Trump has told Putin to end the “ridiculous war” in Ukraine or face new sanctions

US President Donald Trump has warned that he will impose heavy tariffs on Russian goods and more sanctions if he does not end the war in Ukraine.

Writing on his social media platform Truth Social, he said he was doing Russia and President Vladimir Putin a “very big favor” by pushing for a resolution to the war.

Trump has previously said he would negotiate a resolution to the conflict, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, in one day.

Russia has yet to respond to those responses, but senior officials have said in recent days that there is a small window of opportunity for Moscow to counter the new US administration.

Putin has repeatedly said he is ready to negotiate an end to the war, but Ukraine would have to accept the reality of Russia’s territorial gains, which are now about 20% of its land. Kyiv, on the other hand, says that it is not ready to leave its territory.

Trump said at a news conference on Tuesday that he would talk to Putin “very soon” and that he would “likely” impose more sanctions unless the Russian leader comes to the table.

But in her Truth Social post on Wednesday, she went further: “I will make Russia, whose Economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big FAVOE,” she wrote.

“Settle down now and STOP this ridiculous war! It’s going to get worse. If we don’t make a ‘deal’, and soon, I have no choice but to impose high levels of Tariffs, Tariffs and Sanctions on anything. Russia sells to the United States and many other participating countries they are.”

Continuing, he said: “Let’s end this war that would never have started if I were president! We can do it the easy way or the hard way – and the easy way is always better. It’s time to ‘DO’. A DEAL.”

Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitri Polyanskiy, told Reuters news agency that the Kremlin should know what Trump wants before the country moves forward with a deal to end the war.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the World Economic Forum on Tuesday that at least 200,000 peacekeepers would be needed under any deal.

And he told Bloomberg that peacekeeping forces for his country should include US troops to be a realistic deterrent to Russia.

“It can’t be without the United States… even if some European friends think so, no, it won’t be,” he said, adding that no one else would risk such a move without the United States.

While Ukraine’s leaders appreciate the tough-talking Trump – they have always said that Putin understands only force – the initial reaction to the US president’s comments in Kiev suggests that people are waiting for actions, not words.

Trump has not specified where, or when, additional economic sanctions might be targeted. Russian imports to the US have been on the decline since 2022 and all kinds of tough restrictions are already in place.

Today, Russia’s main exports to the US are phosphate-based fertilizers and platinum.

There was a sharp response from Ukrainians in general on social media. Many suggested that further sanctions were a weak response to the Russian aggression. But the biggest question for most is what Putin is willing to discuss in any peace talks with Ukraine.

In Moscow, meanwhile, there are signs that the Russian Kremlin may be willing to accept less than the “victory” it once envisioned, with tanks heading west as far as the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa.

TV editor Margarita Simonyan, a staunch Putin supporter, has begun to talk about “realistic” terms for ending the war, suggesting that fighting on the current front could be halted.

That would mean the four regions that Putin outlawed as Russian territory more than two years ago, like Zaporizhzhia, are still partially controlled by Kyiv.

Russian hardliners, bloggers called “Z”, are outraged by such “defeatism”.

In the social media post, Trump also expressed his threat of tariffs and tougher sanctions with words of “love” for the Russian people and emphasized his respect for Soviet losses in World War II – an almost sacred subject for Putin – although Trump grossly overstated it. numbers and seemed to think that the USSR was only Russia. In reality, millions of Ukrainians and other Soviet citizens also lost their lives.

That said, the man who previously said that Russia could “understand” Ukraine’s entry into NATO – which is tantamount to saying that Putin was provoked by Kyiv – seems to be changing his tone.

Trump’s position matters. But after 11 years of war with Russia and a history of poor peace deals, Ukrainians are not inclined to be hopeful.