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Donald Trump has warned Vladimir Putin that the US is ready to punish Russia with a barrage of new trade restrictions if Moscow fails to reach an agreement soon to end the war in Ukraine.
Trump’s statement in a Truth Social post on Wednesday comes as the president tries to ratchet up pressure on Moscow to launch negotiations with Ukraine.
It marks his first broad statement about the conflict since he returned for his second term in the White House after promising on the campaign trail to end the war within 24 hours of returning to power.
“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.
“Let’s get this war, which never would have started if I were President, over with! We can do it the easy way, or the hard way — and the easy way is always better,” he continued.
Joe Biden’s administration imposed sweeping sanctions on Moscow after it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. US trade with Russia has since plummeted, so any additional tariffs would have a limited impact.
But Trump administration officials believe there are more ways that the US could tighten the screws on Russia financially, particularly by targeting its energy sector.
The Biden administration was reluctant to ban Russian oil and gas exports for fear of disrupting global energy markets. Under the former president, Washington imposed some restrictions on liquefied natural gas projects in Russia and set an international price cap for Russian oil, which Moscow has managed to circumvent.
During his confirmation hearing to be Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent last week told Congress that he would be “100 per cent on board for taking sanctions up, especially on the Russian oil majors, to levels that would bring the Russian Federation to the table”.
Bessent added that he believed the US sanctions on Russia set by Biden were “not fulsome enough”.
Trump, who has been sceptical of US military aid to Ukraine, said he expected to meet Putin soon and the Kremlin has said the Russian leader is ready to sit down with the US president, but no summit has been scheduled.
In his post, Trump touted his “very good relationship with President Putin” and said he was not looking to “hurt” Russia, but would be doing it a “favour” by pushing it to reach a deal.
Hours after being sworn in on Monday, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that Putin was “destroying Russia” by continuing to wage war in Ukraine.
But the president’s announcement reveals his frustration that Moscow does not appear to be listening to his calls for a settlement.
“Putin doesn’t want to end the war, and doesn’t want to be pressured to peace,” a senior Ukrainian official close to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the Financial Times in response to Trump’s comments.
Trump’s special envoy for the Ukraine war, Keith Kellogg, told Fox News earlier this month he hoped to find a solution within “100 days”.
Kellogg had postponed a trip to hold meetings with top officials in Kyiv earlier this month, according to people with knowledge of the plans. The people said the envoy delayed his visit because Trump had not formulated a plan to get the Russians to the negotiating table and bring the war to an end.
Kellogg is expected to visit Kyiv next month but the Ukrainians may first meet him and other members of Trump’s team in Washington.
David Arakhamia, head of Zelenskyy’s party’s faction in the Ukrainian parliament, said a delegation from Kyiv was planning to meet with members of the new administration in the US capital in the coming days.
“Active contacts between the delegation from the Ukrainian parliament and the new Trump team may begin in early February as part of the ‘Ukrainian Week’ to be held in Washington,” he told Ukrainian television on Tuesday.