U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he was reducing the 50-day deadline he gave Russia over its war in Ukraine, underscoring his frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin for prolonging fighting between the two countries.
“I’m disappointed in President Putin,” Trump said, speaking alongside British Prime Minister Keir Starmer ahead of their meeting in Scotland. “I’m going to reduce that 50 days that I gave him to a lesser number because I think I already know the answer what’s going to happen.”
He did not give a new deadline.
Trump set the 50-day deadline earlier this month. The U.S. president has repeatedly voiced exasperation with Putin for continuing attacks on Ukraine despite U.S. efforts to end the war.
Before returning to the White House in January, Trump, who views himself as a peacemaker, had promised to end the three-and-a-half-year-old conflict within 24 hours.
Trump has threatened new sanctions on Russia and buyers of its exports unless an agreement is reached by early September.
But the president, who has also expressed annoyance with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has not always followed up on his tough talk about Putin with action, citing what he deems a good relationship that the two men have had previously.
“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,” Trump said. “And I say that’s not the way to do it.”
(Reporting by Andrew MacAskill and Andrea Shalal in Scotland; additional reporting by Jeff Mason and William James; writing by Susan Heavey and Jeff Mason; editing by Doina Chiacu and Mark Heinrich)