Trump renews sanctions threat as Russia says no Putin-Zelensky meeting planned
By Dasha Litvinova
Washington: US President Donald Trump has renewed a threat to impose further sanctions on Russia if there is no progress towards a peaceful settlement in Ukraine in two weeks, showing frustration at Moscow a week after his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska.
“I’m going to make a decision, and 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,” Trump said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives in Sarov to inspect a nuclear weapons research facility on Friday.Credit: AP
His comments came as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said there was “no meeting planned” between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Putin because the agenda for any summit was “not ready at all”.
Zelensky has repeatedly called for Putin to meet him, saying it is the only way to negotiate an end to the war. Trump had said he had begun arrangements for a Putin-Zelensky meeting after a call with the Russian leader on Monday, following their Alaska meeting.
“The meeting is one of the components of how to end the war,” Zelensky 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].”
Zelensky, meanwhile, has dropped his demand for a lengthy ceasefire as a prerequisite for a leaders’ meeting, though he has previously said Ukraine cannot negotiate under the barrel of a gun.
He said that he and Rutte had discussed security guarantees for Ukraine, potentially similar to NATO’s Article 5, which considers an attack on one alliance member as an attack against all.
Speaking to NBC News in a recorded interview, Lavrov said Putin was ready to meet Zelensky, but only after key issues were first worked out by senior officials. That could involve a protracted negotiating process because the two sides remain far apart.
“Putin is ready to meet when the agenda is ready for a summit, and this agenda is not ready at all,” Lavrov said, echoing Moscow’s established rhetoric about a leaders’ meeting being impossible unless certain conditions were met.
Asked for his response to Lavrov’s comments and what the next steps could be, Trump told reporters at a White House event on Friday, Washington time: “Well, we’ll see. We’re going to see if Putin and Zelensky will be working together. It’s like oil and vinegar, a little bit.
“It’ll be interesting to see. If they don’t, why didn’t they have a meeting because I told them to have a meeting. But I’ll know what I am going to do in two weeks.”
Trump had taken sanctions off the table ahead of the Anchorage meeting with Putin. But at the same White House event where he mentioned possible sanctions, he showed a photograph of his meeting with Putin, saying the Russian leader wanted to attend the FIFA World Cup 2026 soccer in the United States.
Trump displays an image of himself with Putin last week, and said the Russian leader had expressed the desire to attend the soccer World Cup in the US next year.Credit: AP
“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,” Trump said.
Trump’s comments did not address the fact that Russia was banned from international competitions such as the World Cup after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and has not taken part in qualification for the 2026 tournament, which will be hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico.
Putin hails ‘meaningful’ meeting
Meanwhile, in his first public remarks about Trump since the Alaska meeting, Putin said the president’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,” Putin said during a visit to a nuclear weapons research centre.
Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed since Russia launched its 2022 full-scale invasion. Analysts estimate that more than a million soldiers on both sides have been killed or wounded, and fighting is continuing unabated, with both sides also attacking energy facilities.
Russia has maintained its longstanding demand for Ukraine to give up land it still holds in two eastern regions as a prerequisite for peace, while proposing to freeze the front line in two more southerly regions and possibly hand back small areas in other regions.
European leaders cheered Trump’s tone at the White House meeting last Monday when he made vague promises to back European security guarantees for postwar Ukraine. But uncertainty has grown about Putin’s commitment to peace-making efforts as Russian officials raised objections about the cornerstones of the proposals up for negotiation.
Ukraine wants Western security guarantees to deter any future Russian attack, and US and European officials are scrambling to come up with detailed proposals on how that might work. Lavrov earlier this week said that making security arrangements for Ukraine without Moscow’s involvement was pointless.
“[Putin] hasn’t moderated his position in any significant way,” said Nigel Gould-Davies, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London and former British ambassador to Belarus.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, meanwhile, accused Russia of “dragging its feet”, saying it was clear that Moscow did not want peace.
“President Trump has been repeatedly saying that the killing has to stop, and Putin is just laughing, not stopping the killing, but increasing the killing,” she told the BBC.
AP, Reuters