US president tells NBC he did not like his Russian counterpart questioning Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s credibility
Edward
Helmore and agencies
Sun 30 Mar
2025 16.15 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/30/donald-trump-angry-vladimir-putin-ukraine-nbc
Donald Trump
has said he is “very angry, pissed off” with Vladimir Putin for questioning
Ukraine’s leadership.
In a sharp
change of tone towards Moscow, the US president told an NBC reporter he was
angered at his Russian counterpart’s querying of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s
credibility.
“If Russia
and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I
think it was Russia’s fault, which it might not be, but if I think it was
Russia’s fault, I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming
out of Russia,” he said.
Elevated
sanctions on Russia “would be that if you buy oil from Russia, you can’t do
business in the United States,” he said. “There will be a 25% tariff on all …
on all oil, a 25 to 50-point tariff on all oil.”
Trump said
he planned to speak to Putin in the coming week.
He indicated
that Putin’s call for new leadership in Ukraine meant that a peace deal could
be delayed. “New leadership means you’re not gonna have a deal for a long time,
right?” he said.
“If I feel,
if we’re in the midst of a negotiation, you could say that I was very angry,
pissed off, when Putin said yesterday that … you know, when Putin started
getting into Zelenskyy’s credibility, because that’s not going in the right
location, you understand?”
Trump’s
comments come after months of criticism that the administration is acquiescing
to Russian aggression in Ukraine in order to stop the three-year war. He has
previously criticised Zelenskyy, saying he was sick of his handling of the war
and calling him a dictator for failing to hold new elections.
Trump said
he had spoken with Putin “not long ago” and conveyed his anger but that despite
his feelings he had “a very good relationship with him”.
Trump also
used his NBC interview to threaten to punish Iran if it did not make a deal
with Washington over its nuclear programme.
“If they
don’t make a deal, there will be bombing,” he said, adding that he would also
impose “secondary tariffs”.
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