After weeks of softening American policy towards Russia by pulling military and intelligence support for Ukraine’s defense, President Donald Trump threatened Moscow with further economic and trade sanctions after a massive Russian drone attack on the Ukrainian port city of Odessa triggered fires and damaged energy infrastructure.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said Russia was “absolutely ‘pounding’ Ukraine on the battlefield” and declared that he was “considering large scale Banking Sanctions, Sanctions, and Tariffs on Russia” as a result.
The president added that any sanctions he was considering would remain in place until “a cease fire and final settlement agreement on peace is reached” in the years-long conflict. He also exhorted both countries to “get to the table right now, before it is too late.”
Speaking in the Oval Office a short time later on Friday, Trump told reporters he still believes Putin, who first began sending Russian troops into Ukraine when he illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, wants peace based on statements from the Russian leader.
Trump said he thinks the U.S. is currently “doing very well with Russia,” which he admitted is “bombing the hell out of Ukraine.”
“I'm finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine. They don’t have the cards,” he said.
Pressed on whether he thinks Putin is taking advantage of Trump’s decision to pause aid to Ukraine, he replied: “I think he’s doing what anybody else would do… And I think he's hitting him harder than he's been hitting him. And I think probably anybody in that position would be doing that right now.”
But Trump said he would not permit Ukraine’s forces to receive defensive weapons to prevent more Russian attacks because he has to know that Ukraine wants “to settle” with Russia.
“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,” he said.
Despite the most recent threat to add sanctions on Russia by Trump, is unclear what, if any, further sanctions or trade barriers he could impose on Moscow that would have an immediate effect on Russia’s economy.
Since Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered a large-scale unprovoked invasion of Ukrainian territory in February 2022, the United States and European Union, along with other Western democracies, have worked to cut off Moscow from the global financial system and have imposed a series of crippling sanctions that have exacted a steep price but have not meaningfully reduced Russia’s ability to wage war because Putin has successfully exploited alliances with other authoritarian countries such as Iran and North Korea to obtain needed military materiel.
Despite this most recent threat to levy new sanctions against Russia, Trump has privately asked aides about providing Moscow with sanctions relief in exchange for engaging in peace talks.
The president’s latest social media broadside comes just one week after a disastrous Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, after which the Ukrainian leader was asked to leave the White House without signing a mineral rights deal both sides had touted as a way to secure continued support from Trump and his administration.
Zelensky left the White House roughly an hour after the emotional eruption, cutting short talks that were supposed to cement an economic relationship between Washington and Kyiv and create a mechanism to repay the billions in American military aid that has been sent to Ukraine since 2022.
On Monday, Trump took to his Truth Social platform to attack Zelensky in a post claiming that the United States “will not put up with” his sentiments “for much longer” after Zelensky said he expects to maintain a relationship with the U.S. despite his fraught relationship with Trump.
But on Tuesday, he told members of Congress during an address that he was “working tirelessly to end the savage conflict” between Ukraine and Russia and said he’d received a letter from Zelensky indicating that Kyiv was “ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer.”
American and Ukrainian officials are set to meet for talks next week in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh.
