Donald Trump has renewed a threat to impose sanctions on Russia if there is no progress toward a peaceful settlement in Ukraine in two weeks.
Showing frustration at Moscow a week after his meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, the US president said: “I’m going to make a decision as to what we do and it’s going to be, it’s going to be a very important decision, and that’s whether or not it’s massive sanctions or massive tariffs or both, or we do nothing and say it’s your fight.”
The US president said on Friday he was unhappy about Russia’s strike on an American factory in Ukraine this week that caused a fire that injured some of the facility’s employees.
At the same White House event where he mentioned possible sanctions, Mr Trump showed a photograph of his meeting with Mr Putin on the red carpet in Alaska, saying Mr Putin wanted to attend the World Cup 2026 football tournament in the US.
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“I’m going to sign this for him. But I was sent one, and I thought you would like to see it, it’s a man named Vladimir Putin, who I believe will be coming, depending on what happens. He may be coming, and he may not, depending on what happens,” Mr Trump said.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said Russia was doing everything it could to prevent a meeting between him and Mr Putin.
Mr Zelenskiy has repeatedly called for the Russian leader to meet him, saying it is the only way to negotiate an end to the war. He accused Russia of stalling.
“The meeting is one of the components of how to end the war,” he said on Friday at a press conference in Kyiv with Nato secretary general Mark Rutte. “And since they don’t want to end it, they will look for space to [avoid it].”
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, told NBC there was no agenda for such a summit. “Putin is ready to meet with Zelenskiy when the agenda would be ready for a summit. And this agenda is not ready at all,” he said.
During a visit to a nuclear research centre on Friday, Mr Putin said Mr Trump’s leadership qualities would help restore US-Russia relations.
“With the arrival of president Trump, I think that a light at the end of the tunnel has finally loomed. And now we had a very good, meaningful and frank meeting in Alaska,” Mr Putin said. – Guardian
