To his credit, Donald Trump has been very patient with both Russia and Ukraine during these peace deal negotiations. Let’s not forget, Trump said he would have this deal done on day one of his administration or before, so this has been a political disaster for him.
Now, however, it would appear that his patience has finally run out.
There were reports that Donald Trump was trying to force Ukraine to give up an entire region of the country, but Trump denied that it had ever been discussed.
However, Trump did say that a reasonable deal could include territories being decided by a current front-line freeze.
A statement was then released by 11 leaders, including UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, that “strongly” supported that suggestion by Trump. Even Ukrainian President Zelensky said he would agree to such a deal.
The only party that was not on board was Russia, and at that moment, Trump pretty much decided he was done playing games with Putin.
After that announcement by Russia, Trump decided to cancel his upcoming scheduled meeting with Putin in Hungary, no longer believing that Putin is serious about wanting peace.
The White House stated that Trump "feels as though, unfortunately, from the Russian side as of late, he has not seen enough interest in enough action in terms of moving the ball forward toward peace.
"And so a meeting between these two leaders is not completely off the table. I think the president and the entire administration hopes that one day that can happen again, but we want to make sure that there's a tangible positive outcome out of that meeting, and that it's a good use of the president's time."
Then Trump dropped the hammer on Russia.
On Tuesday afternoon, the administration announced that it was ramping up sanctions against Russia.
The release stated, “Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is imposing further sanctions as a result of Russia’s lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine.
“Today’s actions increase pressure on Russia’s energy sector and degrade the Kremlin’s ability to raise revenue for its war machine and support its weakened economy.”
I really like this move by Trump, only I wish he had done it sooner. I think Putin has been playing games for months, hoping he could lure Trump into getting Ukraine to give up massive chunks of territory just to get the war over with. If I were Trump, I would be giving Ukraine long-range missiles and whatever else it needed, demanding NATO nations do the same to allow Ukraine to attack Russia within its borders and really put pressure on Putin for a peace deal. No mercy!
