{"id":407876,"date":"2025-09-08T13:12:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T13:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/407876\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T13:12:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T13:12:12","slug":"eu-and-us-officials-meet-as-trump-says-he-is-ready-to-impose-further-sanctions-on-russia-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/407876\/","title":{"rendered":"EU and US officials meet as Trump says he is ready to impose further sanctions on Russia | Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

The EU\u2019s most senior sanctions envoy is holding talks in Washington with US officials after Donald Trump said he was ready to take further action against Russia over the war in Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

David O\u2019Sullivan, the EU sanctions envoy, is meeting US counterparts on Monday, as Europe and the US look for tougher measures to weaken Vladimir Putin\u2019s war machine after Russia launched its largest-ever air attack on Ukraine<\/a> over the weekend.<\/p>\n

Ahead of those meetings, the head of the European Council, Ant\u00f3nio Costa, hailed transatlantic cooperation over sanctions against Russia and said it was clear that the US remained engaged in supporting Ukraine.<\/p>\n

A European Commission spokesperson also confirmed that the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, spoke to the US vice-president, JD Vance, over the phone on Friday, and \u201cthe only topic during the call was Ukraine\u201d.<\/p>\n

Asked by a reporter at the White House on Sunday if he was ready to move to \u201cthe second phase\u201d of sanctions against Russia<\/a>, Trump responded: \u201cYeah I am\u201d, without elaborating.<\/p>\n

Trump also said that \u201ccertain European leaders are coming over to our country on Monday or Tuesday individually\u201d and that he would speak to the Russian president soon.<\/p>\n

Trump has previously threatened tougher measures against Putin, but each time has allowed deadlines to pass without action.<\/p>\n

Speaking in Helsinki on Monday, Costa said that the EU and US were \u201ccoordinating our efforts to align our sanctions, to be more effective\u201d and to increase pressure on Putin to join peace negotiations with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.<\/p>\n

He said the EU needed to increase sanctions on Russia, \u201cbut also secondary sanctions\u201d on countries buying gas and oil from Russia.<\/p>\n

The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, condemned Russia\u2019s attacks on Ukraine, \u201cwhich show further escalation\u201d a German government spokesperson said on Monday. The spokesperson also said Germany would welcome the US joining Europe in pushing for more sanctions against Russia.<\/p>\n

Over the weekend, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, suggested the US and EU could impose tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil. Bessent said the US was preparing to increase pressure on Russia and urged Europe to do more: \u201cWe need our European partners to follow us, because if the US and EU can do this together \u2026 we are in a race now between how long the Ukrainian military hold up versus how long can the Russian economy hold up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has imposed 50% tariffs on goods from India<\/a> in response to its purchases of discounted Russian oil, but declined to take such punitive action against other large buyers of Russian energy, such as China.<\/p>\n

The issue of secondary sanctions \u2013 which would apply penalties to third countries that trade with Russia \u2013 could be difficult for the EU, which is racing to sign new trade deals, including with India, by the end of the year, to counter Trump\u2019s tariffs that are roiling international relations.<\/p>\n

The US focus on Russian energy also puts an uncomfortable spotlight on Hungary and Slovakia, which have resisted EU plans to phase out Russian fossil fuels. The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orb\u00e1n, and the Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico, favour Trump\u2019s agenda, but are also friendly to Putin and have attacked EU plans to phase out Russian fossil fuels by 2028.<\/a><\/p>\n

The US energy secretary, Christ Wright, told the Financial Times<\/a> that if Europe ceased to buy Russian fossil fuels that would \u201cabsolutely\u201d have a positive influence on the US adopting more aggressive sanctions against Russia. The EU has pledged to buy $750bn of US oil, gas and nuclear products by 2028.<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n

Sign up to This is Europe<\/p>\n

The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans \u2013 from identity to economics to the environment<\/p>\n

Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n

The EU has approved 18 rounds of sanctions against Russia since the full-scale invasion of February 2022, with further proposals expected in the coming days.<\/p>\n

The last set of EU sanctions, agreed in July, lowered the price cap on Russian oil, closed loopholes to reduce trade in Russian petroleum products and banned vessels carrying Russian energy from European ports.<\/p>\n

Speaking alongside Costa, Finland\u2019s prime minister, Petteri Orpo, said cooperation with the US on sanctions was crucial. The latest attacks on Ukraine showed, he said, \u201cthat Putin will not stop killing, he will not go to the negotiation tables. That is why we have to cooperate with and negotiate with the US to find a way to do more sanctions, stronger sanctions, do more military support to Ukraine, and build security arrangements to Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Saturday Russia launched its largest-ever barrage on Ukraine<\/a>, setting the main government building in Kyiv on fire, and killing at least four people, including a mother and her baby.<\/p>\n

Zelenskyy said Putin was testing the world to see \u201cwhether they will accept or tolerate this\u201d and he urged Ukraine\u2019s allies to impose more sanctions and \u201ctough tariffs\u201d on Russia.<\/p>\n

The Kremlin said on Monday that no sanctions would ever force Russia to change course on Ukraine, the state RIA news agency reported.<\/p>\n

Europe and Ukraine are doing everything they can to draw the US into their orbit, said the Kremlin\u2019s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The EU\u2019s most senior sanctions envoy is holding talks in Washington with US officials after Donald Trump said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2000,299,5187,1699],"class_list":{"0":"post-407876","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-european","11":"tag-european-union"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115168853687150768","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}