Updated July 14, 2025 at 5:51 PM EDT
MOSCOW and KYIV — President Trump on Monday threatened to punish Russia with heavy tariffs on countries that trade with Moscow if the Kremlin fails to reach a ceasefire deal with Ukraine by September, while promising Kyiv billions of dollars worth of military equipment.
"We're going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don't have a deal in 50 days," Trump said during a White House meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. "Tariffs at about 100%, you'd call them secondary tariffs."
It was his latest warning against Russian President Vladimir Putin, as Trump becomes increasingly frustrated with the Kremlin leader over his continued war in Ukraine.
President Trump explained that NATO countries would acquire U.S.-made weapons, including Patriot air defense missile systems, and that those countries would provide them to Ukraine.
Speaking Sunday to reporters ahead of the meeting with Rutte, Trump cast the weapons deals as a direct rebuke to Putin. "We will send them Patriots, which they desperately need because Putin really surprised a lot of people," Trump said. "He talks nice and then he bombs everybody in the evening."
Republican senators have sought to reconfigure a draft bill that would give Trump a sanctions on/off switch to use as snap leverage with Moscow.
Collectively, the moves cap a stark turnaround in Trump's approach toward President Putin over the Ukraine issue. Trump has gone from initially promising he could leverage his personal relationship with Putin to negotiate a quick peace agreement, to now openly criticizing the Kremlin leader as unserious in negotiations to end the war.
"It's all talk and then missiles go into Kyiv and kill 60 people," Trump said Monday. "It's got to stop."
The weapons announcement came the same day White House special envoy Keith Kellogg was visiting Kyiv and sat down with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Ukrainian leader appeared upbeat in online footage of the meeting, saying on social media they discussed "strengthening Ukraine's air defense, joint production, and procurement of defense weapons in collaboration with Europe."
Later, Zelenskyy had a call with Trump and discussed ways to "provide more protection to people from Russian attacks and to strengthen our positions," the Ukrainian leader wrote on his Telegram messaging app. "We are ready to work as productively as possible to achieve peace."
Oleksandr Merezhko, who chairs the Ukrainian parliament's foreign affairs committee, called Trump's move "very encouraging," especially because air defense is a top priority for Ukraine these days. He said Patriot systems are the best defense against the increasing number of drones and missiles that Russian forces fire at Ukrainian cities.
"In practical terms, we are hopeful because President Trump himself has said that Patriot systems might reach Ukraine within days," Merezhko told NPR. "This is exactly what we need."
Merezhko had nominated Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize last year, then rescinded the nomination last month, saying Trump had chosen to "appease the aggressor," meaning Russia.
Now he said he is cautiously hopeful Trump could be signaling an attitude change toward Ukraine, which would be a "boost for morale."
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However, Solomiia Bobrovska, a member of the Ukrainian parliament defense and security committee, told NPR she worries that Russian forces could step up hostilities in the next 50 days. She pointed out that Russian forces are conducting offensives on three parts of the front line and are trying to capture more territory. Where that front line lies "will be the starting position for the negotiations period when the time comes," she said.
In Moscow, the Kremlin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, suggested Trump's decision to supply U.S. weapons to Ukraine through NATO marked a continuation of former President Joe Biden's polices, just under a different guise.
"The fact remains that the supply of weapons, ammunition and military equipment from the United States continued and continues to Ukraine," Peskov told reporters.
Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin's point man for negotiations with the U.S., pledged dialogue with Washington would continue despite what he said were "doomed" efforts to pressure Moscow.
Konstantin Kosachev, deputy speaker of Russia's senate, slammed the weapons deals. "The Europeans will have to fork out more and more money. ... There is only one beneficiary: the U.S. military-industrial complex," he wrote on Telegram.
Russia's main market index jumped on the news that Trump would delay additional sanctions for at least 50 days, during which Trump said he expected Russia to negotiate a peace deal.
Yet several prominent Russian nationalists seized on that timeframe, saying it provided Russia a new deadline for a battlefield victory.
Still, political observers in Moscow recalled the Kremlin is dealing with a mercurial American president. Trump's frustrations with Russia today might be directed at Ukraine tomorrow.
"Why should they ruin relations completely?" Sergey Poletaev, of the Moscow-based Vatfor analytical platform, said in an interview with NPR.
"In another six months or so, the pendulum could swing back the other way."
NPR producer Polina Lytvynova contributed reporting from Kyiv.
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