WASHINGTON (news agencies) — President Donald Trump voiced anger Sunday at Russian President Vladimir Putin for comments he made about Ukraine and its president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
In an early Sunday morning phone interview with NBC News, Trump was referencing comments Putin made Friday about temporarily putting Ukraine under external governance. Trump said he was “angry, pissed off” when Putin “started getting into Zelenskyy’s credibility.”
Putin repeated his claim that Zelenskyy, whose term expired last year, lacks the legitimacy to sign a peace deal. Under Ukraine’s constitution it is illegal for the country to hold national elections while it’s under martial law.
“If a deal isn’t made, and if I think it was Russia’s fault, I’m going to put secondary sanctions on Russia,” Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker, adding that there would be “a 25 to 50-point tariff on all oil.”
“Anybody buying oil from Russia will not be able to sell their product, any product, not just oil, into the United States,” he said.
Nonetheless, Trump reiterated that he and Putin have a “very good relationship,” and later Sunday in comments to reporters on Air Force One, he shifted some of his criticism to Zelenskyy.
“He’s trying to back out of the rare earth deal,” Trump said, referring to an agreement that would provide the U.S. with access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals. “If he does that, he’s got some problems. Big, big problems.”
“We made a deal on rare earth. And now he’s saying, well you know, I want to renegotiate the deal,” Trump said en route from Florida to Washington. “He wants to be a member of NATO. He was never going to be a member of NATO. He understands that.”
The U.S. has been pushing for a comprehensive ceasefire deal between Russia and Ukraine to peacefully end their 3-year-old war.
Russia has effectively rejected a U.S. proposal for an immediate and full 30-day halt in the fighting, and the feasibility of a partial ceasefire on the Black Sea was thrown into doubt after Kremlin negotiators imposed far-reaching conditions.
Trump’s comments on Putin come after weeks of intense pressure on Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire.
Meanwhile, Russian drones hit a military hospital, shopping center and apartment blocks in Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv, killing two people and wounding dozens.
Ukraine’s General Staff denounced the “deliberate, targeted shelling” of the military hospital late Saturday. Among the casualties were service members who were undergoing treatment, it said. Regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said those killed were a 67-year-old man and a 70-year-old woman.
According to Ukrainian government and military analysts, Russian forces are preparing to launch a fresh military offensive in the coming weeks to maximize pressure on Kyiv and strengthen the Kremlin’s negotiating position in ceasefire talks.
Ukraine’s air force reported that Russia fired 111 exploding drones and decoys in the latest wave of attacks overnight into Sunday. It said 65 of them were intercepted and another 35 were lost, likely having been electronically jammed.
Zelenskyy said Sunday that over the past week “most regions of Ukraine” came under Russian attack. Writing on X, he said “1,310 Russian guided aerial bombs, over 1,000 attack drones — mostly ‘Shaheds’ — and nine missiles of various types, including ballistic ones” had been launched against Ukraine.
Zelenskyy also repeated his assertion that “Russia is dragging out the war,” echoing comments he made Thursday in Paris that Russia is prolonging ceasefire talks “just to buy time and then try to grab more land.”
Russia’s Ministry of Defense, meanwhile, said its air defense systems shot down six Ukrainian drones. It also claimed Sunday that its troops had taken control of a village in Ukraine’s partly occupied Donetsk region. The Russian claim could not be independently verified, and Ukraine did not comment.
With reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine.
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