‘Pissed Off’ Trump Threatens to Ramp Up Russia Secondary Tariffs For Dragging Feet on Ukraine Peace

President Donald Trump said he urgently wants a deal in Ukraine to save lives, threatening Russia with “secondary tariffs” on its oil trade if President Vladimir Putin doesn’t “fulfil his part of the deal”.

Russia will be hit with “secondary tariffs” — which President Trump defines as monetary sanctions on second nations that buy products from the another to discourage trade — on its oil exports if it doesn’t hurry up and agree to peace in Ukraine, a “very angry” U.S. President has warned in a series of remarks.

Speaking in the Oval Office on Monday night, President Trump explained he wants to see Russia’s Vladimir Putin make a deal because of the value of human life, the U.S. leader reminding the press pack that both Ukrainian and Russian soldiers are human beings.

Saying that pushing for peace is worthwhile to save “2,500 human beings” a week, President Trump said of his Russian counterpart: “I want to make sure that he follows through and I think he will, I don’t want to go secondary tariffs on his oil”.

President Trump reminded that secondary tariffs had already been very effective against Venezuela and said he expected the same with Russia, if his hand was forced because: “He knows I don’t play games.”

Because of this warning, President Trump said he believes Putin will ultimately stop dragging his feet and “fulfil his part of the deal”.

As previously reported, the threats of ‘tariffs’ against the customers of Russian oil to attack the Russian economy come as part of President Trump’s apparent pivot from carrot to stick for Moscow, having earlier offered concessions and cooperation to get the Kremlin to the negotiating table. He said at the weekend, per NBC that Russia trying to change the direction of travel in negotiations left him feeling “very angry, pissed off” and later on Air Force One that Putin had been “disappointing… I wasn’t happy with that”.

President Trump has also been maintaining focus on Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who attempted to re-litigate the minerals deal in front of the press at the White House in February. Responding to claims Ukraine now wants to swap minerals for NATO membership, Trump retorted in the Oval Office that this was “never discussed” and is not on the table.

Speaking on Air Force One, Trump said of that notion: “I think Zelensky, by the way, I see he’s trying to back out of the rare earth deal.

“And if he does that, he’s got some problems. We made a deal on rare earth, and now he’s saying: ‘Well, you know, I want to renegotiate the deal.’ He wants to be a member of NATO. Well, he was never going to be a member of NATO. He understands that.”