U.S. and Russian officials have increasingly fired verbal volleys at each other publicly in recent days, as Washington’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine appear to be devolving.
President Donald Trump promised on the campaign to end the war during the first 24 hours of his presidency, and while his administration quickly made overtures to Moscow that the previous administration was unwilling to, the two sides do not appear much closer to ending the deadliest war in Europe since World War II.
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Trump warned Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly on Tuesday that he is “playing with fire,” following a multiday drone assault against Ukraine.
“What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened in Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD,” the U.S. leader added.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who is still a top security official, responded to the president’s remarks, saying in a social media post that he “only know[s] of one REALLY BAD thing — WWIII,” to which Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, responded, “Stoking fears of [World War III] is an unfortunate, reckless comment … and unfitting of a world power.”
An aide to Putin, Yury Ushakov, also said Moscow has “come to the conclusion that Trump is not sufficiently informed about what is really happening” in response to his remarks.
In the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump said it will take about two weeks to figure out if Putin is serious about ending the war or if he’s “tapping us along.”
Trump and Putin last spoke on May 19, and the comments from both sides since then have only gotten more sour.
During that two-hour call, Putin said he agreed to work with Ukraine on a memorandum that would set out the contours of a peace accord, including the timing of a ceasefire, but the United States has not received it yet.
“When President Trump spoke with President Putin a little over a week ago, the Russians said they were going to come up with what they call a memorandum, what I call a term sheet,” Kellogg said Tuesday morning on Fox & Friends. “What a term sheet means, ‘OK, this is how we get to peace.’ We got that from the Ukrainian side. We need to get that from the Russian side. Do you know what you do? You meld them together. You put them together. And say, ‘What does this look like? What is not acceptable, what is acceptable? Where can you go to bring them together?’ Once we get that term sheet or memorandum, then we’ll put it together, and there will be another meeting.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow “continues the development of the draft memorandum regarding the future peace treaty.”
With the verbal sparring between Washington and Moscow, the president is considering whether to apply additional sanctions on Russia, and there is bipartisan support in Congress for him to do so. Even Republican officials who were supportive of Trump’s diplomacy push have now signaled that they believe it is time for the U.S. to apply additional pressure on Russia.
Trump said he was hesitant to impose new sanctions on Russia if it would negatively affect the ceasefire negotiations.
John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, said Tuesday that the gradual application of sanctions has been ineffective over the course of Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, which began in February 2022.
“The European package they’re considering is their 17th package of sanctions,” Bolton said on CNN. “Now, one question is, if they could find that many sanctions, why weren’t they imposed in February of 2022, when the war started? This kind of gradual escalation of economic sanctions obviously doesn’t work, and the Russians are taking advantage of them.”
Moscow has made demands for what it would take to end the war, and the requirements resemble Ukraine giving it nearly everything it sought when it launched the war, even things it would not be able to achieve on the battlefield.
The Kremlin wants international recognition for the Ukrainian territory Russia has annexed, wants to demilitarize Ukraine, including a new government in Kyiv. It also wants a buffer zone between Russia and Ukraine and to ensure NATO does not expand closer to its borders, including by giving Ukraine membership.
“I’ve always said that [Putin] wants ALL of Ukraine, not just a piece of it, and maybe that’s proving to be right,” Trump said Sunday in a social media post.
The Trump administration had signaled a willingness to comply on some of those subjects, such as recognizing Russian-occupied territory and disallowing Ukraine from NATO, even though the alliance said last year that Kyiv was on the “irreversible path” toward membership. However, that has not swayed the Russians to act.
If the U.S. wants to further apply pressure on Putin, it could increase the lethal aid it is providing to Ukraine, or it could lift the restrictions the U.S. has put in place on Ukraine regarding the use of U.S.-provided weapons deep in Russian territory.
Bolton, who is not on good terms with the president, said he would encourage Trump to tell NATO, “We’ve wasted three years not providing military aid in a strategic fashion. We have been deterred by these Russian threats of a wider war. That’s over. We’re going to have a strategy now that will regain full sovereignty and territorial integrity for Ukraine. I don’t expect Trump to do it, but that’s the right thing to do.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced Monday that Western allies, including France, Germany, and the U.S., are lifting those restrictions, though U.S. State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce declined to comment on the subject on Tuesday.
A primary feature of the administration’s strategy in ending the war was to restart conversations between Moscow and Washington, which had largely gone stagnant under former President Joe Biden’s administration. The president also has been quick to criticize Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which signaled that Trump’s priority, unlike Biden’s, was not to secure a Ukrainian victory but to end the conflict by any means.
The low point in the Trump-Zelensky relationship occurred when the two got into a public argument in the Oval Office with Vice President JD Vance. Zelensky, who had traveled to Washington to sign a minerals deal, was kicked out of the White House before the deal was signed, and the U.S. temporarily stopped sharing key intelligence with Ukraine’s military.
The two sides have finalized the agreement, and Zelensky has agreed to the U.S.-supported 30-day ceasefire, which Russia has not, but Trump has still criticized him.
TRUMP SHARPENS PUTIN CRITICISM IN WARNING AS HE WEIGHS SANCTIONS ON RUSSIA: ‘PLAYING WITH FIRE!’
“Likewise, President Zelenskyy is doing his Country no favors by talking the way he does. Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don’t like it, and it better stop,” Trump said Sunday in a social media post, in response to comments from the Ukrainian leader in which he argued that U.S. “silence” regarding Russian attacks is emboldening them.
Zelensky warned this week that “there is a lot of evidence” that Russian forces “are preparing new offensive operations” and are not interested in peace.