‘Pissed off’ at Putin, Trump threatens tariffs on Russian oil if Moscow blocks Ukraine deal

In a sharp change of tone to his normal stance towards Moscow, US President Donald Trump told an NBC reporter that he was angered when Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) started getting into Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's credibility. (AFP)
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Updated 31 March 2025
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‘Pissed off’ at Putin, Trump threatens tariffs on Russian oil if Moscow blocks Ukraine deal

  • “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," he said on NBC News
  • Putin on Friday suggested Ukraine could be placed under a form of temporary administration to allow for new elections that could push out Zelensky
  • Trump plans to speak with Putin this week, NBC News says

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE: US President Donald Trump said on Sunday he was “pissed off” at Russian President Vladimir Putin and will impose secondary tariffs of 25 percent to 50 percent on buyers of Russian oil if he feels Moscow is blocking his efforts to end the war in Ukraine.
Trump told NBC News he was very angry after Putin last week criticized the credibility of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s leadership, the television network reported, citing a telephone interview early on Sunday.
Since taking office in January, Trump has adopted a more conciliatory stance toward Russia that has left Western allies wary as he tries to broker an end to Moscow’s three-year-old war in Ukraine.
His sharp comments about Putin on Sunday reflect his growing frustration about the lack of movement on a ceasefire.
“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 ... I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia,” Trump said.
“That would be, that if you buy oil from Russia, you can’t do business in the United States,” Trump said. “There will be a 25 percent tariff on all oil, a 25- to 50-point tariff on all oil.”
Trump later reiterated to reporters he was disappointed with Putin but added: “I think we are making progress, step by step.”
Trump said he could impose the new trade measures within a month.
There was no immediate reaction from Moscow. Russia has called numerous Western sanctions and restrictions “illegal” and designed for the West to take economic advantage in its rivalry with Russia.
Trump, who spent the weekend at his estate in Palm Beach, Florida, told NBC News he planned to speak with Putin this week. The two leaders have had two publicly announced telephone calls in recent months but may have had more contacts, the Kremlin said in video footage last week.
The White House had no immediate comment on when the call would take place, or if Trump would also speak with Zelensky.
Trump has focused heavily on ending what he calls a “ridiculous” war, which began when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, but has made little progress.
Putin on Friday suggested Ukraine could be placed under a form of temporary administration to allow for new elections that could push out Zelensky.
Trump, who himself has called for new elections in Ukraine and denounced Zelensky as a dictator, said Putin knows he is angry with him. But Trump added he had “a very good relationship with him” and “the anger dissipates quickly ... if he does the right thing.”

Growing pressure to end war
Trump’s comments followed a day of meetings and golf with Finnish President Alexander Stubb on Saturday, during Stubb’s surprise visit to Florida.
Stubb’s office on Sunday said he told Trump a deadline needs to be set for establishing a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire to make it happen and suggested April 20 since Trump would have been in office then for three months.
US officials have been separately pushing Kyiv to accept a critical minerals agreement, a summary of which suggested the US was demanding all Ukraine’s natural resources income for years. Zelensky has said Kyiv’s lawyers need to review the draft before he can say more about the US offer.
Trump told reporters on Air Force One he thought Zelensky was “trying to back out of the rare earth deal.... if he’s looking to renegotiate the deal, he’s got big problems.” Trump also told reporters that Ukraine would never be part of NATO.
Trump’s latest tariff threats would add to the pain already facing China, India and other countries through trade measures imposed during his first two months in office, including duties on steel, aluminum and cars. More duties on imports from the countries with the largest trade surpluses are slated to be announced on Wednesday.
William Reinsch, a former senior Commerce Department official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the haphazard way Trump was announcing and threatening tariffs leaves many questions unanswered, including how US officials could trace and prove which countries were buying Russian oil.
Trump set the stage for Sunday’s news with a 25 percent secondary tariff imposed last week on US imports from any country buying oil or gas from Venezuela.
His remarks to NBC suggest he could take similar action against US imports from countries that buy oil from Russia, a move that could hit China and India particularly hard.
The US has not imported any Russian barrels of crude oil since April 2022, according to US government data. Before that, US refiners bought inconsistent volumes of Russian oil, with a high of 98.1 million barrels in 2010 and low of 6.6 million in 2014, according to a review of EIA data since 2000.
India has surpassed China to become the biggest buyer of seaborne Russian crude, which comprised about 35 percent of India’s total crude imports in 2024.
Trump on Sunday also said he could hit buyers of Iranian oil with secondary sanctions if Tehran did not reach an agreement to end their nuclear weapons program.


