US President Donald Trump on Wednesday stepped up the pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to make a peace deal with Ukraine, threatening tougher economic measures if Moscow does not agree to end the war.
Trump’s warning in a social media post came as the Republican seeks a quick solution to a grinding conflict that he had promised to end before even starting his second term.
“If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries,” Trump wrote.
Photo: Reuters
Trump said he was “not looking to hurt Russia” and had “always had a very good relationship with President Putin,” a leader for whom he has expressed admiration in the past.
Russia already faces crushing US sanctions over the war since invading Ukraine in 2022 and trade has slowed to a trickle. Trump’s predecessor, former US president Joe Biden, imposed sweeping sanctions against Moscow’s energy sector earlier this month, but Trump and his administration reportedly believe there are ways of toughening measures to press Putin.
The US imported US$2.9 billion of goods from Russia from January to November last year — down sharply from US$4.3 billion over the same period in 2023, US Department of Commerce data showed.
Top US imports from Russia include fertilizers and precious metals.
It was Trump’s toughest line on Putin since he returned to the White House this week, and comes despite fears that it was Kyiv rather than Moscow that he would persuade to make a peace deal.
Trump at a White House news conference on Tuesday said only that it “sounds likely” that he would apply additional sanctions if Putin did not come to the table, but the US president declined to say whether he would continue Biden’s policy of sending billions of dollars in weaponry to help Ukraine.
“We’re looking at that,” he said. “We’re talking to [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskiy, we’re going to be talking to President Putin very soon.”
Trump has also said he expects to meet Putin — with whom he had a summit in his first term in Helsinki — soon.
Prior to beginning his new term on Monday, Trump had vowed to end the Ukraine war “within 24 hours” and before even taking office, raising expectations that he would leverage aid to force Kyiv to make territorial concessions to Moscow, but his promised breakthrough has proved elusive.
In unusually critical remarks about Putin on Monday, Trump said the Russian president was “destroying Russia by not making a deal.”
Trump added that Zelenskiy had told him he wanted a peace agreement to end the war.
Putin congratulated Trump on his inauguration on Monday. The Russian leader added that he was “open to dialogue” on the Ukraine conflict with Trump’s incoming US administration, adding that he hoped any settlement would ensure “lasting peace.”
US special counsel for the US Department of Justice Robert Mueller and the FBI both investigated alleged collusion between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign — which Trump in his post on Wednesday dubbed once again the “Russia hoax.”
Mueller won convictions of six members of the Trump campaign, but said he found no evidence of criminal cooperation with Russia by the Trump campaign.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump