United States President Donald Trump has announced a deal to supply more weapons to Ukraine and has threatened to impose steep tariffs on Russia unless a peace deal is reached within 50 days.
The announcements on Monday marked a dramatic U-turn for US policy, as it comes weeks after the Pentagon announced it would be pausing weapons shipments to Ukraine.
But Trump has become increasingly frustrated with Russian President Vladimir Putin and hopes the weapons will help bring a swift end to Russia’s more than three-year invasion of Ukraine.
Sitting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte at the Oval Office, Trump told reporters he was disappointed in Putin and that billions of dollars of US weapons would go to Ukraine.
“We’re going to make top-of-the-line weapons, and they’ll be sent to NATO,” Trump said, adding that Washington’s NATO allies would pay for them.
The weapons would include Patriot air defence missiles Ukraine has urgently sought, he said.
“It’s a full complement with the batteries,” Trump said. “We’re going to have some come very soon, within days.”
“We have one country that has 17 Patriots getting ready to be shipped … we’re going to work a deal where the 17 will go, or a big portion of the 17 will go to the war site.”
‘Severe tariffs’
He added that if Putin failed to sign a peace deal with Ukraine, he would impose “very severe tariffs” in 50 days, including secondary tariffs of 100 percent.
“We’re going to be doing secondary tariffs,” Trump said. “If we don’t have a deal in 50 days, it’s very simple, and they’ll be at 100 percent.”
The threat to impose so-called secondary sanctions on Russia, if carried out, would be a major shift in Western sanctions policy.
Throughout the war, Western countries have cut most of their own financial ties to Moscow, but have held back from taking steps that would restrict Russia from selling its oil elsewhere. That has allowed Moscow to continue earning hundreds of billions of dollars from shipping oil to buyers such as China and India.
A White House official told the Reuters news agency that Trump was referring to 100 percent tariffs on Russian goods as well as secondary sanctions on other countries that buy its exports.
Lawmakers from both US political parties are pushing for a bill that would authorise such measures, targeting other countries that buy Russian oil. The bill would give Trump the authority to impose 500 percent tariffs on any country that helps Russia, but the chamber’s Republican leaders have been waiting for Trump to give them the go-ahead for a vote.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram that he had spoken to Trump and “thanked him for his readiness to support Ukraine and to continue working together to stop the killings and establish a lasting and just peace”.
Zelenskyy said he also had “a productive conversation” with Trump’s envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv on Monday, about strengthening Ukrainian air defences, joint arms production and purchasing US weapons in conjunction with European countries.
“We hope for the leadership of the United States, because it is clear that Moscow will not stop unless its … ambitions are stopped by force,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram.
‘Speed is of the essence’
Trump took office with a promise to end Russia’s war on Ukraine within 24 hours, and sought rapprochement with Moscow, speaking several times with Putin.
His administration has pulled back from pro-Ukrainian policies such as backing Kyiv’s membership in NATO and demanding Russia withdraw from all Ukrainian territory.
Trump has also accused Zelenskyy of prolonging the war and called him a “dictator without elections”.
But Putin has yet to accept a proposal from Trump for an unconditional ceasefire, which was quickly endorsed by Kyiv. And in recent days, Russia has launched hundreds of drones to attack Ukrainian cities, angering the US president.
Trump, who accused Putin last week of throwing a lot of “b*******” at the US, said on Monday that his shift was motivated by frustration with the Russian president.
“My conversations with him are always very pleasant … I go home, I tell the first lady: ‘I spoke to Vladimir today, we had a wonderful conversation’. She said: ‘Oh, really? Another city was just hit’.”
The US leader said he thought that “we actually had probably four times a deal” but then it “wouldn’t happen because bombs would be thrown out that night”.
Trump said that, unlike his predecessors, he was not “fooled” by Putin, and that ultimately, talk doesn’t talk. It’s got to be action … He knows the deal. He knows what a fair deal is.”
Rutte, the NATO secretary-general, commended Trump’s announcement, saying: “It will mean that Ukraine can get its hands on really massive numbers of military equipment, both for air defence, but also missiles, ammunition, etc.
“If I was Vladimir Putin today, and hear you speaking about what you were planning to do in 50 days, and this announcement, I would reconsider whether I should not take negotiations about Ukraine more seriously than I was doing at the moment.”
He said that Germany, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Canada all wanted to be a part of rearming Ukraine.
Rutte added that “speed is of the essence here”, and suggested that some weapons would be rushed to Ukraine and later replaced with purchases from the US.
Germany to play ‘decisive role’
In Kyiv, Ukrainians are cautiously viewing the announcement as a strong message of support, despite the many unknown details, according to Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands.
“If Patriot batteries really do make their way to Ukraine, then that is going to go a long way to protecting the skies over this country, as it tries to endure almost nightly massive barrages of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones,” he said from the Ukrainian capital.
There was no immediate response from Moscow.
But within Russian society, the US-NATO announcement was greeted with disappointment, said Al Jazeera’s Yulia Shapovalova.
“There were hopes when Donald Trump came into power that the conflict would end,” she said from Moscow. “People saw that Trump had some steps to bring peace to Ukraine to help finish this conflict, but now, he’s kind of lost his patience. Pro-war sources say: ‘You see, we told you that Russia didn’t have to trust Donald Trump because he was not Russia’s friend’.”
Germany, meanwhile, welcomed the new weapons deal.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, in a statement on Monday, said that Trump has “taken an important step today” and that he has assured the US leader that “Germany will play a decisive role”.
“We are doing this in our own interests,” Merz said, adding that Germany was still working with its allies to “clarify the details” of the plan.
The European Union’s top diplomat also hailed Trump’s announcement as a “positive step”.
“On the other hand, 50 days is a very long time if we see that they are killing innocent civilians every day,” Kaja Kallas told reporters in Brussels. “So, it’s clear that we all need to put more pressure on Russia to want peace, and it’s good that the Americans are taking action.”
