Donald Trump has threatened Russia with additional “large-scale” sanctions and tariffs, as the US president shifts to piling pressure on Moscow in an effort to broker a peace deal in Ukraine.
Trump’s comments on Friday come as tensions have eased with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy following a public confrontation in the White House last week, which led to the US suspending military aid and intelligence support to Kyiv.
US and Ukrainian officials are due to meet next week in Saudi Arabia for talks. National security adviser Mike Waltz and secretary of state Marco Rubio will head the US delegation.
“Based on the fact that Russia is absolutely ‘pounding’ Ukraine on the battlefield right now, 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,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
“To Russia and Ukraine, get to the table right now, before it is too late. Thank you!!!” he added.
Trump has faced criticism from US allies as well as domestic lawmakers, including some Republicans, for his clashes with Zelenskyy. Concerns are growing that the White House is handing all the leverage to Russia even before direct talks begin between Moscow and Kyiv.
In the Oval Office later on Friday, Trump returned to friendlier rhetoric towards Moscow.
“I’m finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine [than Russia],” the president said. “I find that in terms of getting a final settlement, it may be easier dealing with Russia, which is surprising, because they have all the cards, and they’re bombing the hell out of them right now.”
However, he did say that his Truth Social post was “a very strong statement” to Moscow saying it “can’t” continue its intense bombing of Ukraine.
Trump said he did not think Russian President Vladimir Putin was taking advantage of the halted intelligence sharing from Washington to Kyiv and was instead “doing what anybody else would do”.
“I think [Putin’s] hitting [Ukraine] harder than he’s been hitting them. And I think probably anybody in that position would be doing that right now. He wants to get it ended,” he said.
Despite Moscow’s bombing campaign, Trump said he did not want to keep supplying Kyiv with air defences since “I have to know that they want to settle. I don’t know that they want to settle.”
Trump added that before he thinks about US security guarantees for Ukraine, he wants the war settled. “Ukraine has to get on the ball and get a job done,” he said.
US officials had previously threatened sanctions on Russia in an effort to push Putin towards the negotiating table, but Trump emphatically renewed that message on Friday.
The White House has not offered any details of the threatened sanctions and tariffs on Russia.
Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, told reporters on Friday that “there are a heck of a lot of things that are left, for sure” to sanction “but . . . let’s see how it goes”.
Russia remains under sweeping sanctions imposed by former president Joe Biden, including on its financial services, defence and energy sectors. The US has also targeted top Russian business leaders and oligarchs with sanctions.
The sanctions have cut Russia’s trade surplus by more than half, from $337bn in 2022, the first year of the war, to just $151bn last year, said Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.
The most painful measures were the sanctions against oil exports, which have forced Russian companies to sell at a discount while raising their logistics and financial costs, and financial sanctions that have created cumbersome barriers for the country’s companies making international transactions, as well as sanctions on its airline sector.
The sweeping approach taken by the Biden administration meant that Trump can do relatively little to ratchet up pressure, Prokopenko said. “There’s no sanctions bazooka any more and the US can’t inflict real pain,” she added.
But Trump officials say the sanctions from Biden were ineffective, particularly with respect to Russia’s all-important energy sector.
“A major factor that has enabled the Russian war machine’s continued financing was the Biden administration’s egregiously weak sanctions on Russian energy,” Scott Bessent, the US Treasury secretary, told the Economic Club of New York on Thursday.
He suggested that the Biden administration had held back on imposing more severe sanctions due to “worries about upward pressure on US energy prices during an election season”.
“What was the point of substantial US military and financial support over the past three years, without a commensurate and fulsome sanction support?” he asked.
The White House has previously dangled the possibility of an easing of sanctions on Russia if it reaches a peace deal with Ukraine, and officials have even pointed to business opportunities for US investors in the country in the event an agreement is reached.
Higher tariffs on Russian imports will have limited impact since the country’s trading with the US has collapsed in recent years. According to the US trade representative’s office, goods imports from Russia amounted to $3bn in 2024.
