Kateryna Hirnyk08:19, 21.05.25

According to American officials, additional sanctions against Russia will hinder business development, and Trump wants to maximize economic opportunities for the United States.

US President Donald Trump said after a call with Russian leader Vladimir Putin that Russia and Ukraine must find their own solution to the war, appearing to plan to remove themselves from peace talks. Trump also backed away from his own threats to join a European pressure campaign that would include new sanctions against Russia, The New York Times reported, citing officials familiar with the matter.

“If Trump does not change his course again, then Putin will have gotten exactly what he wanted: not only an end to American pressure, but also a deep rift within NATO, between the Americans and their European allies,” the publication writes.

As one White House official told the NYT, the reason is that “additional sanctions against Russia will hinder business development, and the president wants to maximize economic opportunities for Americans.”

US officials have responded to criticism by saying that existing sanctions against Russia, imposed after the 2022 invasion, remain in place. But the implication of Trump’s conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky and the Europeans is that the era of American diplomatic efforts, new weapons for Ukraine and economic sanctions against Russia is rapidly coming to an end, the publication writes:

“Several European officials said that what they understood from this conversation was that they should not expect the United States to join them in applying additional financial pressure anytime soon.”

Trump has effectively moved on to what some European leaders believe is his real goal: normalizing relations between Washington and Moscow.

“Frustrated by slow progress and Putin’s intransigence, Trump is publicly considering walking away from the talks. And in his post on Monday, he made it clear that he wants to take the United States out of the talks and move on to making business deals with Russia,” the article says.

As the NYT notes, Trump is seeking to help American companies benefit from Russia’s energy sector and rare earth minerals, although for now the US insists that none of these deals can take place until a peace agreement is reached between Russia and Ukraine.

At the same time, informed sources say, Putin seems to understand Trump’s desire for commerce and has directed most of their conversations toward potential economic relations:

“As a result, Europe is now moving toward new sanctions, while the United States appears poised to move in the opposite direction, seeking to do without Ukraine and forge closer relations with Russia. This is precisely the split within NATO that Putin has sought to create and exploit for two decades.”

One senior European official said Trump never seemed interested in joining sanctions against Russia if it refused an unconditional ceasefire. His threats, the official said, were mostly demonstrative; the United States did not get involved in drafting any serious new sanctions.

At the same time, the differences between Americans and Europeans over support for Ukraine are likely to intensify at two upcoming summits: the Group of 7 summit in Canada in mid-June and the NATO summit in The Hague a week later, the NYT predicts.

Putin and Trump’s conversation

As a reminder, a two-hour telephone conversation took place between the US president and the head of the Kremlin on May 19. The American leader described their conversation as “wonderful”, stating that Kyiv and Moscow would immediately begin peace talks on a ceasefire.

Western media reported that Trump’s soft stance on Russia had raised concerns among European leaders , who had coordinated efforts to pressure Russia to abide by the ceasefire.

Trump later told reporters that he believed in Putin’s desire for peace , and that he was not imposing sanctions only because he did not want to harm peace talks.

(c)UNIAN 2025