“I think I will decide what we will do. And this will be a very important solution. Either it is large -scale sanctions, or large -scale tariffs, or one and another. Or I will not do anything and say“ this is your war, ”Trump said.
Trump:
I Will Make a Very Important Decision in Two Weeks if the Ukraine Is Not Settled.
We Will See Ceether or Not We Impose Massive Sanction or We Do Nothing. pic.twitter.com/u7gigjvgqg
– Clash Report (@clashreport) August 22, 2025
To the question, what to expect if the illegitimate president of the aggressor of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin does not sit at the negotiating table with the head of the Ukrainian state Vladimir Zelensky to stop the war, Trump replied that he would understand whose fault it is.
“If there are reasons, I will understand this. We will see if they have a meeting … And if not, why didn’t they meet? Because I told them to hold a meeting. But I will know in two weeks that I am going to do. There are pretty good ideas,” the American president emphasized.
Context
In July Trump He threatened that if Putin does not conclude a peace agreement with Ukraine within 50 days, The United States will introduce secondary 100 percent duties against the Russian Federation. In addition, the US president approved an agreement according to which NATO allies will be able to buy weapons from the USA for Ukraine. The media also wrote that Trump can give Ukraine a weapon that will reach Moscow.
On August 18, in Washington, a meeting of Trump and European leaders took place, including was Zelensky. They talked about guarantees of security and the upcoming meeting of Zelensky with Putin, as well as their trilateral meeting with Trump. On the same day, the US President called Putin, and later stated that he began organizing a meeting between him and Zelensky. However, the Kremlin began to put forward conditions.
The White House was repeated on August 19 that Putin agreed to a bilateral meeting, but after that the Russian Foreign Ministry once again said that negotiations at the highest level “needed to prepare the most thoroughly.”
The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made several statements (in particular about the alleged protection of “Russian people”, about the deprivation of the grounds for recognizing the independence of Ukraine and on the participation of the Russian Federation in discussing guarantees of the security of Ukraine), which, according to media assessment, actually destroyed Russia's negotiations with the United States and called into question the prospects for peace negotiations of Ukraine and the Russian Federation.
Zelensky said that his bilateral meeting with Putin should take place in “neutral” Europe. The head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andrei Ermak in an interview with Putin, published in an interview on August 21, said there are several options for meeting Zelensky with Putin, among them – Geneva, Istanbul, Vatican, Saudi Arabia.
