US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he would meet with a number of European leaders this week to discuss ending the war in Ukraine, as Western officials continued to condemn Russia’s largest-ever airstrike on its neighbour over the weekend.
In comments reported by Reuters, Trump said that “certain European leaders” would be visiting the US “individually” on Monday or Tuesday to discuss an end to the war, but provided no further details.
The US president added that he planned to speak with Vladimir Putin by phone “over the next couple of days”, in what would be his seventh call with the Russian leader since taking office in January.
Trump also said that he would be ready to move to the “second phase” of sanctions against Moscow in the wake of Russia’s largest-ever airstrike on Ukraine on Sunday, which killed at least five people and damaged a key government building in central Kyiv.
While Trump did not say what measures second phase sanctions might entail, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested to NBC News that Washington and the EU could work together to impose “secondary tariffs on the countries that buy Russian oil”, which would force the Russian economy into “total collapse” and “bring President Putin to the table”.
In a Friday interview with ABC News that was broadcast following the attacks on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that imposing secondary tariffs on countries purchasing Russian oil and gas was the “right idea”.