U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he would likely impose sanctions on Russia if its president, Vladimir Putin, refuses to negotiate about ending the war in Ukraine.
Trump gave no details on possible additional sanctions. The United States has already sanctioned Russia heavily for its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Trump said his administration was also looking at the issue of sending weapons to Ukraine, adding his view that the European Union should be doing more to support Ukraine.
“We’re talking to (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelenskiy, we’re going to be talking with President Putin very soon,” Trump said. “We’re going to look at it.”
Trump said he had pressed Chinese President Xi Jinping in a call to intervene to stop the Ukraine war.
“He’s not done very much on that. He’s got a lot of… power, like we have a lot of power. I said, ‘You ought to get it settled.’ We did discuss it.”
(Reporting by Steve Holland in Washington; writing by Andrea Shalal and Jeff Mason; Editing by Leslie Adler and Matthew Lewis)