WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump issued Russian President Vladimir Putin an ultimatum on Wednesday – make a deal with me to end the Ukraine war or pay a hefty economic price.
Trump said he’d put all manner of taxes, tariffs and sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States and vaguely threatened secondary punishment against countries who do business with Moscow.
“We can do it the easy way, or the hard way – and the easy way is always better,” he said. “It’s time to MAKE A DEAL. NO MORE LIVES SHOULD BE LOST!!!”
The missive followed a warning from Trump the previous evening that sanctions against Russia were likely if Putin refused to enter into negotiations to end the war. Trump repeatedly pledged to quickly end the bloodshed when he was a candidate, claiming at various points that he’d do it as president-elect or within 24 hours of arriving at the White House.
But the conflict has proved harder to solve than Trump once thought — an issue he has blamed, in part, on constraints he faced in directly negotiating with Putin.
Trump told reporters during a January press conference that Putin wanted to meet with him but he felt it would be improper while Joe Biden was still in office.
The Logan Act prevents private citizens from corresponding with foreign governments with the intent of undermining U.S. foreign policy. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden quit speaking to Putin. His administration adopted the stance that the U.S. would provide military assistance to Ukraine for as long it takes to drive out Russian troops, unless Kyiv decided it wanted to change course.
Trump said Tuesday evening that Putin disrespected Biden and wouldn’t be permitted to treat him that way. He said he’d spoken with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and would be talking with Putin.
“President Zelenskyy would like to have peace. He’s told me that very strongly. He’d like to have peace, but it takes two to tango,” Trump told USA TODAY during an impromptu news conference.
As for when and where he’d meet with Putin, the president replied: “Anytime they want.”
And if Putin did not agree to enter into negotiations, Trump said he was “likely” to put sanctions on Russia.
War in Ukraine:Putin draws a nuclear red line for the West
Robert O’Brien, who served as national security adviser during Trump’s first term, said in an interview prior to the exchange that he believed the new administration would try to pressure Russia into cutting a deal by ratcheting up sanctions on the aggressor nation.
“I would expect President Trump to say, look, Vladimir Putin, if you don’t come to the table and do so quickly, the sanctions are gonna be pretty significant and devastating,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien said both sides would need to make concessions. But the former Trump national security adviser, who also served as as his special envoy for hostages affairs, did not believe the president was interested in a scenario where Putin would be able to rebuild his army and attack Ukraine in several years.
In a social media post on Wednesday, the U.S. president said he was not “not looking to hurt Russia” and emphasized that he “always had a very good relationship” with Putin prior to the start of the conflict. “We must never forget that Russia helped us win the Second World War, losing almost 60,000,000 lives in the process.”
The Russian government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump sidesteps questions about how ceasefire would work
Multiple times as a candidate, Trump declared that he could end the war in one day, going so far at a September debate as to claim he’d get it done during the presidential transition. He backed off that timeline as the inauguration drew closer, vowing instead to have the war wrapped up within the next six months.
“That’s a tough one, much tougher than it would have been before it started, I can tell you that,” Trump told reporters at a Jan. 7 news conference at Mar-a-Lago. “A deal could have been made just by an average dealmaker. A deal could have been made on that,” he added.
Last month Trump called for an immediate ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine after a meeting with Zelenskyy. But he has not said how one would work or how he plans to resolve the war. He has also declined to say whether he’d continue to provide weapons to Ukraine and sympathized with Russia over its concerns about Ukraine’s bid to join NATO.
He told reporters on Tuesday evening that he believes the European Union should be sending more money to Ukraine than the United States does.
“I mean, what are we stupid? I guess the answer is yes,” he said, answering his own rhetorical question.
An ‘excellent call’:Trump, Zelenskyy speak for first time after election with Ukraine’s future in doubt
The European Union says it has spent $145 billion since the start of the war on financial, military, humanitarian and refugee assistance to Ukraine. It has also committed to providing $20 billion in loans. The U.S. government has appropriated $175 billion to Ukraine since the beginning of the war, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Advisers to Trump have talked at various points about freezing the war along the current battle lines during talks, delaying NATO membership for Kyiv for a period of 10 to 20 years in exchange for substantial military assistance and the withdrawal of Russian troops from eastern Ukraine, and the establishment of a demilitarized zone that would be patrolled by European peacekeepers to enforce an agreement.
Nearly three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moscow occupies just under 20% of Ukraine’s territory, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
Ukraine has managed to take back some of its occupied territory, but its efforts to mount a counteroffensive have largely stalled as Russia has surged weapons and soldiers to Ukraine’s northeast Kharkiv region with support from North Korean troops.
Russia has meanwhile continued to bombard Ukrainian cities with missile and drone attacks, and it is trying to blockade its ports. Ukraine has stepped up drone attacks on Russian ships and infrastructure and also fired at targets inside Russia using long-range missiles supplied by the U.S. and European countries.
New administration looks for a negotiated end to the war
At a hearing last week, Trump secretary of state nominee Marco Rubio, who was later confirmed to the role, signaled it would be the official position of the administration that the Ukraine-Russia war be brought to an end.
He said sending unlimited aid to Ukraine for as long as it wants to keep fighting is not a realistic position and both countries would have to make concessions.
“Now what that master plan looks like is going to be hard work,” he said. “My hope is that it can begin with some ceasefire.”
