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Trump threatens sanctions against Russia over ‘ridiculous war’

US President Donald Trump says he will likely impose sanctions on Russia.

US President Donald Trump says he will likely impose sanctions on Russia. Photo: AAP/TND

US President Donald Trump has threatened more American sanctions, taxes and tariffs against Russia to force an end to the three-year war in Ukraine.

In a Truth Social post on Thursday (AEDT), Trump said he was going to “do Russia a favour” by urging its President Vladimir Putin to stop the “ridiculous war”.

“We can do it the easy way, or the hard way — and the easy way is always better,” Trump said.

While insisting he loved Russian people and had a good relationship with Putin, Trump said it was time to “MAKE A DEAL” and that “NO MORE LIVES SHOULD BE LOST!!!”.

“Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE,” he wrote.

“If we don’t make a ‘deal”, and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries.

“Let’s get this war, which never would have started if I were President, over with!”

Trump has previously boasted that he could end the Ukraine war in “one day”.

The US has already sanctioned Russia heavily for its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

After his inauguration, Trump said his administration was looking at the issue of sending weapons to Ukraine, adding his view that the European Union should do more to support Ukraine.

“We’re talking to [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky, we’re going to be talking with President Putin very soon,” Trump said on Tuesday.

“We’re going to look at it.”

Trump said he had pressed Chinese President Xi Jinping in a call to intervene to stop the Ukraine war.

“He’s not done very much on that. He’s got a lot of … power, like we have a lot of power. I said, ‘You ought to get it settled’. We did discuss it.”

Donald Trump

President Donald Trump’s post on Truth Social. Photo: Truth Social 

In other developments in Trump’s first week in office, there are reports that thousands of refugees who had been approved to arrive in the US are now stranded around the world.

Trump on Monday (US time) signed an executive order suspending the US’s refugee settlement program.

Meanwhile, the US military is preparing to send about 1500 additional active-duty troops to the border with Mexico, a US official said.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, did not say exactly when the troops would be deployed.

They would join the roughly 2200 active-duty and thousands of National Guard troops already on the border.

During his first term, Republican Trump ordered 5200 troops to help secure the border with Mexico.

Democratic former president Joe Biden deployed active-duty troops to the border as well.

On his first day in office on Monday, Trump declared illegal immigration a national emergency, tasking the US military with aiding border security, issuing a broad ban on asylum and taking steps to restrict citizenship for children born on US soil.

His January 20 executive order instructed the Pentagon to send as many troops as necessary to obtain “complete operational control of the southern border of the United States”.

“Within 90 days, the heads of the Defence Department and Department of Homeland Security will need to recommend whether additional actions, including invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807, might be necessary,” it said.

There were roughly 11 million immigrants in the US illegally or with a temporary status at the start of 2022, according to a US government estimate — a figure that some analysts now put at 13 million to 14 million.

-with AAP

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