Ukraine: Trump and his deadlines

📅 Published: August 15, 2025

📰 Source: theindependent

Curated by AllZimNews.com

His latest display of disdain for the deadlines he sets himself began in mid-July, when he gave Russia a fifty-day deadline to agree to a ceasefire in its war against Ukraine.

A week later, in an apparent fit of temper over President Vladimir Putin’s relentless nightly attacks on Ukrainian cities, Trump moved the deadline up by a month, to August 8.

Russia’s penalty for missing that deadline was allegedly going to be American “secondary tariffs” against other countries that continue to buy Russian oil, notably China, India and Turkey. “I used trade for a lot of things, but it’s great for settling wars,” Trump boasted – only to discover, not for the first time, that his intended targets were able to push back.

Trump declared, again before the actual deadline rolled around, that India’s new tariff would be 50%, not 25%, if it didn’t stop buying heavily-discounted Russian oil.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi immediately declared that he was ready to “pay a huge price” rather than let the US dictate India’s trade policies – and Trump didn’t even try it on with China or Turkey.

So, with no leverage in Moscow, his deadline for a Russian ceasefire passed unmentioned.

Instead, he sent his favourite emissary, real estate developer Steve Witkoff, to make a new offer: a one-on-one meeting between Trump and Putin in which the two men would make a deal without the Ukrainians, the European Nato countries, or anybody else present.

Putin jumped at the chance, as it will be his first face to face meeting with a US president since 2021. (He was being boycotted because of his invasion of Ukraine, but this is presumably one of Russia’s rewards for agreeing to a “summit”. ) However, what Trump hopes to get out of it is less obvious. 🔗

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