President Donald Trump's perspective of the Russia-Ukraine war has shifted, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview.

Speaking to the Financial Times ahead of this week's NATO summit in Turkey, Zelenskyy suggested Trump has become more optimistic about Ukraine's battlefield prospects as Kyiv intensifies long-range drone strikes deep inside Russia.

"President Trump wants to be where there's success," Zelenskyy said, adding that the U.S. president recently told him Ukraine was "doing very well" with its drone campaign.

Zelenskyy said Trump's view of the conflict has shifted as Ukraine demonstrates its ability to strike strategic targets inside Russia.

The Ukrainian leader argued the war has entered a new phase in which air power and drone technology, not territorial gains, will determine the outcome.

"Today I believe victory in this war belongs to whoever is smarter," Zelenskyy told FT.

After Ukraine blunted Russia's advance on land and pushed much of Moscow's fleet from the western Black Sea, "the next battlefield becomes the sky," he said.

Zelenskyy said that Ukraine's greatest weakness remains a shortage of advanced air-defense systems, particularly U.S.-made Patriot interceptors capable of stopping Russian ballistic missiles.

Despite his optimism, Ukraine endured another deadly Russian missile and drone barrage this week, underscoring the continued intensity of the conflict.

Trump, meanwhile, struck an optimistic tone while speaking alongside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday.

"I had a very good talk with President Putin," Trump told reporters. "I also spoke with President Zelenskyy right after that. I think they both want to make a deal."

The president said he believes a peace agreement is within reach despite years of fighting.

"I settled eight wars, and I think we're going to be settling a ninth," Trump said. "I think we're going to get it settled hopefully soon."

Trump said the war has become increasingly dominated by drones and lamented the mounting casualties.

"It's a drone war. It's a war of drones," he said. "I've seen the battlefields. ... It's carnage, and it should stop."

The president also emphasized that, unlike under the Biden administration, European allies are now paying the U.S. for military equipment destined for Ukraine.

"When [former President Joe] Biden was here, he gave them hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of equipment," Trump said. "Now I sell the equipment for, you know, fair price, the full price. And I sell it not to Ukraine.

"I sell it to the European Union. They pay us."

NATO leaders hope Trump's increasingly positive assessment of Ukraine's military performance will translate into additional Western support, particularly for air-defense interceptors that Kyiv says are essential to counter Russia's escalating missile attacks, FT separately reported.

Even so, Trump has continued to stress that his top priority is ending the war through negotiations rather than prolonging the conflict.