Western media reports say U.S. President Donald Trump said yesterday he would add new tariffs to his sanctions threat against Russia if the country does not make a deal to end its war in Ukraine, and added that these could also be applied to “other participating countries.”
The US president reportedly used a post on Truth Social to warn Moscow "we can do it the easy way, or the hard way" and called on Putin to "settle now" or face "high levels" of tariffs.
“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 on Truth Social, according to CNBC.
Reuters says Trump's post did not identify the countries that he considered participants in the conflict, or how he defined participation.
Media outlets note that Trump’s rhetoric towards Russia has marked some of his strongest-ever public criticism of Putin and his leadership.
During the presidential election, Trump had vowed to bring the conflict to an end within 24 hours of re-entering the White House.
However, his pick for Ukraine peace envoy, Keith Kellogg, told Fox News last week that the new administration was aiming at a timeline closer to 100 days.
The Guardian reports that asked about the war in Ukraine shortly after his inauguration on January 20, Trump said that his Russian counterpart was destroying Russia by refusing to negotiate a ceasefire. “He can’t be thrilled, he’s not doing so well,” he told reporters, referring to Putin’s war. “Russia is bigger, they have more soldiers to lose, but that’s no way to run a country.”
Meanwhile, Dmitry Polyansky, Russia's first deputy permanent representative to the UN, said on January 22 that Moscow needs to study the terms of US President Donald Trump's proposal to end the conflict in Ukraine
"This is not just a question of ending the armed conflict. This is primarily a question of eliminating the root causes of the Ukrainian crisis," Reuters quoted Polyansky as saying.
According to the Russian diplomat, Russia first of all needs to find out what “deal” means in Trump's understanding.
"He is not responsible for what the US has been doing in Ukraine since 2014, turning it into an 'anti-Russia' and preparing it for a conflict with us, but it is in his power to stop this harmful policy," Polyansky concluded.
