Donald Trump has said he will meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy in New York on Friday, despite a Republican backlash against the Ukrainian president’s lobbying efforts in the US this week.

Zelenskyy had been trying to soothe US Republicans including Trump and House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson who had reacted furiously to the Ukrainian president’s courting of Democrats this week in an attempt to secure more support for Kyiv’s position against Russia.

“I hate to see the carnage,” Trump said on Thursday while claiming he would “quite quickly” strike a peace deal between Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“As you know President Zelenskyy has asked to meet me and I will be meeting with him tomorrow morning at around 9:45 in Trump Tower,” the Republican former president added in a press conference in New York.

Trump’s comments came after Zelenskyy wrote to Trump asking for a meeting to discuss Ukraine’s pursuit of a “just peace”.

The Republican presidential candidate posted Zelenskyy’s letter on his social media platform earlier on Thursday.

“You know I always speak with great respect about everything connected to you,” Zelenskyy wrote. “I would really like for our meeting to take place as part of our efforts to end this war in a just way.”

The exchange marked an attempt by the Ukrainian leader to regain his footing after Trump and others expressed anger at Zelenskyy for focusing his diplomacy on Democratic politicians in the middle of the US election campaign.

The furore erupted after the US announced another $8bn package of aid for Ukraine backed by Republicans.

The Republican backlash caused consternation in Kyiv, where Zelenskyy’s allies accused officials of bungling the US trip at a crucial moment for Ukraine, which has lost ground to Russian forces in the eastern Donbas region.

A former Ukrainian official said: “It looks like the Republicans were looking for ways to create a scandal but we should have avoided giving them the opportunity. The Republicans will still be strong in Washington. They can block everything.”

Ukraine’s president earlier on Thursday expressed his gratitude to “Joe Biden, US Congress and both its parties, Republicans and Democrats, as well as the entire American people” for the fresh aid.

“We have always valued the strong bipartisan support in the United States and among Americans for Ukraine’s just cause of defeating Russian aggression,” he wrote on social media.

Trump lashed out at the Ukrainian leader on Wednesday, accusing him of refusing any negotiation with Russia and claiming Zelenskyy had cast “aspersions” about him.

Johnson demanded the resignation of Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, Oksana Markarova, who organised Zelenskyy’s visit to an arms factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he was accompanied only by Democrats. Pennsylvania is a swing state in November’s presidential election.

“The tour was clearly a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats and is clearly election interference,” Johnson wrote in a letter to the Ukrainian leader.

Zelenskyy had intended to use his US trip to present his so-called victory plan for strengthening Ukraine’s military and diplomatic position to Biden, Trump and Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate.

He met Harris and Biden at the White House on Thursday, where the vice-president took veiled aim at Trump and his running mate JD Vance, implying they would “force Ukraine to give up large parts” of its land and “require Ukraine to forgo security”.

Speaking alongside Zelenskyy, she added: “They are proposals for surrender, which is dangerous and unacceptable”.

Trump on Thursday denied his vision for ending the war amounted to surrender.

“It’s not a surrender . . . my strategy is to save lives,” he said, adding that his message to Zelenskyy would be: “We need peace. We need to stop the death and destruction.”

The $8bn package unveiled by the White House comprises $2.4bn in new assistance and $5.6bn already earmarked for Ukraine and includes a first pledge of “joint stand-off weapons” or glide bombs, which could be used for long-range strikes.

But the package falls well short of the needs Zelenskyy presented to Biden later on Thursday. The US has rebuffed Kyiv’s repeated requests to use long-range weapons to strike targets inside Russia, an important element in his plan.

The Republican backlash over Zelenskyy’s US visit has triggered recriminations in Kyiv.

“Going to Scranton was a mistake,” said Oleksandr Merezhko, chair of the foreign affairs committee in the Ukrainian parliament. “The president has been let down either by someone in the embassy or in his office.”

He added: “It would have been better not to have made that visit at all.”

David Arakhamia, leader of Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party in parliament, played down the significance of Trump’s comments, describing them as “campaign rhetoric and manipulation, which everyone is doing”.

He conceded the timing of Zelenskyy’s visit was not very good, but said Ukraine’s leader needed to press for more funding.

“Whatever you do, you risk becoming part of the election debate,” Arakhamia said. “But we cannot afford to just sit and wait until the elections are done.”

