U.S. President Donald Trump said he is no longer interested in speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I’m not so interested in talking anymore. […] We have such nice conversations, such respectful and nice conversations, and then people die the following night, with a missile going into a town and hitting — recently, I guess, the nursing home, but they hit other things,” Trump said on Monday.
Trump also said he would shorten the deadline he had previously set for the Russian president to agree to a ceasefire. “I’m going to make a new deadline of about 10 or 12 days from today,” he said. Trump had earlier demanded that Putin halt hostilities by the beginning of September.
If Moscow fails to implement a ceasefire, Trump threatened to impose 100 percent tariffs on imports to the United States from any country that continues trading with Russia.
The two leaders last spoke by phone on July 3. Following the call, Trump voiced dissatisfaction, saying he doubted Putin was genuinely committed to achieving a swift peace.