UK PM, Trump Discuss Heightening Sanctions on Russia
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he and President Donald Trump discussed how to "decisively increase the pressure" on Russian President Vladimir Putin "to get him to agree to a peace deal."
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However, what the U.S. is willing to do to increase either economic or military pressure was not clear.
In response to a question at the Sept. 18 press conference in England, Trump said that if the price Russia can get for its oil drops, Putin will stop fighting. "He will have no choice," Trump said.
Trump noted that he has hiked tariffs on India over their purchases of Russian oil, and already has high tariffs on Chinese goods.
"I'm willing to do other things, but not when the people that I am fighting for are buying oil from Russia," he said. He did not name which countries are at fault, but he did say it's not the U.K. "You can't do that," Trump continued. "That is not playing fair with the United States. We can't have that."
Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who has led the push for higher secondary tariffs for oil customers, said on social media that "it is now time for Europe to follow President Trump’s lead by putting tariffs or sanctions on Putin’s oil customers like China and India. The countries that buy cheap Russian oil are providing the financial resources for Putin to continue the bloodbath in Ukraine."
Starmer said "one or two countries" need to re-evaluate their reliance on Russian energy. "We do need to have a wider suite of sanctions," he said.
Earlier in the press conference, he noted that Russia's incursion into Polish airspace, and its bombing of the EU embassy in Kyiv and the British Council, an educational and cultural institution, show Putin is either emboldened or reckless.
"We have to put extra pressure on Putin. And it's only when the [U.S.] president has put pressure on Putin that he's actually shown any inclination to move," Starmer said. "So we have to ramp that pressure up."