Democrats press Trump officials for ‘large-scale’ effort to address Gaza starvation

Updated 55 min 58 sec ago
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Democrats press Trump officials for ‘large-scale’ effort to address Gaza starvation

  • Nearly three dozen senators are signing onto a letter Tuesday urging the resumption of ceasefire talks and criticizing an Israeli-backed American organization created to distribute food
  • Trump on Monday expressed concern about the worsening humanitarian situation and broke with Israel’s claim people are not starving in the Gaza Strip

WASHINGTON: Senate Democrats are imploring President Donald Trump’s administration to step up its role in addressing suffering and starvation in Gaza, with more than three dozen senators signing onto a letter Tuesday urging the resumption of ceasefire talks and sharply criticizing an Israeli-backed American organization that had been created to distribute food aid.
In a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Republican president’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, the senators said the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, created in February with backing from the Trump administration, has “failed to address the deepening humanitarian crisis and contributed to an unacceptable and mounting civilian death toll around the organization’s sites.”
It marked a mostly united plea from Senate Democrats — who are locked out of power in Washington — for the Trump administration to recalibrate its approach after the collapse of ceasefire talks last week. Trump on Monday expressed concern about the worsening humanitarian situation and broke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that people are not starving in the Gaza Strip. But it is unclear how Trump will proceed.
Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii said it was “not at all credible” to think the Israeli military — one of the most advanced in the world — is incapable of distributing food aid or performing crowd control.
“They made a choice to establish a new way of doing food distribution,” he said. “And it’s not working at all.”
The letter, obtained by The Associated Press, calls for a “large-scale expansion” of aid into Gaza channeled through organizations experienced working in the area. It also says efforts for a ceasefire agreement are “as critical and urgent as ever.”
The message was led by four Jewish members of the Democratic Caucus — Sens. Adam Schiff of California, Chuck Schumer of New York, Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Schatz — and calls for the return of the roughly 50 hostages, 20 still believed to be alive, held by Hamas since its Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
The 39 signatures on the letter show the extent to which Democrats have achieved some unity on a foreign policy issue that deeply divided them while they held the White House last year. They called for an end to the war that sees Hamas no longer in control of Gaza and a long-term goal of both an Israeli and a Palestinian state and opposed any permanent displacement of the Palestinian people.
Meanwhile, Republicans are backing Trump’s handling of the situation and supporting Israel. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he was satisfied with Trump trying “to referee that, but the Israelis need to get their hostages back.”
Still, images of the worsening hunger crisis in Gaza seemed to be reaching some Republican members of Congress.
Over the weekend, far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who routinely calls for an end to foreign aid, said on social media “what has been happening to innocent people and children in Gaza is horrific. This war and humanitarian crisis must end!”
For Schatz, it was a sign many Americans do care about suffering in other parts of the world, even after Trump won the election with “America First” foreign policy goals and kickstarted his administration by demolishing US aid programs.
“They are seeing images of chaos, images of suffering that are either caused by the United States or at least could have been prevented by the United States,” Schatz said. “And it is redounding negatively to the president.”


Kremlin says ‘committed’ to peace in Ukraine after Trump’s new deadline

Updated 29 July 2025
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Kremlin says ‘committed’ to peace in Ukraine after Trump’s new deadline

  • US President Donald Trump cut his deadline for Moscow to cease fire in the conflict
  • US leader is not interested in talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin anymore

MOSCOW: Russia is still committed to achieving peace in Ukraine, the Kremlin said Tuesday, in the first reaction to US President Donald Trump cutting his deadline for Moscow to cease fire in the conflict.

The US president earlier said he would slash his initial 50-day deadline to “about 10 or 12 days” and that he was not interested in talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin anymore.

“We have taken note of President Trump’s statement yesterday. The SVO (special military operation) continues,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, using Russia’s term for its offensive.

He also noted a slowdown in attempts to restore ties with the United States after Trump’s comments.

“We would like to see more dynamics. We are interested in this. In order to move forward, we need impulses from both sides.”

Multiple Russian strikes killed over two dozen people across Ukraine on Tuesday, including a 23-year-old pregnant woman and at least 16 inmates who died in a single strike on a prison.

But Peskov said Moscow still remained “committed to the peace process to resolve the conflict around Ukraine and secure our interests.”

The latest round of talks between Moscow and Kyiv held last week yet did not yield a breakthrough, but only provided for the exchange of prisoners.