The Biden administration rushed to unload aid to Ukraine during the transition amid concerns that Trump would use military assistance as a bargaining chip. A Biden administration official told USA TODAY in January that the U.S. had exhausted all the funding that Congress previously appropriated.
Trump pushes for end to the conflict:Donald Trump calls for ‘immediate’ ceasefire in Russia-Ukraine war after meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy
In an interview before the inauguration, Rep. Michael McCaul, who was chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee until early January, said he did not know whether Trump would ask Congress for additional money.
“I’m hoping that Trump sees who Putin really is, you know, in this process, and he’s not a good faith partner. He’s not a good faith negotiator,” said McCaul, a leading proponent of Ukraine aid in Congress.
Trump said at a news conference in early January that Putin sought to meet with him during the transition, but he did not think it would be appropriate to take the Russian leader up on the offer until after he had taken office.
“He can’t be thrilled, he’s not doing so well. I mean, he’s grinding it out, but most people thought that war would’ve been over in about one week and now you’re into three years,” Trump told reporters assembled in the Oval Office on Monday evening, hours after he was sworn in to his second term. “So he can’t be thrilled, it’s not making him look very good.”
Preparations for a meeting are underway, Trump national security adviser Michael Waltz told ABC News earlier this month.
“From President Trump’s perspective, you can’t enter a deal if you don’t have some type of relationship and dialog with the other side,” he said. “And we will absolutely establish that in the coming months.”
It is not entirely clear how soon the leaders plan to meet or where they would even do so. The leaders met in Helsinki the first time Trump was in office. Finland has since joined NATO and sided with Ukraine in the war.
A source familiar with the discussions that are taking place said Trump’s special envoy to Russia and Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, was likely to meet with Putin’s government first.
Before sanctions and other measures are put in place there has to be dialog, the person said, and so far, Kellogg’s conversations have been limited to Ukraine and the Europeans.
Kellogg postponed a trip he planned to make to Kyiv until after the inauguration. He did not respond to a request for comment but told Fox News during an interview in early January that he had a personal goal of wrapping the war up in 100 days.
Zelenskyy has said he planned to meet with Trump after the inauguration although it was not clear when. The pair have been in regular communication over the last few months, speaking by phone after the election and meeting in September on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Zelenskyy and Trump held talks in December while they were in Paris.
In an interview published in January with podcaster Lex Fridman, the Ukrainian president said it is “naive” to think that Putin wants to finish the war and Trump would have to pressure him to stop it. Zelenskyy said that he struck a ceasefire agreement with Putin in 2019 that Russia eventually violated after ignoring his phone calls.
Trump will be in the same situation as he was, Zelenskyy said, unless the U.S. offers serious security guarantees to Ukraine.
“Today (Putin is) afraid of Trump. But once Trump manages, for example, to do a ceasefire deal without serious security guarantees for Ukraine, he will give a pass to Putin,” Zelenskyy said. “He does not want that. I believe in what he says. But he will give Putin an opportunity, because in Putin’s head, he wants me to fight with Trump.”
‘Dictators do not go on vacation’:Zelenskyy takes an apparent dig at Congress over military aid
At a speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, in what appeared to be Zelenskyy’s first public remarks about Trump since the U.S. leader returned to office, the Ukrainian president questioned whether Trump was committed to NATO and European security more generally.
“Will President Trump even notice Europe? Does he see NATO as necessary? And will he respect EU institutions?” Zelenskyy asked an audience of leaders and global opinion shapers.
He didn’t attempt to answer his own question.
Putin is demanding that Ukraine be prohibited from ever joining NATO and continues to demand that Ukraine withdraw from territory that it has annexed, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst said.
“What Trump has put out there, while I think it’s not wonderful, it’s also not a disaster if European troops are willing to serve in between the two forces to enforce peace. That’s pretty close to a security guarantee,” said Herbst, the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.
Herbst said he believes the Europeans can be persuaded into such an agreement if they are offered their own security guarantees from the United States.
“I think Trump does not want to think about this right now, but if this became essential to get the deal, he may and that is: if the Russians start shooting at the Europeans, and Europeans shoot back, the Americans are also shooting back.”
O’Brien, the former Trump national security adviser, said, “You’d have security guarantees that are more than a scrap of paper and less than full NATO membership.”
Those could include having British and European forces on the ground. “There are significant security guarantees to get the Ukrainians what they need and protects Ukraine that are short of NATO membership. I don’t think NATO membership is the magic wand here for Ukraine,” O’Brien said.
A senior European defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue where there appears to be some division among allies about Trump’s ideas for Ukraine, said there is no scenario where a Russia-Ukraine peace deal where the latter is forced to give up territory represents “the best solution to the war.”
The official said western allies should “never approve” an agreement that sees Ukraine cede its territory to Russia, that Putin needs to be held accountable for war crimes committed in Ukraine and also pay financial reparations for damages and losses to Ukrainian infrastructure sustained during the war.
“The only good and long-term sustainable solution is a full victory for Ukraine,” the official said. The official added that if Trump’s peace plan means the conflict is “frozen” − armed conflict is brought to an end, but there’s no peace treaty or other resolving political framework − it would simply allow Russia’s military to regroup and relocate, including closer to other parts of Europe where more countries would be threatened.
The official added that the most important issue for Ukraine now is how to get it in the strongest possible position vis-a-vis Russia and to compel Putin to negotiate.
“This is the most critical part,” the official said, “and it is still unsolved.”
