By Guy Faulconbridge, Gleb Stolyarov and Lucy Papachristou
MOSCOW (Reuters) -The Kremlin on Tuesday reacted icily to Donald Trump‘s warnings to President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine, saying that recent decisions by the U.S. president and the NATO military alliance would be interpreted by Kyiv as a signal to continue the war.
Trump, sitting beside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office, on Monday, announced new weapons for Ukraine and threatened “biting” secondary tariffs of 100% on the buyers of Russian exports unless there is a peace deal in 50 days.
“The U.S. president’s statements are very serious. Some of them are addressed personally to President Putin,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “We certainly need time to analyse what was said in Washington.”
Peskov, though, added that it was already clear that decisions being made in Washington and other NATO capitals were “perceived by the Ukrainian side not as a signal for peace but as a signal to continue the war.”
Putin, who has spoken to Trump by telephone at least six times this year, has yet to comment publicly on Trump’s remarks.
But two other senior Russian officials did not hold back.
Former President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council, said Moscow did not care about Trump’s “theatrical ultimatum”, while a senior Russian diplomat, Sergei Ryabkov, suggested that giving ultimatums to Moscow was unacceptable and pointless.
Trump, who has said he wants to be seen as a “peacemaker” president, said he wanted to see the end of the war – on which he said the United States had spent $350 billion – but that he had been “disappointed” by Putin.
TRUMP ‘VERY UNHAPPY’
Trump specifically expressed frustration that Putin’s “talk” about peace was often followed by Russian strikes on major Ukrainian cities, and indicated Washington wanted to press Moscow into ending the war by sending more arms to Ukraine.
“I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy,” Trump said of Putin, a reference to former U.S. President Joe Biden calling the Russian leader “a killer” in a 2021 interview.
The Financial Times reported that Trump had privately encouraged Ukraine to step up strikes deep in Russian territory, even asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy whether he could hit Moscow if the U.S. provided long-range weapons.
Trump told the BBC that he was “not done” with Putin and that he thought a Ukraine peace deal was on the cards.
Putin ordered Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces. The United States says 1.2 million people have been injured or killed in the war.
In Moscow, state television broadcasts led with advances by Russian troops in Ukraine, of which Russian forces control just under a fifth, and an attack on Russia by Ukrainian drones which injured 18 people.
SECONDARY SANCTIONS
Kommersant, one of Russia’s most respected newspapers, invoked William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” in its front page headline to suggest betrayal: “Et tu, Trump – the main peacekeeper of Ukrainian conflict joined the ‘party of war'”.
Putin has repeatedly said he is ready to make peace – but on his terms – and that there is no point discussing a ceasefire until the details of what a peace would look like are nailed down.
In Washington, a White House official said Trump’s intention is to impose “100% tariffs on Russia” and secondary sanctions on other countries that buy oil from Russia if a peace deal is not struck in 50 days.
“We can do secondary,” Trump said. “We’re probably talking about 100 percent or something like that. We can do secondary tariffs without the Senate, without the House, but what they’re crafting also could be very good.”
Eighty-five of the 100 U.S. senators are co-sponsoring a bill that would give Trump the authority to impose 500% tariffs on any country that helps Russia.
China, India and Turkey are the biggest buyers of crude from Russia, the world’s second largest exporter of oil.
(Reporting by Lucy Papachristou in London, Gleb Stolyarov, and Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Gareth Jones)
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