Syrian charged over Berlin Holocaust memorial stabbing

Updated 29 July 2025
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Syrian charged over Berlin Holocaust memorial stabbing

  • The suspect, who was arrested shortly after the attack and is in pre trial detention, has also been charged with causing serious bodily harm and attempted membership of a foreign terrorist organization

FRANKFURT: A Syrian man who allegedly supports the Daesh group has been charged with attempted murder over the stabbing of a Spanish tourist at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, prosecutors said Tuesday.
The suspect, a refugee partially identified as Wassim Al M., is said to have seriously injured the 30-year-old man at the landmark in the German capital in February.
It was one of a series of attacks blamed on foreign nationals that fueled a bitter debate about immigration in the run-up to Germany’s general election.
The suspect “shares the ideology of the foreign terrorist organization Islamic State (IS)” and has “radical Islamist and antisemitic views,” federal prosecutors said in a statement.
He had traveled from the eastern city of Leipzig, where he had been living, to Berlin to target “alleged infidels, whom he regarded as representatives of a Western form of society that he rejected,” prosecutors said.
Shortly before the stabbing, the suspect, who was 19 at the time, sent a photo of himself to IS members so the group could claim responsibility for the attack, they said.
The tourist, from the Basque Country in northern Spain, was wounded in the neck during the attack at Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a somber grid of concrete steles located near the Brandenburg Gate and the US embassy.
The suspect, who was arrested shortly after the attack and is in pre-trial detention, has also been charged with causing serious bodily harm and attempted membership of a foreign terrorist organization.
Officials said previously he had arrived in Germany in 2023.
The attack was one of several which shocked Germany ahead of the general election, which saw a doubling in the vote-share for the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The election was won by the center-right CDU/CSU, which has since taken power at the head of a coalition and moved swiftly to introduce stricter curbs on immigration.
The new government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz has signalled it is trying to resume deportations to Syria, which have been suspended since 2012.


Fukushima radioactive debris removal delayed until 2037

Updated 29 July 2025
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Fukushima radioactive debris removal delayed until 2037

  • Preparation work needed to start the retrieval is expected to take “12 to 15” years from now, Tepco official Akira Ono told reporters
  • Dangerously high radiation levels mean that removing melted fuel and other debris from the plant is seen as the most daunting challenge in the decades long decommissioning project

TOKYO: A massive operation to remove hundreds of tons of radioactive debris from Japan’s tsunami-stricken Fukushima nuclear plant has been delayed until at least 2037, the operator said Tuesday.
Around 880 tons of hazardous material remain inside the power station, site of one of history’s worst nuclear accidents after a tsunami triggered by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake in 2011.
Preparation work needed to start the retrieval is expected to take “12 to 15” years from now, Tepco official Akira Ono told reporters.
This means the earliest they can embark on the removal is now 2037, according to a Tepco document, after the company previously said they hoped to start in the early 2030s.
Dangerously high radiation levels mean that removing melted fuel and other debris from the plant is seen as the most daunting challenge in the decades-long decommissioning project.
Tiny samples of material have twice been collected under a trial project using special tools, but full-fledged extractions are yet to take place.
The new schedule throws into doubt previously stated goals by Tepco and the government to declare the Fukushima plant defunct by 2051.
But Tepco insisted Tuesday the deadline was achievable despite acknowledging it would be “tough.”
“There is no need to abandon the target,” Ono said, adding it is the firm’s “responsibility” to “figure out how to meet it.”
Three of Fukushima’s six reactors went into meltdown in 2011 after the huge tsunami swamped the facility.


UK PM Starmer recalls cabinet to discuss Gaza peace plan

Updated 29 July 2025
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UK PM Starmer recalls cabinet to discuss Gaza peace plan

  • Starmer has not shared details of the plan, but over the weekend he compared the proposals to the “coalition of the willing,” the international effort to support Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire in its war with Russia

LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will hold an emergency cabinet on Tuesday to discuss the situation in Gaza and a proposed peace plan as he comes under mounting pressure from his own party to recognize a Palestinian state.
Starmer has taken the rare step of recalling his cabinet during the summer holidays to discuss how to deliver more humanitarian aid to Gaza.
In a meeting with US President Donald Trump in Scotland on Monday, Starmer discussed the need for a ceasefire in Gaza and what he called the “revolting” humanitarian crisis.
Britain is working on the plan with France and Germany after a call between the leaders of the three countries last week.
Starmer has not shared details of the plan, but over the weekend he compared the proposals to the “coalition of the willing,” the international effort to support Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire in its war with Russia.
Starmer’s spokesman said he would discuss the plan with other international allies and countries in the Middle East.
War has raged in Gaza between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas for the past 22 months. Israel has been facing growing international criticism, which its government rejects, over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
With warnings people in Gaza are facing starvation, growing numbers of lawmakers in Starmer’s Labour Party want him to recognize a Palestinian state to put pressure on Israel.
British foreign minister David Lammy will attend a United Nations conference in New York on Tuesday to urge support for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.
Successive British governments have said they will formally recognize a Palestinian state when the time is right, without ever setting a timetable or specifying the necessary conditions.
The issue has come to the fore after President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday France would recognize Palestine as a state.
Starmer has so far rejected plans to immediately recognize a Palestinian state, saying he was focused on “practical solutions.”
Last week, more than 200 British members of parliament from nine parties signed a letter Friday calling for an immediate recognition of a Palestinian state.