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United States President Donald Trump has reiterated the threat of potential sanctions against Russia if no substantial headway is made towards a peaceful resolution in Ukraine within the next two weeks.
“It’s going to be a very important decision, and that’s whether or not it’s massive sanctions or massive tariffs or both, or we do nothing and say it’s your fight,” Trump said on Friday.
“I’m not happy about it, and I’m not happy about anything having to do with that war,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Moscow of actively obstructing efforts to organise a face-to-face dialogue between him and Putin.
Zelenskyy has consistently advocated for direct negotiations with the Kremlin leader, asserting that a personal meeting is essential to brokering an end to the conflict.
Trump stated that he had initiated preliminary steps toward arranging a summit between Zelenskyy and Putin following a phone conversation with the Russian president on Monday, which came shortly after their Alaska meeting on 15 August.
Zelenskyy has accused Russia of stalling.
“The meeting is one of the components of how to end the war,” he said on Friday at a press conference in Kyiv with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. “And since they don’t want to end it, they will look for space to (avoid it).”
Agenda for peace ‘not ready’, Russia says
Meanwhile, Russia’s foreign minister has said preparations for a potential meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin remain incomplete.
“Putin is ready to meet with Zelenskyy when the agenda would be ready for a summit. And this agenda is not ready at all,” Sergei Lavrov told US-outlet NBC on Friday.
The statement echoed Moscow’s established rhetoric about a leaders’ meeting being impossible unless certain conditions were met.
Asked for his response to Lavrov’s comments and what the next steps are, Trump told reporters earlier on Friday: “Well, we’ll see. We’re going to see if Putin and Zelenskyy will be working together. It’s like oil and vinegar a little bit.”
Trump had taken sanctions off the table in preparation for his summit in Anchorage with Putin, but as fighting continues in Ukraine, that position could shift.
Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022. Analysts estimate that more than a million soldiers on both sides have been killed or wounded since then.
Trump, whose 2024 presidential election campaign included claims that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in a day, has made several threats to impose sanctions on Russia in the past.
Ahead of Trump’s recent meeting with Putin, he threatened unspecified “severe consequences” if Russia didn’t agree to end the war but took those threats off the table during their discussion in Alaska.
However, in early August he cited India’s continued imports of Russian oil as a reason as a reason for imposing a blanket 25 per cent tariff on Indian goods.
He has not yet committed to imposing secondary sanctions on other major Russian-oil importers like China, saying in mid-August only that he might “in two or three weeks”.
