A renewed attempt by US President Donald Trump to end the Russo-Ukrainian War by pressuring Kyiv to accept territorial concessions dominated Ukrainian news media on Monday, with the US leader’s diplomatic efforts widely described as biased in favor of the Kremlin and Trump counterpart Vladimir Putin.

The mainstream Ukrainska Pravda newspaper, a nationally-read independent publication, summed up the results of Friday talks between Zelensky and Trump: “[T]he meeting was a disappointment for the Ukrainian side. Zelensky expected to convince the American leader to provide Kyiv with long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles capable of hitting targets deep inside Russian territory.”

“[T]he conversation was far from diplomatic… Trump’s message amounted to ‘your country will freeze and your country will be destroyed…’ if Ukraine didn’t make a deal with Russia,” Ukrainska Pravda (Ukrainian: Українська Правда = Ukrainian Truth) reported on Monday, in an article typical of major Ukrainian media reaction to the US-Ukraine talks.

Practically all Ukrainian news media, both legacy and social, gave major play to a Sunday Financial Times article reporting that the White House escalated into a “shouting match” in which Trump was “cursing all the time” and “swearing.” The US leader reportedly repeated a longstanding Kremlin threat to Ukraine that, “If he [Russian leader Vladimir Putin] wants it, he will destroy you.”

Reportedly, while lecturing Zelensky, Trump dismissed accurate and independently-confirmed Ukrainian claims, including by Kyiv Post reporting, that the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) in more than three years of war fought Russian assaults to a stalemate and were inflicting debilitating casualties.

The Financial Times account of a furious Trump angrily sweeping a Ukrainian map of frontline positions off a table, rather than look at it and consider the possibility AFU had stopped the Russian ground forces cold, was widely repeated across mainstream Ukrainian news reports on Monday. Some articles pointed out that when Russian invaded Ukraine in 2022 the White House told Zelensky Ukraine was doomed to defeat.

News articles detailing Trump’s attack on Zelensky, his administration’s hostility to Ukraine, and White House intent to partition Ukraine in favor of Russia competed with and sometimes pushed to typical top news like reports on Russian drone strikes against Ukrainian cities, and battle reports from the front.

“Trump Demanded Zelensky Give Donbas to Putin, Otherwise He Would ‘Destroy’ Ukraine,” headlined the authoritative news magazine Dzerkalo Tizhnya (Ukrainian: Дзеркало тижня = Weekly Mirror), Ukraine’s most widely-read weekly news magazine. The publication’s news reporting is generally neutral, but often critical of public officials seen by the magazine to be doing their job badly.

“Zelensky left disappointed after Trump refused to give Ukraine Tomahawks. It is worth noting Trump’s repetition of Putin’s rhetoric during the meeting destroyed the hopes of many of Ukraine’s European allies that he (Trump) could be persuaded to increase support for Kyiv…this acrimonious meeting reflected Trump’s fickle stance on the war and his willingness to support Putin’s maximalist demands,” an analytical Sunday piece said.

“[T]he meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky repeatedly turned into a ‘shouting match’…The US president allegedly…lost control of himself and swore… Trump interrupted the Ukrainian leader (and) insisted that Ukraine cede the entire territory of the Donetsk region, and repeated Putin’s talking points,” a report from the mainstream TSN television news channel reported on Monday.

The leading Ukrainian web news platform Censor.net in Monday focused on Zelensky comments made on Friday suggesting Trump special envoy to Moscow, Steve Witkoff, in talks with Ukrainian officials was repeating Kremlin talking points verbatim, and that Witkoff seemed convinced that Ukrainian citizens who happen to speak the Russian language are happy to have their towns and cities captured and occupied by the Russian Armed Forces.

Witkoff’s alleged pro-Moscow bias was headlined. “Witkoff did indeed speak about abandoning the Donetsk region. The US is misinterpreting Russia’s signals,” Censor.net reported. The article went on to trash Witkoff’s alleged argument Ukraine should hand over territory to Russia because Russia had changed its constitution to make the land part of Russia, by repeating the Zelensky point that by that logic Ukraine could amend its own constitution to make pieces of Russia part of Ukraine.

A top story by the publicly-financed and independent Hromadske news agency on Monday morning covered Witkoff’s alleged foreign policy fumbling in detail, repeating most of Zelensky’s comments detailing the New York real estate billionaire’s – according to the Ukrainian leader – limited knowledge of Russia, Ukraine and the region.

Ukrainian media on Monday widely reported Sunday comments by Polish President Donald Tusk that “no one should pressure Zelensky to make territorial concessions.” Also prominent were articles about German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Saturday statement that Europe must step in to help Ukraine with weaponry, because Trump had refused to arm Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles.

The web news site LB.UA (Left Bank), a platform with 300,000+ readership mostly of professionals and government workers, led off its Monday news with a report on the General Staff past 24 hours estimate of Russian combat losses (890 men, 45 artillery systems, tanks and fuel trucks), a Russian drone attack in the Kharkiv region hospitalizing a family of four.

LB.UA informed its readers:“Donald Trump… said that his country also needs these missiles. Before that, he was more open [to transferring Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine] but the [Trump] rhetoric changed after a phone call from Vladimir Putin and the announcement of a meeting with him [Putin] in Budapest,”

The nationally-aired independent Channel 5 television channel reported to viewers on Monday: “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Putin was frightened by the possible delivery of American Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine.

“The day before this meeting, on October 16, Trump spoke with Putin by phone. After that conversation Trump announced that a [new] summit between the American president and the Russian dictator could take place in two weeks – this time in Budapest.”

Trump in a Friday post on his TruthSocial platform said the meeting Zelensky had been “frank and cordial…(and)…interesting,” and on Sunday in comments to reporters aboard Air Force One said he never suggested Ukraine cede territory to Russia.

Other Hromadske articles published in the early hours of the Monday news cycle articles detailed European plans possibly to allow Ukraine into the EU without extending full voting rights, renewed Russian drone strikes hitting rail infrastructure in the northern Sumy and Chernihiv regions, and the Sunday accidental shelling of US Vice President J.D. Vance’s motorcade by US Marine Corps artillery.