Donald Trump renewed a threat to impose sanctions on Russia if there was no progress toward a peaceful settlement in Ukraine, as Moscow said there remained “no meeting planned” between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“I’m going to make a decision as to what we do 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, showing apparent frustration at Moscow a week after his meeting with Putin in Alaska.
The president said he was unhappy about a Russian strike on an American factory in Ukraine this week, which caused a fire that injured some of the facility’s employees.
The Ukrainian president said on Friday that Russia was doing everything it could to prevent a meeting between him and Putin.
Trump had said he had begun the arrangements for a Putin-Zelenskty meeting after a call with the Russian leader on Monday that followed their Alaska meeting, while Zelenskyy has repeatedly called for Putin to meet him, saying it is the only way to negotiate an end to the war.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told NBC there was no meeting planned, but Putin was “ready to meet with Zelenskyy when the agenda would be ready for a summit. And this agenda is not ready at all.”
The statement, echoing Moscow’s rhetoric about a leaders’ meeting being impossible unless certain conditions were met, was a setback for Trump, who had spent the week declaring a diplomatic breakthrough in his bid to bring Moscow and Kyiv closer to peace.
Even as Trump voiced frustration with the slow progress on a potential peace deal, he showed White House reporters a photograph of his meeting with Putin on the red carpet in Alaska, and said Putin wanted to attend the World Cup 2026 football tournament in the US.
“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.
During a visit to a nuclear research centre on Friday, Putin said there was “light at the end of the tunnel” for a restoration of US-Russia relations.
“We had a very good, meaningful and frank meeting in Alaska,” Putin said, adding “the next steps now depend on the leadership of the United States, but I am confident that the leadership qualities of the current president.”
His comments signalled Russia’s optimism that it can mend relations with the US and strike business deals, despite the lack of clear progress towards ending the Ukraine conflict.
Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Russia launched in 2022. 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 while proposing to freeze the frontline in two more southerly regions Moscow claims fully as its own and possibly hand back small pieces of other Ukrainian territory it controls.
Zelenskyy meanwhile has dropped his demand for a lengthy ceasefire as a prerequisite for a leaders’ meeting, although he has previously said Ukraine cannot negotiate under the barrel of a gun.
On Thursday, Zelenskyy had accused Russia of “trying to wriggle out of holding a meeting”, adding that Moscow wanted to continue the offensive.
The question of eventual security guarantees for Ukraine has been front and centre of the US-led diplomatic push to broker a peace deal to end the conflict.
Trump – who hosted Zelenskyy and top European leaders at the White House on Monday before making a call to Putin – said Russia had agreed to some western security guarantees for Kyiv.
But Moscow later cast doubt on any such arrangement, Lavrov saying on Wednesday that discussing them without Russia was “a road to nowhere.”
“When Russia raises the issue of security guarantees, I honestly do not yet know who is threatening them,” said Zelenskyy, who wants foreign troops in Ukraine to deter Russian attacks in the future.
With Reuters, Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press