A person close to Zelenskyy said the “optics” of his visit to Scranton looked bad in hindsight and blamed Ukraine’s ambassador for a “lapse of judgment”.

But Arakhamia defended Markarova, calling her one of Ukraine’s most effective envoys. “Why would we fire her just because Speaker Johnson doesn’t like her? It was very rude, frankly.”

Additional reporting by Steff Chavez in Washington

Once more, a voting tech company has settled its defamation lawsuit over false allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election before the start of trial — in this instance, Smartmatic USA’s suit against the conservative network Newsmax.

Thursday’s settlement occurred during the jury selection process. A four-week trial was scheduled to begin in Delaware on Monday.

Neither side made details of the settlement public.

Smartmatic emailed a statement saying it is “very pleased to have secured the completion of the case against Newsmax.” The statement said Smartmatic is now shifting gears to focus on its related suits against Fox News and Fox Corp.

“Lying to the American people has consequences,” the company’s statement said. “Smartmatic will not stop until the perpetrators are held accountable.”

Lawsuits stemming from 2020 election continue

The case is just one in a flurry of lawsuits surrounding false claims about fraud in the 2020 election. In 2023, on the eve of opening arguments, Dominion Voting Systems settled a defamation case against Fox News for $787.5 million.

Dominion also is suing Newsmax in Delaware Superior Court, while Smartmatic is pursuing a case against Fox News in New York.

Smartmatic also settled a similar case against One America News Network earlier this year. The details of that settlement also remain confidential.

Two defamation cases overseen by the same judge

The size of Fox’s record settlement spoke to the gravity of the recurring false claims by the network about Dominion. The presiding judge, Eric M. Davis, had already ruled that Fox News had knowingly and repeatedly defamed Dominion before the settlement. The only question before the jury was to determine actual and punitive damages.

Davis also oversaw the Smartmatic case against Newsmax. He earlier ruled that Smartmatic could not seek punitive damages beyond any direct losses it could show as a result of being defamed. “There is no evidence that Newsmax acted with evil intent towards Smartmatic,” the judge wrote.

Much like Dominion’s case against Fox, Smartmatic’s case against Newsmax centered on false statements made on dozens of television segments in late 2020 in which hosts, producers and guests linked the voting machine company to vote-switching conspiracy theories.

Smartmatic operated only in Los Angeles County during the 2020 elections. No fraud was alleged there. Given California’s strong Democratic tilt, no influence could have affected the broader outcome.

The network’s guests and hosts embraced allegations that Smartmatic software flipped votes during the election that year.

Among the offending segments: Newsmax hosts replayed exchanges from Fox News amplifying conspiracy theories about election fraud promoted by Trump legal adviser Sidney Powell. Newsmax’s Greg Kelly told viewers, “I believe her, and I don’t believe the critics.” Powell was sanctioned by a federal judge in 2021 and subsequently pleaded guilty to election interference in Georgia in 2023.

By late 2020, Newsmax started airing a disclaimer that no evidence linked Dominion or Smartmatic to the manipulation of votes and disavowed other related conspiracy theories. The next year, it broadcast an apology and a retraction to claims about a Dominion employee who faced death threats.

Looming indictments

In legal filings, Newsmax denied that it engaged in any defamatory action toward Smartmatic.

Even so, the further unspooling of its defense strategy may have proven embarrassing for Newsmax. In a day-long pre-trial hearing earlier this month, the network’s lawyers indicated that some of its litigation strategy may have relied on the argument that producers at the cable news channel didn’t didn’t realize Smartmatic and Dominion were two separate companies. The legal briefs also signaled that Newsmax’s on-air personalities weren’t subject to its journalistic standards because those guidelines governed its “writing” more than its broadcasts.

Even before Davis nixed the possibility of punitive damages, there was also some legal sparring over Smartmatic’s changing estimates of how much it was worth. Lawyers acknowledged a “$1 billion swing” in its proposed valuation.

Smartmatic had also received a public black eye this summer with the revelation that federal authorities had indicted several company officials, including its president, for a bribery scheme in the Philippines. Davis had ruled that Newsmax would be allowed to present some evidence about that issue in its defense during trial.

Those developments made the odds more daunting that a trial would yield greater results for Smartmatic than a settlement. And they could come into play in the New York trial against Fox as well.

