This file picture shows Putin with Trump during the latter’s first presidency.
US President Donald Trump has raised the prospect of imposing large-scale US sanctions on Russia, days after pausing military aid and intelligence support to Ukraine, and he called on both countries to get on with negotiating a peace deal. Trump’s threat of banking curbs and tariffs followed a Reuters report on Monday that the White House was preparing to give Russia possible sanctions relief as part of the push to end the war and improve diplomatic and economic ties with Moscow. “Based on the fact that Russia is absolutely ‘pounding’ Ukraine on the battlefield right now, I am strongly considering large-scale Banking Sanctions, Sanctions, and Tariffs on Russia until a Cease Fire and FINAL SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT ON PEACE IS REACHED,” Trump said on his social media platform. “To Russia and Ukraine, get to the table right now, before it is too late. Thank you!!!” Russian forces have almost surrounded thousands of Ukrainian troops who stormed into Russia’s Kursk region last summer in a shock incursion which Kyiv had hoped to use as leverage over Moscow in any peace talks. Ukraine’s position in Kursk has deteriorated sharply in the last three days, open source maps show. The Russian counteroffensive has nearly cut the Ukrainian force in two and separated the main group from its principal supply lines. “The situation (for Ukraine in Kursk) is very bad,” Pasi Paroinen, a military analyst with the Finland-based Black Bird Group, told Reuters. There was no official confirmation of the Russian thrust from either Russia or Ukraine, which both tend to report battlefield developments with a delay. Russian forces also damaged energy and gas infrastructure inside Ukraine overnight in their first major missile attack since the US paused intelligence sharing with Ukraine. Ten people, including a child, were injured, Ukrainian officials said. President Volodymyr Zelensky, seeking to shore up Western support for Ukraine after the apparent US diplomatic pivot towards Moscow, responded to the attack by calling for a truce covering air and sea. “The first steps to establishing real peace should be forcing the sole source of this war, Russia, to stop such attacks,” Zelensky said on the Telegram messaging app. Moscow has rejected the idea of a temporary truce, which has also been proposed by Britain and France, and said it would never let peacekeepers from North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) countries into Ukraine, after the two countries suggested a European force could police any permanent settlement. Russia, one of the world’s biggest oil producers, is already subject to wide-ranging sanctions imposed by the United States and partners after Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022. US sanctions on Russia include measures aimed at limiting its oil and gas revenues, including a cap of $60 per barrel on Russia’s oil exports. Trump did not go into detail on the possible sanctions against Russia and said later at an Oval Office media briefing that he was finding it more difficult to deal with Ukraine. He also said that he trusts Vladimir Putin. “I believe him,” he said in a televised press conference at the White House. “I’m finding it more difficult frankly to deal with Ukraine and they don’t have the cards. It may be easier dealing with Russia.” Despite threatening new sanctions on Russia earlier yesterday, Trump said he understood why Putin’s forces had inflicted a massive bombing campaign across Ukraine overnight. “I actually think he’s doing what anybody in that position would be doing that right now,” Trump said. “I’ve always had a good relationship with Putin. And you know, he wants to end the war.” “I think he’s going to be more generous than he has to be, and that’s pretty good. That means a lot of good things.” Trump said that Zelensky risks losing all US involvement. “I don’t know that they want to settle. If they don’t want to settle, we’re out of there because we want them to settle. I’m doing it to stop death,” Trump said. Despite tension with Trump, Zelensky said late on Thursday that he would travel to Saudi Arabia next Monday for a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman before talks there later in the week between US and Ukrainian officials. Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has already held extensive talks with Russian officials. He said he was in discussions with Ukraine for a peace agreement framework to end the three-year-old war and confirmed that a meeting was planned next week with the Ukrainians in Saudi Arabia. Russia holds around a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea which it annexed in 2014, and its forces are steadily advancing in the eastern Donetsk region.
