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Trump Says Losing Patience With Putin, Eying Bank, Oil Sanctions

(Bloomberg) -- US President Donald Trump said that his patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin was “running out fast” and threatened Moscow with new economic sanctions as efforts to broker ceasefire talks with Ukraine have faltered.

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“It’ll be hitting very hard on with sanctions to banks and having to do with oil and tariffs also,” Trump said Friday in an interview on Fox News.

Still, the president insisted that he had already “done a lot” to punish Russia, noting expanded tariffs he placed on India for purchasing Russian energy and argued that “this is a Europe problem, much more than our problem.”

Russia on Friday said negotiations with Ukraine were on “pause” despite Trump’s push following a meeting with Putin last month for direct talks between the Russian leader and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

“Communication channels exist, they are established, our negotiators have the opportunity to communicate through these channels, but for now, perhaps, we can talk about a pause,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday, without elaborating.

The US is expected to urge allies in the Group of Seven to imposes tariffs as high as 100% on China and India — for their purchases of Russian oil — at a meeting of finance ministers on Friday.

The US will also tell the G-7 countries they should create a legal pathway to seize immobilized sovereign Russian assets and consider seizing or using the principle of those assets to fund Ukraine’s defense, according to a US proposal seen by Bloomberg. The vast majority of the about $300 billion of Moscow’s immobilized assets are in Europe.

Earlier this week, Trump told European officials he’s willing to impose sweeping new tariffs on India and China to push Putin to the negotiating table with Ukraine — but only if nations in Europe do so as well.

Trump made the ask when he called into a meeting with senior US and European Union officials in Washington and said the US would be willing to mirror tariffs imposed by Europe on either country, Bloomberg reported earlier.