President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Russia must agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine by Aug. 8 or risk sanctions, accelerating a deadline that was previously up in the air.
Trump in July set a 50-day deadline for the agreement with Ukraine, threatening tariffs if a deal was not made. On Monday, during his meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, he said he was shortening this deadline to “10 or 12 days.”
Aboard Air Force One on Tuesday, on his way back to the United States, Trump said the clock was ticking and it was “10 days from today.”
“And then we’re going to put on tariffs,” Trump added, “and I don’t know if it’s going to affect Russia, because he wants to, obviously, probably keep the war going.”
The president has flipped on his views on the war in Ukraine throughout his second administration, recently expressing he is “disappointed” with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He said Tuesday he has not yet heard from Russia about the new timeline.
“We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting in July. “He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
Trump’s push for a ceasefire in the war is part of his push to be seen as an international peacemaker, a role he said will be his “proudest legacy” in his second inaugural address.
The president has lamented the lack of deal in the war, with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine beginning in 2022 while Joe Biden was president. Before his inauguration, Trump insisted he would end the war in Ukraine on day one of his second term, blaming Biden for allowing the war to begin.
