Donald Trump has given Russia “10 or 12 days” to reach a peace deal with Ukraine.
The US president slashed the 50-day deadline he had issued to Moscow earlier this month to end Europe’s biggest war since 1945 or face “severe” tariffs on its trade.
Ukraine welcomed Mr Trump’s intention to bring the deadline forward by almost a month and his admission he was “very disappointed” by Russian president Vladimir Putin and “not so interested in talking [to him] any more”.
“I’m going to make a new deadline of about 10 or 12 days from today. There’s no reason in waiting … I want to be generous, but we just don’t see any progress being made,” Mr Trump said beside British prime minister Keir Starmer in Scotland on Monday.
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Earlier, as the leaders stood on the steps of his hotel in Turnberry, Mr Trump said: “We thought we had it settled numerous times. And then president Putin goes out and starts launching rockets into some city like Kyiv and kills a lot of people in a nursing home or whatever. You have bodies lying all over the street, and I say, ‘That’s not the way to do it’.”
Mr Trump said he had “spoken to president Putin a lot. I always got along with him very well”, but was now “very disappointed in him”.
Since Mr Trump started his second term at the White House in January, Ukraine has urged him to put more pressure on Russia to abandon its full-scale invasion of almost three-and-a-half years, which he said he would be able to end “in one day” during his re-election campaign.
Kyiv agreed in March to a US proposal for a full 30-day ceasefire if Russia also pledged to stop fighting, but over summer the Kremlin’s forces have intensified ground attacks on eastern Ukraine and drone and missile strikes across the country.
Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, quickly thanked Mr Trump on social media “for standing firm and delivering a clear message of peace through strength” and for “shortening the timeline he gave Putin, because he believes the answer is obvious”.
“Putin respects only power – and that message is loud and clear. When America leads with strength, others think twice,” Mr Yermak said.
Mr Zelenskiy is pushing for a peace summit with Putin, but says Ukraine will not accept terms that would amount to capitulation – including demands currently set out by Moscow.
The Kremlin insists it respects Mr Trump’s push for peace and is willing to hold talks, but only when Ukraine accepts the permanent occupation of five of its regions, abandons any hope of joining Nato and complies with other restrictions on its sovereignty.
Mr Trump announced on July 14th he would impose “severe” tariffs on some Russian exports and on countries that buy them unless a peace deal was agreed within 50 days.
The main target would be oil, which is still a huge revenue-earner for the Kremlin and a major contributor to its war chest.
Russia’s army enjoys a large advantage over Kyiv’s forces in numbers and arms supplies and it continues to make slow gains in parts of eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian troops are holding their ground in most areas and claim to have retaken some territory in the northern border region of Sumy in recent days.
Russian national airline Aeroflot cancelled dozens of flights on Monday due to what it called an IT fault.
Two pro-Ukrainian hacker groups said they had destroyed thousands of the company’s servers and stolen a vast amount of passenger and other data.
