The Kremlin insisted its officials “need time” to offer a full response to President Donald Trump on Tuesday following the latter’s demand Russia end its invasion of Ukraine in 50 days or face “secondary tariffs” on its trade partners.
Trump, who has increasingly expressed frustration and dismay with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and accused him of intentionally stalling peace talks with Ukraine, announced on Monday during a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte that America would facilitate the shipment of U.S. weapons to Ukraine. He also suggested that countries that still trade with Russia would have to pay tariffs to trade with America if the war did not conclude in 50 days. Such sanctions would have an outsized impact on Russia’s largest trade partners, such as China, India, and the European Union.
Putin’s top spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on Tuesday that Trump’s remarks were “very serious” and required thought to properly address.
“The latest statements from the US president are very serious. Something in them concerns President [Vladimir] Putin personally,” Peskov said during his regular briefing. “We will certainly need time to analyze the rhetoric from Washington.”
Peskov suggested that Putin could weigh in personally, but urged reporters to “wait for Putin to decide whether he will comment on that himself.”
On the issue of peace talks with Ukraine specifically, Peskov claimed that Russia could not move to end hostilities because it was still “waiting for Ukrainian proposals concerning a timeframe for a third round” of talks. Negotiations between low-level officials from both countries, which most recently occurred on June 2, have not resulted in any progress towards ending the conflict. In remarks both on Monday and throughout last week, Trump placed the blame for that stagnation squarely at the feet of Moscow, complaining that Putin did not seem to be seeking an end to war in good faith.
“I speak to [Putin a lot],” Trump told reporters in the White House on Monday. “I always hang up and say ‘well that was a nice phone call’ and then missiles are launched into Kyiv. I go home, I tell the first lady, ‘you know, I spoke to Vladimir today, we had a wonderful conversation’. And then she says ‘oh really? Another city was just hit.’”
Trump had previously described himself as “very disappointed” in Putin, lamenting, “I thought he was somebody that meant what he said. But he’ll talk so beautifully, and then he’ll bomb people at night. We don’t like that.”
Last week, he told reporters plainly, “We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, [if] you want to know the truth … He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
As a result, he said on Monday, the United States would pursue “very severe tariffs.”
“It’s very simple, and they’ll be at 100 per cent, and that’s the way it is, couldn’t be more simple. I hope we don’t have to do it,” he explained.
The United States engages in very little trade with Russia, so direct tariffs on Russian goods would likely have very little impact on the Russian economy. Like other rogue nations such as Iran, North Korea, and Cuba, Russia was left off of the master list of tariffs imposed on “Liberation Day,” April 2, for this reason.
Peskov was not the only Russian official to weigh in on Trump’s tariff threat. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, currently in China for the ongoing Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting, indicated at a press conference that Moscow was confused by Trump’s comments.
“We want to understand what is behind this statement. Fifty days. It used to be 24 hours. And 100 days,” Lavrov said, according to the Russian outlet Sputnik. “We have all been through this and really want to understand what motivates the US president.”
Lavrov suggested that the existence of low-level talks with Ukraine indicated progress.
“If our explanations, which we have repeatedly conveyed to our colleagues … if they are simply ignored, or not reported to president Trump,” he stated, “it is difficult to judge what is behind this. But to say that there is no progress and therefore 50 days … If in the week of June 22 the Ukrainian side had agreed to name the date of the third round, maybe there would already be 30 days left.”
According to Rutte, Russian officials have actively sabotaged the peace talks, including on one instance sending a historian “explaining the history of Russia since 1250” rather than allowing for actual discussion on the war.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who answers to Lavrov, more directly rejected the White House deadline.
“Any attempts to make demands, especially in the form of ultimatums, are unacceptable to us,” he reportedly declared.
Similarly, Dmitry Medvedev – a former puppet president now most well-known for repeatedly threatening to drop nuclear bombs over Europe – also feigned apathy at the White House announcement.
“The world shuddered, expecting the consequences. Belligerent Europe was disappointed. Russia didn’t care,” Medvedev wrote on the social media website Twitter, according to the Moscow Times, dismissing Trump’s remarks as “theatrical.”
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