“Smartmatic unsurprisingly chose to settle its case with Newsmax on the eve of trial after a series of major setbacks devastated its case,” a spokesperson for Fox News Media said in a statement Thursday evening. “Smartmatic’s claims against Fox are similarly impaired, unsupported by the facts and intended to chill First Amendment freedoms.”

The network said it was looking forward to defending its case in court.

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Israel’s military launched new strikes on Beirut and expanded its bombing campaign to the Lebanon-Syria border despite a last-minute diplomatic push for a ceasefire to prevent full-blown war with Hizbollah.

The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately provide details of who the strikes had targeted, but residents of the city said they had heard three blasts in the southern suburb of Dahiyeh, which Hizbollah controls.

The strikes are part of a massive escalation launched by the Israeli military in Lebanon over recent days, which has fuelled fears that the year-long hostilities between Israel and the Lebanese militant group are on the verge of spiralling into a broader regional conflict.

In an effort to defuse tensions, US President Joe Biden and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday put forward a proposal for a 21-day ceasefire between the two sides.

US officials hope that the truce will allow time to negotiate a more durable ceasefire between Israel and Hizbollah, and also put pressure on Hamas to accept the terms of a ceasefire-for-hostages deal with Israel in Gaza.

But Israeli officials quickly poured cold water on hopes of a breakthrough. In a brief statement issued as he headed to New York to address the UN General Assembly, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had not yet responded to the proposal and ordered the Israeli military to keep fighting “at full force”.

Israel’s foreign minister Israel Katz said there would be no ceasefire until Israelis displaced by the fighting had returned home. Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s ultranationalist finance minister, said the country’s campaign should “end in one scenario: crushing Hizbollah and removing its ability to harm the residents of the north”.

“The enemy must not be given time to recover from the heavy blows he received and to reorganise for the continuation of the war in 21 days’ time,” he wrote on X on Thursday morning.

Their comments were echoed by a string of other far-right members of Israel’s government with settlements minister Orit Strock saying there was “no moral mandate for a ceasefire, not for 21 days and not for 21 hours”.

Netanyahu depends on the far-right members of his coalition to remain in power. Ministers from his Likud party also spoke out against the plan.

While the US-French proposal, which was backed by the G7, EU, Australia, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar, did not set a deadline for the two sides to respond, US officials had previously said that they expected the Israeli and Lebanese governments to do so “in the coming hours”.

People familiar with the situation said the US hoped that Netanyahu would use his speech at the UN to announce that Israel’s war in Gaza was moving into a new phase, which might persuade Hizbollah — which has insisted it will not stop firing at Israel until the war in Gaza is over — to agree a temporary truce.

The burst of diplomatic activity follows a major Israeli offensive against Hizbollah. The militant group initiated the hostilities when it began firing rockets at Israel on October 8 in support of Hamas, which had launched its attack on Israel the previous day.

But over the past week, Israel has assassinated a string of senior Hizbollah commanders, and on Monday it launched a broad bombing campaign targeting what it said were the militant group’s weapons stores in Lebanon, killing more than 600 people. On Wednesday, the head of Israel’s army told troops to prepare for a possible ground operation in Lebanon.

The military said on Thursday morning that it had conducted further strikes overnight, hitting 75 Hizbollah targets in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.

Lebanon’s health ministry said 20 people were killed, 19 of them Syrian nationals, in an Israeli attack that levelled a building in the town of Younine in the Bekaa Valley. That was the deadliest strike in a day of bombings that also killed seven others elsewhere in Lebanon’s south, according to a Financial Times tabulation of health ministry statements.

Until this week Israel had rarely targeted the Bekaa Valley, a Hizbollah stronghold along Lebanon’s eastern border with Syria, previously concentrating most strikes in the south.

The IDF said it had also struck targets on Lebanon’s border with Syria relating to Hizbollah weapons transfers, while a Lebanese minister said at least one of the strikes landed on the Syrian side of a bridge connecting the two countries.

Hizbollah has also begun firing deeper into Israel. On Wednesday, it fired a ballistic missile at Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial hub, for the first time, which was shot down by air defences. On Thursday, it fired a barrage of about 45 rockets at Israel, according to the Israeli army, most of which were intercepted.

Additional reporting by Polina Ivanova in Jerusalem

Data visualisation by Steven Bernard and Alan Smith