… or else it’s going to get personal as well as financial. Donald Trump has shifted on his approach to the Russian invasion of Ukraine after six months of attempting to incentivize Vladimir Putin into honest talks to end the war. Over the last couple of weeks, Trump has reinstated weapons shipments previously held up to Ukraine and spoken in clearly unhappy terms with Putin’s refusal to work toward an end to hostilities, and he’s been getting more vocal about it of late.
Today, he made his personal displeasure known:
Trump on Putin:
“I go home and I tell the First Lady, ‘you know I spoke to Putin today, we had a wonderful conversation,’ she says ‘oh really? Another [Ukrainian] city was just hit.’” pic.twitter.com/pj6C7oEWor
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) July 14, 2025
Trump had put a lot of effort into claiming that he could talk Putin into peace. These remarks strongly suggest that Trump has taken offense at Putin’s refusal to meaningfully engage, and Trump has decided enough is enough. Not only will the US retaliate with sanctions and tariffs, Trump declared today, but the US will supply NATO with both defensive and offensive weapons that NATO can then give to Ukraine, if they so choose:
President @realDonaldTrump: “We are very, very unhappy with [Russia], and we’re going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don’t have a deal in 50 days, tariffs at about 100%.” pic.twitter.com/A4buqgu27a
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) July 14, 2025
President Trump threatened new tariffs on Russia and turned up the pressure on two of America’s largest trading partners. U.S. stocks were little changed.
The U.S. will impose tariffs of up to 100% on Russia if it doesn’t agree to halt hostilities in Ukraine within 50 days, Trump said Monday.
Separately, the European Union said it would hold off on retaliatory tariffs after Trump threatened to slap 30% tariffs on EU and Mexican goods. EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič said he intended to speak with his U.S. counterparts Monday.
The US does not do a lot of business with Russia, especially since the start of the war. Most American businesses pulled out of Russia in 2022, and trade between the US and Russia is relatively low. Retaliatory tariffs by the EU would be more significant, especially given Russia’s need for hard currency and Europe’s need for cheap energy. The much bigger problem for Putin will come with the renewed and intensified arms transfers to Ukraine, via proxy or not:
President Donald Trump announced Monday that NATO allies will finance the purchase of air defense systems and other weapons for Ukraine, his most significant move yet to support Kyiv in a war with Russia he’s long hoped to end.
The weapons, worth “billions of dollars,” will be built by the U.S. defense industry and financed by European countries, Trump said.
“We’ve made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons and they’re going to be paying for them,” Trump said, noting that NATO would coordinate the weapons transfers. “They feel strongly about it and we feel strongly about it, too. But we’re in it for a lot of money and we don’t want to do it anymore.”’
This arrangement is likely designed to mollify Trump’s more isolationist base, which has seen Ukraine as more of a corrupt part of the Biden family business, fairly or not. It gives the US a different orientation to the conflict, in which we act more as a paid supplier than an aid supplier, so to speak. It allows for increased production in the US — and new jobs as a result — while we more or less claim hands-off on the decision to send those systems to Ukraine. Of course, the US is the key leading nation of NATO, so Putin will likely see this as a distinction without a difference.
That’s not the only risk Putin will run, either. Trump is talking about sending systems that Ukraine has not had in the past, including defensive systems like the Patriot anti-ballistic missile system. However, Trump is also readying offensive weapons that the US has held off on allowing Ukraine to use:
President Trump will announce a new plan to arm Ukraine on Monday that is expected to include offensive weapons, two sources with knowledge of the plans tell Axios.
Why it matters: Sending offensive weapons would be a major shift for Trump, who had until recently been at pains to say he would provide only defensive weapons to avoid escalating the conflict.
U.S., Ukrainian and European officials hope the weapons will shift the trajectory of the war and change Russian President Vladimir Putin’s calculations regarding a ceasefire.
Putin is likely to respond to that with his usual strategy of “escalating to de-escalate,” just as he often threatened while the Joe Biden Regency occupied the White House. At times, Putin hinted that he might use tactical nukes if Ukraine used offensive weapons that could reach Moscow, and that he might retaliate against the US and NATO. However, Putin has already been escalating over the last few months, using drones in massive waves to attack civilian targets in the Ukrainian rear.
Now, of course, Putin is dealing with Trump, the author of Operation Midnight Hammer, not the authors of the Kabul bug-out. Trump just made clear that he will exercise American power to protect American interests without apology or even much of an explanation. He did that after giving Iran a 60-day deadline and waited twelve more days to drop the “midnight hammer,” which underscores the seriousness with which Trump takes his deadlines. Trump won’t use military action as part of his 50-day “or else,” but if Putin tries military retaliation as a response, Trump will clearly react in ways that Putin can’t afford. Trump’s decision to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities within months of taking office again sent a very clear message that has long been absent in US policy about the consequences of fooling around for very long.
“Or else” finally means something again. Putin knows it, too.
