Trump Warns His Patience With Putin Is “Running Out Fast”

U.S. President Donald Trump has said that he is losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin and could issue new tariffs and sanctions to compel the Russian leader to enter cease-fire negotiations with Ukraine.

Trump said that his patience with Putin’s refusal to participate in peace talks with Ukraine was “running out and running out fast,” during an interview with Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” on Sep. 12.

Trump ist genau wie Putin – ein Blender….
Trump hat erneut erklärt, dass seine Geduld gegenüber Putin zur Neige geht. Er droht mit gewissen Sanktionen.
„Meine Geduld scheint schon fast erschöpft zu sein, und das schnell – aber es braucht ja zwei zum Tango tanzen… Als Putin es… pic.twitter.com/RjA9J8We7n

— Konstanze Hoffmann (@KonstanzeHoffm1) September 12, 2025

As Andrew Thornebrooke reports for The Epoch Times, the president added that “it does take two to tango,” saying that Putin’s recalcitrance on committing to peace talks was in part due to the Russian leader’s mutual animosity with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“There’s tremendous hatred between him and Zelenskyy,” Trump said.

Trump has made ending the war in Ukraine and other international conflicts a key part of his presidential agenda, but has struggled at times to convince Putin and Zelenskyy to meaningfully negotiate on ending the conflict.

The comments follow a high-profile summit between Trump and Putin in Alaska in August, which aimed to bring Russia back to the negotiating table but ultimately did not result in the resumption of cease-fire talks.

“There’s no deal until there’s a deal,” Trump said at the time.

That meeting itself was the result of a threat by Trump to impose new sanctions on the Russian oil sector, including secondary tariffs on nations such as India and China that purchase oil from Russian entities.

Trump renewed those threats during Friday’s interview, saying the United States would have to “come down very, very strong” on Russia if Putin did not commit to peace talks with Ukraine.

When asked what coming down on Russia would look like, Trump said that it would involve “hitting [Russia] very hard with sanctions to banks and having to do with oil and tariffs also.”

Trump also reached out to U.S. allies in Europe earlier this week in the hopes of building international support for secondary tariffs of up to 100 percent on China and India.

The move demonstrates how much Trump and his administration have shifted in handling the war in Ukraine since first coming to office, moving from pausing all support of Ukraine early in the year to renewing weapon sales to Kyiv and threatening sanctions against Moscow.

The difficulty lies in getting either Kyiv or Moscow to relent on any of several key war aims, with Zelenskyy refusing to consider the giving up of any territory to Russia and Putin demanding that it be given territory it has failed to conquer.

For now, Moscow appears undeterred. This week alone, Russia launched its largest aerial assault against Ukraine and sent drones into NATO member Poland’s airspace.

NATO leadership has not yet verified whether the drones entered Polish airspace deliberately or as part of an operation in Ukraine that went wrong.

Trump said during Friday’s interview that Russian assets “shouldn’t be close to Poland.”