Trump ‘very disappointed’ with Putin as he says he’s cutting short 50-day secondary sanctions deadline

President Donald Trump said he is “very disappointed” in Russia’s Vladimir Putin and said he’s cutting Moscow’s 50-day deadline to avoid secondary sanctions on Russian oil to between 10 and 12 days from now unless Putin brings his three-year-old war on Ukraine to an end.

The countdown for the new deadline could start “tonight or tomorrow,” according to the president.

Speaking alongside Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer on the steps of his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland, Trump complained that Putin had too often talked a good game about wanting to reach a cease-fire in the conflict only to resume bombing civilian targets in short order.

“We thought we had that settled numerous times. And then President Putin goes out and starts launching rockets into some city like Kyiv and kills a lot of people in a nursing home or whatever. You have bodies lying all over the street. And I say that’s not the way to do it,” Trump said.

“I’m very disappointed. I’m disappointed in President Putin. Very disappointed in him. So we’re going to have to look and I’m going to reduce that 50 days that I gave him to a lesser number.”

During a separate media availability alongside Starmer at the top of a bilateral meeting, Trump told reporters that new deadline would be “about 10 or 12 days from today.”

“There’s no reason in waiting … I want to be generous, but we just don’t see any progress being made,” he said.

“I’ll announce it, probably tonight or tomorrow. But there’s no reason to wait. If you know what the answer is going to be, why wait?”

Asked whether he thinks Putin has been lying to him about his intention to end the war, Trump said he did not want to use the word “lying” but went on to complain that Putin would discuss peace plans during their phone conversations only to launch new attacks on civilians thereafter.

“All I know is would have a good talk. And it seemed, on, let’s say, three occasions, it seemed that we were going to have a ceasefire and maybe peace … and all of a sudden missiles are flying into Kyiv and other places,” he said.

“And I say: ‘What’s that all about?’ I spoke to him three, four hours ago, and it looked like we were on our way. And then I’d say ‘forget it’ and I’m not going to talk anymore. You know, this has happened on too many occasions, and I don’t like it. I don’t like it.”

He later added: “So what I’m doing is we’re going to do secondary sanctions unless we make a deal, and we might make a deal … he’s got to make a deal. It’s too many people are dying.”

Trump had set a 50-day deadline starting 15 July for Putin to avoid what he described as “very severe tariffs” during a meeting in the Oval Office with Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte.

At the time, Trump said the US would be “doing secondary tariffs” at “100 per cent” if Putin didn’t meet that deadline.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick later clarified to reporters that Trump was indeed speaking of secondary sanctions on countries that purchase Russian petroleum rather than tariffs on Russian goods.

The secondary sanctions would take the form of tariffs meant to punish countries purchasing Russian oil — by taxing imports from those nations at levels as high as 100 percent.

The taxes Trump has threatened would be lower than the whopping 500 percent tariffs proposed in a bipartisan sanctions bill under consideration in Congress, but they would effectively double the cost of imports from places such as China, India and Germany as all three are major U.S. trading partners that still purchase Russian petroleum products.

Trump’s threat to move up the deadline for Putin to end the war lest he face further American sanctions is the latest in a series of moves that have collectively made up a stunning about-face in the American leader’s posture in the Russia-Ukraine war.

He entered office for his second term as a strident critic of U.S. support for Ukraine and has had a rocky relationship with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dating back to a now-infamous July 2019 phone call between the two leaders that led to the first of his two impeachment trials in the U.S. Senate. He ordered a halt to shipments of weapons to Kyiv after a disastrous Oval Office meeting with the Ukrainian president in March but resumed them after Republican lawmakers complained.

But in recent weeks Trump has become more and more upset by Putin’s refusal to engage in good-faith efforts to end the war he once bragged that he’d end within 24 hours after returning to the White House.

On 11 July after Russian drones struck a Ukrainian maternity hospital, he cryptically warned reporters that they’d be “seeing things happen” with respect to Moscow, one day after promising a “major statement” on the conflict.

That statement, made alongside Rutte during that 15 July meeting alongside Rutte, was an announcement that the US would be providing yet more arms to Ukraine through Nato allies that would be purchasing weapons and in turn providing them to Kyiv.

Trump, who had just weeks earlier claimed that Putin was interested in a deal following a marathon phone call with the Russian leader, called his counterpart “all talk” for rejecting months of U.S. efforts to broker a deal to end the war he started by ordering an invasion of Ukraine.

“I’ve been hearing so much talk. It’s all talk. It’s all talk. And then missiles go into Kyiv and kill 60 people,” he said.

And at a cabinet meeting just over a week earlier on 8 July, Trump accused Putin of of “killing a lot of people”, including many of his own soldiers to the tune of “7,000 a week.”

He said the Russian leader had “thrown a lot of bulls***” at him while continuing to prosecute the war he started in 2022.

“It’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless,” he said.

Minutes later, he told the assembled press that the US would be sending more weapons to Ukraine.