US President Donald Trump said on Friday that members of his administration are “already talking” with Russian officials about ending the war in Ukraine, the first time the new president has confirmed discussing the war with the Kremlin since taking office on Jan. 20.
He did not disclose who within his administration has been part of the discussions, which Trump called “very serious,” or whether the talks had resulted in any decisions.
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“We will be speaking, and I think will perhaps do something that’ll be significant,” Trump said an Oval Office exchange reported by the Associated Press. “We want to end that war. That war would have not started if I was president.”
When asked specifically if he had already spoken directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump demurred. “I don’t want to say that,” he told reporters.
Ukrainian officials have expressed concern over the prospect of Trump holding bilateral talks between the US and Russia without Kyiv’s involvement. “Talking about Ukraine without us — it is dangerous for everyone,” Zelensky said in an interview on Saturday.
ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, February 2, 2025
Since his inauguration, Trump has repeatedly blamed former President Joe Biden for the war in Ukraine, a sentiment that Putin echoed in recent comments on state TV. “We always had a business-like, pragmatic but also trusting relationship with the current US president,” Putin said.
“I couldn’t disagree with him that if he had been president if they hadn’t stolen victory from him in 2020, the crisis that emerged in Ukraine in 2022 could have been avoided.”
However, in a Jan. 22 post on the American president’s personally owned social media network, Truth Social, he appeared to issue a rare threat to the Kremlin. “Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE,” he wrote.
“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.” He added that Russia could choose “ the easy way, or the hard way.”
Trump has recently used sky-high tariffs to pressure allies to heed his ‘America First’ objectives.
A short-lived tariff war with Colombia exploded when President Gustavo Petro rejected two planes of deported immigrants, requesting that they be treated with more dignity and respect when being repatriated. Trump responded immediately by imposing a 25% tariff on all goods coming into the US, to which Colombia imposed a matching tariff on American goods coming into Colombia – before Petro backed off and accepted return migrants on Trump’s terms, ending the dispute and reversing the tariffs.
On Saturday, Trump announced new tariffs on the US’s biggest trading partners – Canada, Mexico, and China.
The 25% tariffs on America’s neighbors are purportedly meant to force Mexico to stem the flow of illegal immigrants across the southern border and to spur Canada to stop fentanyl from crossing the northern border, the White House said – without offering any clear objectives that allies can meet for the tariffs to be lifted.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced late Saturday that Canada would immediately match the 25% tariffs on $30 billion in American goods coming into the US.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum also railed against the retaliatory tariffs, saying the country would respond in kind, but did not share any details on the rates.
China faces an additional 10% tariff on all imported goods and responded by saying they would file a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization.
Trump’s swift action in levying these tariffs against allies may put more pressure to negotiate on the Kremlin after the US president’s explicit threats online of a trade war with Russia if Putin does not sit down for fair peace talks with Ukraine and the US.
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