Trump threatens Russia with sanctions if Putin refuses to negotiate peace deal with Ukraine

US President Donald Trump threatened to impose additional sanctions on Russia should Vladimir Putin refuse to enter into talks on ending the war in Ukraine, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

While Trump gave no details of the type of sanctions he had in mind and didn’t acknowledge the fact that the US had had strict sanctions on Russia in place since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, in an apparent sign of his seriousness about ending the war as soon as possible, he did confirm that there had already been contact between his administration and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“We’re talking to Zelensky, we’re going to be talking with President Putin very soon,” Trump said, adding that he had also discussed the war in Ukraine with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and that he had “pressed” Xi into intervening to stop the conflict but that Xi had “not done very much on that” so far.

Trump also said that the new US administration was considering sending more weapons to Ukraine, while also returning to one of his regular talking points to note that the European Union should do more to support Kyiv than it is currently. Continuing Washington’s supply of weapons to Ukraine would amount to a change of policy for the new administration, however, as Trump has repeatedly condemned the vast US expenditure on the war.

Understanding the importance of personal relationships to the US president, Zelensky made an effort to meet with Trump in Paris last month to discuss ending the war, despite a number of negative things that Trump had said about him during his presidential campaign.

Trump, who in his inauguration called himself a “peacemaker”, is widely believed to favour a peace deal in which Ukraine agrees to cede the approximately 20% of its territory currently occupied by Russian forces to Moscow, though both Moscow and Kyiv have said that such a resolution would be unacceptable.