&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "Melania Trump snubs Olena Zelenska at UNGA; ignores Ukrainian first lady’s plea for abducted children")
US President Donald Trump's wife, First Lady Melania Trump, as per reports, has rejected Ukrainian First Lady Olena Volodymyrivna Zelenska's request to meet at the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) despite repeated requests. This comes as the United Nations General Assembly's high-level week opened in New York on Tuesday (Sep 23) with about 150 world leaders in attendance. Despite that, on the sidelines, the expected meeting between US First Lady Melania Trump and Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska never took place, despite repeated requests from Kyiv.
What happened?
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's wife has reportedly reached out to Melania multiple times to set up a meeting, but the US first lady has decided against a sit-down, according to reports.
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According to the New York Post, Melania Trump’s senior adviser Marc Beckman said Zelenska had reached out “several times,” to arrange a bilateral meeting. “The truth is that Mrs. Zelenskaya has reached out to Melania several times to set up a meeting, but there's no bilateral meeting. There’s nothing formal,” Beckman said. “As our first lady is very polite, she’s going to say hello today, but there’s no sit-down, substantive conversation set, no meeting set,” he added.
Why did Zelenska want to meet Trump?
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The Ukrainian first lady had hoped to use the meeting to draw attention to the plight of children allegedly abducted by Russia during the war, an issue central to her international advocacy. On Tuesday, Zelenska told an audience in New York that at the current pace, it would take 50 years to return all the children taken to Russia, and said, “These children cannot await a lifetime”. So far, she said, only 1,625 have been brought back.
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While Melania Trump had earlier signalled openness to Ukrainian children's plight, on the UNGA sidelines, instead of meeting Zelenska, she hosted a reception for world leaders’ spouses. There, she unveiled a new coalition on children’s well-being and technology safety called “Fostering the Future Together.” The initiative, framed as a think tank-style effort, aims to promote education, innovation, and safeguards around AI, robotics and blockchain.
Trump’s brief four-minute appearance — in which she urged other first spouses to “safeguard healthy environments for our children” — ended without her greeting counterparts individually. Zelenska, who had been standing at the front of the room, was later seen waiting quietly near an elevator.
