President Donald Trump speaks at a Kennedy Center Honors reception on December 6, 2025, in Washington, D.C.
| Photo Credit: AP

U.S. President Donald Trump. File
| Photo Credit: AP

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday (January 22, 2025) he would add new tariffs to his sanctions threat against Russia if the country does not make a deal to end its war in Ukraine, and added that these also could be applied to “other participating countries.”

In a post on Truth Social, President Trump modified comments he made on Tuesday that he would likely impose sanctions against Russia if President Vladimir Putin refused to negotiate an end to the nearly three-year conflict.

Also read | Putin, Xi discuss their close ties in chat after Trump’s inauguration

“If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries,” President Trump said.

Russia’s embassy in Washington and mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

His post did not identify the countries that he considered participants in the conflict, or how he defined participation.

The Biden administration had already heaped heavy sanctions on thousands of entities in Russia’s banking, defense, manufacturing, energy, technology and other sectors since the conflict began in February 2022.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Treasury hit Russia’s energy revenues with its hardest sanctions yet, targeting oil and gas producers Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegas, as well as 183 vessels that are part of the so-called dark fleet of tankers aimed at evading other Western trade curbs.

President Trump has sought to use the threat of tariffs to achieve non-trade goals, including threatening Mexico, Canada and China with duties to push them to stop illegal migration and the flow of the deadly opioid fentanyl into the United States.

Also read | Trump says he is considering 10% tariff on China starting February 1

Those three countries are the top U.S. trading partners. But Russia is far down the list, with U.S. imports from Russia falling to just $2.9 billion through the first 11 months of 2024 from $29.6 billion in 2021.

The U.S. stopped importing Russian oil after its invasion, but still imports some precious metals, including palladium used in automotive catalytic converters.

As for other participants, the Biden administration had imposed sanctions against entities in China, North Korea and Iran for aiding Russia’s war effort.

President Trump said he was “going to do Russia, whose Economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big FAVOR. Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War!”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
| Photo Credit: AP

Russia sees no point in a weak ceasefire to freeze the war in Ukraine but Moscow wants a legally binding deal for a lasting peace that would ensure the security of both Russia and its neighbours, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday (December 26, 2024).

“A truce is a path to nowhere,” Mr. Lavrov said, adding that Moscow suspected such a weak truce would be simply used by the West to re-arm Ukraine.

“We need final legal agreements that will fix all the conditions for ensuring the security of the Russian Federation and, of course, the legitimate security interests of our neighbors,” Mr. Lavrov said.

He added that Moscow wanted the legal documents drafted in such a way to ensure “the impossibility of violating these agreements.”

Reuters reported last month that President Vladimir Putin is open to discussing a Ukraine ceasefire deal with Donald Trump but rules out making any major territorial concessions and insists Kyiv abandon ambitions to join NATO.

Mr. Putin said last week that he was ready to compromise over Ukraine in possible talks with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on ending the war and had no conditions for starting talks with the Ukrainian authorities.

Mr. Putin said the fighting was complex, so it was “difficult and pointless to guess what lies ahead… (but) we are moving, as you said, towards solving our primary tasks, which we outlined at the beginning of the special military operation.”

Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly said he will end the war, said on Sunday that Mr. Putin wanted to meet with him. Russia says there have been no contacts with the incoming Trump administration.

Mr. Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Retired Lieutenant-General Keith Kellogg, will travel to Kyiv and several other European capitals in early January as the next administration tries to bring a swift end to the Russia-Ukraine war, according to two sources with knowledge of the trip’s planning.

“I really hope that the administration of Mr. Trump, including Mr. Kellogg, will get involved in the root causes of the conflict. We are always ready for consultations,” Mr. Lavrov said.

Mr. Putin says an arrogant West led by the United States ignored Russia’s post-Soviet interests, tried to pull Ukraine into its orbit since 2014 and then used Ukraine to fight a proxy war aimed at weakening – and ultimately destroying – Russia.

After a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan Revolution, Russia annexed Crimea and began giving military support to pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

The West says Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine was an imperial-style land grab by Moscow that has strengthened the NATO military alliance and weakened Russia.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday that Ukraine’s membership of NATO is “achievable”, but that Kyiv will have to fight to persuade allies to make it happen.

Moscow says the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO was one of the principal justifications for its invasion. Russia has said it any NATO membership for Ukraine would make any peace deal impossible.

Moscow:

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday that Ukraine’s proposed peace plan as well as the latest UN proposals to revive the Black Sea grain initiative were both “not realistic.”

Lavrov spoke at a press conference after a week of intense global diplomacy at the annual gathering of world leaders at UN headquarters in New York where Ukraine and its Western allies sought to drum up support for Kyiv.

“It is completely not feasible,” Lavrov said of a 10-point peace blueprint promoted by Kyiv. 

“It is not possible to implement this. It’s not realistic and everybody understands this, but at the same time, they say this is the only basis for negotiations.”

He said the conflict would be resolved on the battlefield if Kyiv and its Western allies stuck to that stance.

Lavrov added that Moscow left the Black Sea grain initiative because promises made to Russia – including removing sanctions on a Russian bank and reconnecting it to the global SWIFT system – had not been met.

He said the latest UN proposals to revive that export corridor for Ukrainian agricultural products were “simply not realistic”.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)