100% tariffs on Russia without a peace agreement on Ukraine within 50 days .
Donald Trump stated this while speaking at the White House, flanked by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte .
The US president's statement was eagerly awaited: "I'm disappointed in Putin, because I thought we'd reached an agreement two months ago, but it looks like it won't materialize. If we don't have an agreement within 50 days, it's very simple: the tariffs will be 100%." Trump also announced "secondary" tariffs on Moscow's allies .
The US president dodged a question about why he had granted such a long 50-day deadline and simply said: "This is not my war, it's Biden's war, and it would never have broken out with me."
He said he was open to an agreement ("I think it will be reached, Putin knows what a fair agreement is") and, answering the question whether the Russian president is a killer (as Biden defined him), he said: "I don't want to say that Putin is a killer, but he's a tough guy."
"Take Trump's warning seriously," Rutte said instead. "If I were Putin and you were speaking, I would consider taking the negotiations more seriously than I am now."
On the arms issue: "We made an agreement today with NATO. We will continue to send weapons to Ukraine, but the US will pay nothing. We will produce them, and the Europeans will pay for them," he declared.
"We don't want to spend all our money anymore; we can't. We make the best weapons in the world," Trump added, explaining that the agreement to send weapons to Ukraine was the result of "a coordinated agreement with NATO."
"In short," he reiterated, "we will build cutting-edge weapons, send them to NATO, and NATO will ensure they can be sent to other countries, and there will be a sort of replacement."
(Unioneonline/L)
