With No Ukraine Peace Deal, Trump Again Threatens Russia Sanctions

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He was unhappy about Russia’s deadly strike on a factory in Ukraine this week, he said.

“I’m not happy about it, and I’m not happy about anything having to do with that war,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, said on Friday that Russia was doing everything it could to prevent a meeting between him and Putin, while Russia’s foreign minister said the agenda for such a meeting was not ready.

Zelensky has repeatedly called for Putin to meet him, saying it is the only way to negotiate an end to the war.

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Zelensky accused Russia of stalling.

“The meeting is one of the components of how to end the war,” he said on Friday at a press conference in Kyiv with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. “And since they don’t want to end it, they will look for space to (avoid it).”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told NBC there was no agenda for such a summit.

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Asked for his response to Lavrov’s comments and what the next steps are, Trump told reporters earlier on Friday: “Well, we’ll see. We’re going to see if Putin and Zelensky will be working together. It’s like oil and vinegar a little bit.”

Trump had taken sanctions off the table in preparation for his summit in Anchorage with Putin. But at the same White House event where he mentioned possible sanctions, he showed a photograph of his meeting with Putin on the red carpet in Alaska, saying Putin wanted to attend the World Cup 2026 soccer tournament in the United States.

“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.

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During a visit to a nuclear research center on Friday, Putin said Trump’s leadership qualities would help restore U.S.-Russia relations.

“With the arrival of President Trump, I think that a light at the end of the tunnel has finally loomed. And now we had a very good, meaningful and frank meeting in Alaska,” Putin said.

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.

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Zelensky 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.

At the press conference with Rutte, Zelensky said they had discussed security guarantees for Ukraine. He said the guarantees ought to be similar to NATO’s Article 5, which considers an attack on one member of the alliance as an attack against all.

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“Robust security guarantees will be essential, and this is what we are now working on to define,” he said.