A week of mixed results for Volodymyr Zelensky

While there, he yet again called for an end to Russia's war on his country, but also met US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the assembly to secure production licences for US Patriot air defence systems for Ukraine.

The Ukrainian president has asked the Trump administration for Patriot licences since last May and in July it looked like Mr Trump would grant that request. But it did not come to pass.

Mr Zelensky said that Mr Trump had, during their meeting on Tuesday, told him that he had approved the transfer of a licence to produce Patriot missiles, but did not specify which one: the PAC-2, an earlier model produced in the US and Germany, or the PAC-3, a newer version produced in the US and Japan.

US officials have not confirmed whether those licences have indeed been granted this time around.

Even if the US issues Patriot licences to Ukraine in the coming weeks, the decision won't help Ukraine's air defences this winter.

The reason for that is because it could take Ukraine at least a year to start producing its own Patriot systems and even longer to produce them in substantial numbers.

Last winter, Russian forces hammered Ukraine's energy infrastructure with drone and missile strikes, forcing Ukrainians in large cities to endure freezing temperatures in their homes.

This winter could be worse for Ukrainian civilians as Russia intensifies its ballistic missile strikes on the country's economic infrastructure and continues to launch greater numbers of jet-powered drones each week, which Ukraine is only now trying to neutralise with a new generation of drone interceptors.

The Trump-Zelensky meeting on the sidelines of UNGA also delivered little progress on advancing a long-standing US-Ukraine proposal for a reciprocal truce between Kyiv and Moscow on striking energy infrastructure.

Moscow has never indicated that it is willing to sign up to an energy truce since it was first proposed by Ukraine in March 2025.

Earlier this month, Mr Trump urged Ukraine to stop striking Russian oil refineries due to the pressure that strikes are having on the global supply and price of diesel and petrol.

"I think the sort of the differences and the challenges that we're seeing in describing this energy truce possibly come from the fact that all interested parties have different priorities," Alex Fynn, an editor at research unit Kyiv Independent Insights, told RTÉ News.

The US, he said, is pushing for a narrower ceasefire which covers Ukraine striking Russian refineries but does not cover a wider reciprocal truce on stopping strikes across the wider energy sector.

"We see that the Ukrainian side is really pushing for a much broader sectoral deal that maybe stops strikes on its port infrastructure and its railways," said Mr Fynn, adding that a truce that only covered refineries would be "a fairly poor deal for Ukraine".

Ukraine, he said, would lose one its biggest levers over Russia if the truce were to be limited to strikes on refineries only.

For the past four Septembers in New York, Mr Zelensky has returned to the same podium in the General Assembly Hall, and each time has delivered the same core message: that it is time for Russia to end its war on his country. (His speech to delegates in 2022 was delivered via video link so he has delivered five speeches at UNGA as a wartime president).

That message does not get any easier with each passing year as new global crises occupy the minds of many world leaders.

America's war with Iran and wider tensions in the Middle East, a global energy crisis, the continuing humanitarian situation in Gaza, climate change, and concerns over the future direction of AI were all high on the agenda for many delegates this year.

Yet, Mr Zelensky managed to keep the fate of Ukraine relevant at the assembly this week, mostly through a mix of sheer persistence and visibility.

Apart from the Trump meeting, the Ukrainian president held meetings with several other heads of government, including French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The autocratic Turkish leader has remained a staunch supporter of Ukraine's territorial integrity while also maintaining relations with Russia.

In Mr Zelensky's speech to delegates on Wednesday, he focused on Russia's staggering number of casualties so far this year, and the actions of its president, Vladimir Putin.

"The more freedom Putin has to act, the more dangerous the world becomes for everyone else," he told delegates.

Vladimir Putin, said Mr Zelensky, "must be denied the space to act and the space to spread this evil further".

He was not only speaking to world leaders in the room, but perhaps also to the Russian elite, those who may still have some small leverage inside the Kremlin.

Mr Zelensky also defended Ukraine's strategy of striking Russian oil depots and refineries.

Ukraine's target, he said, was "not gasoline or diesel", but Russia's abilities to finance the war.

And he had a word for big buyers of Russian oil in the room, like India and China.

"When someone gives Russia more money through trade, they give this war more time," said Mr Zelensky.

Mr Zelensky tried, as he has done at previous UNGA gatherings, to impress upon delegates that Russia's war affects the whole world.

"This is about energy. About critical infrastructure. This is about food security. This is about the lives of many, many people in many countries," he said.

European leaders attending UNGA issued some of the strongest words of support for Ukraine throughout the week. That was always going to be the case.

However, Mr Zelensky and other senior Ukrainian officials were critical of the EU's decision this week to de-list two Russian billionaires, Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman, from its sanctions list.

France had lobbied for Mr Usmanov's removal from the bloc's list of more than 3,000 sanctioned Russian individuals so it could get a French national, who had been convicted of spying, released from prison in Azerbaijan.

Luxembourg lobbied for Mr Fridman's de-listing and given that the EU requires unanimity for sanctions against individuals, the two men were de-listed.

Mr Zelensky described the de-listings as "a mistake" when speaking after his meeting with Mr Trump on Tuesday and made it clear that Ukraine would push for the two men to be sanctioned again.

His foreign minister Andrii went further still, calling the decision "shameful and unjustified" and that the de-listing sent the wrong signal to Moscow.

Yesterday, Mr Zelensky warned that Ukraine was facing a €23.7bn ($27bn) deficit in relation to defence spending and that the country needed about one-third of that sum for drone production expenditure between January and March alone.

The de-listing saga, the slow disbursement to-date of a €90bn EU support loan to meet Kyiv's budgetary needs this year and next, and the lack of confirmation from the Trump administration over Patriot licences are not what Mr Zelensky wants at this stage in the war.

Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil facilities still give Kyiv plenty of leverage to shape discussions on a potential truce for the wider energy sector.

However, it is difficult to see Mr Trump giving up his demand for Ukraine to stop those strikes in order to ease the pressure on global diesel supplies.