President Donald Trump’s dance card is filling up with local and world leaders for his U.N. visit this week — Zohran Mamdani and Volodymyr Zelenskyy are on it — but notably absent from the line-up so far is his main partner in the war against Iran.
Ahead of his speech to the U.N. General Assembly, the Republican president is scheduled to meet with Mamdani, New York City’s democratic socialist mayor, at Gracie Mansion on Monday, the mayor’s office and a White House official told MS NOW Sunday.
This will make their third meeting, but the first on Mamdani’s home turf. In their last meeting at the White House in February, Mamdani — whom Trump has alternately praised and ridiculed — was able to secure the release of a Columbia University student who had been detained by ICE earlier that day.
Beleaguered Ukrainian President Zelenskyy announced Sunday that he, too, will get a meeting with Trump this week.
He said in a post on X that he and Trump spoke Sunday afternoon. “An important conversation, and we got through a lot,” he said. “We agreed to meet in New York, and this meeting could change a lot.”
“There is diplomatic momentum,” Zelenskyy said, adding, “The peace track is our number one priority.” His comments came as Ukraine waged a massive drone attack against Moscow on the final day of Russia’s first wartime parliamentary election.
One major leader missing from Trump’s U.N. sidelines docket this week is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even as the conflict with Iran has significantly expanded throughout the Middle East.
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Zachary Wacker is an MS NOW desk associate based in New York, N.Y.