NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said the coordinated move was about “changing the calculus” and pushing the Kremlin back to negotiations. “These sanctions are the result of difficult but necessary discussions,” Rutte said after meeting Trump in Washington.
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Trump Sanctions: “These Are Tremendous”
President Trump defended his decision, describing the sanctions as “very big ones that are against their two big oil companies.” Speaking from the Oval Office, he said, “We hope that they won’t be on for long. We hope that the war will be settled.”
He added, “Hopefully [Putin] will become reasonable, and hopefully [Zelensky] will be reasonable. You know, it takes two to tango.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised the move, saying, “The result of this meeting: we have sanctions on Russian energy, we don’t have a meeting in Hungary without Ukraine — and that’s not bad.”
A New Phase in U.S.-Russia Relations
While the sanctions have bolstered Trump’s image as a decisive global actor, Russian officials have described them as an “act of war.” Former President Dmitry Medvedev declared, “The decisions taken are an act of war against Russia. And now Trump has fully aligned himself with loony Europe.”
