US President Donald Trump has said he is “strongly considering large-scale sanctions” and tariffs on Russia until a ceasefire and peace deal with Ukraine is reached.
Trump said he was contemplating the move because “Russia is absolutely ‘pounding’ Ukraine on the battlefield right now”.
Trump’s comments marked a sharp change in tone. Since coming into office, he has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and blamed Ukraine’s leader for not wanting peace with Russia.
Hours later, however, the US president told reporters he was “finding it more difficult to deal with Ukraine”, and repeated that he trusted Putin.
Last Friday, Trump berated Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. Days earlier, he had even called him a dictator and blamed Ukraine for starting the war which began on 24 February 2022 when Putin launched a full-scale invasion of the neighbouring country.
The public dressing-down was followed this week by Trump pausing all US military aid and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv.
It is not clear if this enabled Russia’s large-scale missile and drone attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure on Thursday night.
On Friday morning, Trump issued his threat of sanctions tariffs against Russia – apparently over the attack.
“They [Russia] are bombing the hell out of them [Ukraine] right now… and I put a statement out, a very strong statement ‘can’t do that, can’t do that’,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Friday.
Asked if that was a result of the US pause in military co-operation with Ukraine, Trump said Putin was doing “what anyone else would do”.
And he justified the US move by saying: “I want to know they [Ukraine] want to settle and I don’t know they want to settle.”
In Friday’s post, Trump wrote: “I am strongly considering large scale Banking Sanctions, Sanctions, and Tariffs on Russia until a Cease Fire and FINAL SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT ON PEACE IS REACHED. To Russia and Ukraine, get to the table right now, before it is too late.”
He did not provide any details as to how such sanctions and tariffs against Russia may work.
Moscow is already under the heaviest Western sanctions in its history, many of which target its oil exports and foreign currency reserves.
It has been able to get around them to a large extent by selling discounted oil to India and China, while importing many of the goods it previously got from the West through countries like Kazakhstan.
China is reported to be helping to sustain Russia’s war effort with large volumes of dual-use technology, which it denies.
The White House administration cannot have failed to notice the chorus of criticism that all the pressure for a peace deal is being piled on just Ukraine, not Russia. So it is possible that Trump’s threat is an attempt to present itself as being more even-handed.
The problem is, we simply do not know what was discussed and what was agreed in that “lengthy and highly productive” 90-minute phone call that Donald Trump suddenly announced he had held last month with the Russian president.
So far, Vladimir Putin has played a clever hand, sitting back and doubtless enjoying watching the transatlantic alliance come apart at the seams.
Compared to that gain, the threat of US tariffs is unlikely to bother him unduly.
