky and Netanyahu meet Trump as wars in Ukraine and Iran drag on

What the report says

BBC World News reported that US President Donald Trump held separate White House meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on 28 July 2026, with the White House characterising both discussions as “positive and productive.” The two leaders were in Washington for the funeral of Senator Lindsey Graham, who had been a prominent backer of Israel and US support for Ukraine.

Zelensky’s meeting focused on Ukraine’s push for stronger air defences as Russia continues drone and ballistic missile attacks. According to the BBC, Kyiv has been seeking US help to produce or obtain Patriot interceptor missiles, and Zelensky later told Fox News that Trump had agreed to provide licences for Ukrainian domestic production. The BBC said there was no official US confirmation of new military assistance and that it had asked the White House for comment. Zelensky also met US lawmakers before a Senate vote on sanctions targeting buyers of Russian oil and gas.

Netanyahu’s talks came amid strains in US-Israel relations over the war involving Iran and continuing regional strikes. After the meeting, Trump posted that it had been “a very good meeting,” while Netanyahu told Israeli media the two shared the objective of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The BBC also cited the US military as saying Iranian forces attempted an attack on American forces in the Middle East, with missiles intercepted, and that US and Saudi forces struck Iranian proxies in eastern Iraq. Tehran had not commented at the time of the report.

The meetings matter because they placed two major US foreign-policy crises before Trump on the same day, with Ukraine seeking long-term air-defence capacity and Israel looking for alignment with Washington during a widening confrontation with Iran.