Donald Trump has threatened tougher sanctions against Russia after its heaviest aerial bombardment on Ukraine since the war began.<\/p>\n
Sunday\u2019s strikes killed four people, including a mother and her baby, and damaged Ukraine\u2019s main government building in Kyiv for the first time.<\/p>\n
The attack \u2013 which Ukraine said involved at least 810 drones and 13 missiles \u2013 has led to growing calls for stronger Western action against President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n
Kremlin\u2019s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that no sanctions would ever be able to force Russia to \u201cchange the consistent position that our president has repeatedly spoken about\u201d.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters after the bombardment, the US president said he was \u201cnot happy with the whole situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has previously threatened harsher measures against Russia, but not taken any action when Putin ignored his deadlines and threats of sanctions.<\/p>\n
Asked on on Sunday if he was prepared to move to the \u201csecond phase\u201d of punishing Moscow, Trump replied: \u201cYeah, I am,\u201d though gave no details.<\/p>\n
The threat follows remarks from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who said Washington was prepared to escalate economic pressure but needed stronger European backing.<\/p>\n
In an interview with NBC, Bessent said that, if EU nations increased sanctions and secondary tariffs on countries which buy Russian oil, \u201cthe Russian economy will be in total collapse, and that will bring President Putin to the table\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cWe are in a race now between how long can the Ukrainian military hold up, versus how long can the Russian economy hold up.\u201d<\/p>\n
So far, Washington\u2019s most aggressive measure has been a 50% tariff on imports from India, imposed last month in response to Delhi\u2019s continued purchases of Russian oil. Trump has floated the idea of extending such secondary sanctions to other countries, but has yet to follow through.<\/p>\n
European leaders are expected to travel to Washington early this week to discuss ways of ending the war, Trump has said<\/p>\n
\u201cCertain European leaders are coming over to our country on Monday or Tuesday individually,\u201d Trump said, without specifying which leaders. He also signalled that he would speak with Putin in the next couple of days.<\/p>\n
In an interview with ABC News, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky urged European nations to fully stop buying Russian energy.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cWe have to stop [buying] any kind of energy from Russia, and by the way, anything, any deals with Russia. We can\u2019t have any deals if we want to stop them.\u201d He praised Trump\u2019s tariff strategy as \u201cthe right idea\u201d to cut off Moscow\u2019s revenues.<\/p>\n
Since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in March 2022, Russia has earned around $985bn (\u00a3729bn) of oil and gas, according to the think tank the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.<\/p>\n
China and India have been the largest buyers, while the EU has significantly reduced \u2013 but not entirely halted \u2013 purchases. Brussels has pledged to phase out all Russian energy imports by 2027.<\/p>\n
Despite mounting sanctions, Russia is working to expand its markets. At a meeting in Beijing last week, Moscow said it would increase supplies of gas to China.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, OPEC+, the group of oil-producing nations that includes Russia, has agreed to boost production, a move that could drive down global oil prices and complicate Western efforts to squeeze Moscow\u2019s finances.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Donald Trump has threatened tougher sanctions against Russia after its heaviest aerial bombardment on Ukraine since the war began. Sunday\u2019s strikes killed four people, including a mother and her baby, and damaged Ukraine\u2019s main government building in Kyiv for the first time. The attack \u2013 which Ukraine said involved at least 810 drones and 13 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121065\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}