New US president Donald Trump has threatened to impose heavy financial penalties on goods from Russia unless it agrees quickly to make a deal to end its war with Ukraine, as Kyiv said at least 200,000 European peacekeepers would be needed to safeguard any such agreement.
“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,” Mr Trump wrote on social media.
“Let’s get this war, which never would have started if I were President, over with! We can do it the easy way, or the hard way,” he wrote.
[ US, Russia and China could sideline Europe in efforts to end war, Ukraine warnsOpens in new window ]
“I’m not looking to hurt Russia. I love the Russian people, and always had a good relationship with President [Vladimir] Putin,” Mr Trump added, claiming he was doing the Russian leader “a very big FAVOR” because his “Economy is failing” and “IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE”.
He also said: “We must never forget that Russia helped us win the Second World War, losing almost 60,000,000 lives in the process.” In fact, the entire Soviet Union – including Russia, Ukraine and 13 other republics – lost about 27 million soldiers and civilians.
Earlier, new US secretary of state Marco Rubio said it would be “the official policy of the United States that the war has to end and we’re going to do everything possible to bring that about”.
“We are going to engage in making it end in a way that is sustainable, meaning we don’t just want the conflict to end and then restart in two, three or four years down the road,” he added. “We want to bring stability.”
Russia did not immediately respond to Mr Trump’s comments, but Mr Putin has said Ukraine must accept permanent occupation of five of its regions and abandon all hope of joining Nato.
“Everything depends on the United States. If Trump is ready to see Ukraine in Nato, we will be in Nato, everyone will be in favour. If President Trump is not ready to see us in Nato, we will not be in Nato,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, suggesting that European states such as Hungary and Slovakia that now vehemently oppose such a move would bend to the US leader’s will.
He also said Kyiv would never formally accept any loss of territory to Russia: “No matter what anyone wants, even if all the allies in the world unite, we will never recognise the occupied territories… For us, they will always remain occupied territories until we liberate them.”
After urging Europe at the world economic forum in Davos to ensure it played a leading role in bringing peace to Ukraine, Mr Zelenskiy said European armies should be ready to send at least 200,000 peacekeepers to his country if it reached a deal with Russia to end the war: “It’s a minimum, otherwise it’s nothing.”
Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said that compared to the “hopelessness in every respect” of former US president Joe Biden, the return of Mr Trump to power created “at least a small window of opportunity”.
“We will probably observe a rise in domestic American tensions and perhaps even the settling of scores,” he added. “How this situation will influence the shape of the US foreign policy course is also a question that requires close attention.”
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