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Donald Trump has warned Vladimir Putin that the US is ready to punish Russia with a barrage of new trade sanctions if Moscow fails to reach an agreement soon to end the war in Ukraine .

Trump’s statement on a Truth Social post on Wednesday comes while the president is trying to ratchet up the pressure on Moscow to launch negotiations with Ukraine.

It marked his first broad statement on the conflict since he returned for his second term in the White House after pledging on the campaign trail to end the WAR within 24 hours of power return.

“If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I will have no choice but to place high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything Russia sells to the United States, and various other participating countries,” Trump wrote.

“We’re going to end this war, which wouldn’t have started if I was President, after all! We can do it the easy way, or the hard way — and the easy way is always better,” he continued.

Joe Biden’s administration imposed several sanctions on Moscow after it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. US trade with Russia has since plummeted, so any additional tariffs would have limited impact.

But Trump administration officials believe there are several ways the US can tighten the screws on Russia financially, particularly by targeting the energy sector.

The Biden administration has been reluctant to ban Russian oil and gas exports for fear of disrupting global energy markets. Under the former president, Washington imposed some restrictions on Russian liquefied natural gas projects and set an international price cap for Russian oil, which Moscow managed to avoid.

During his confirmation hearing to be Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent last week told Congress that he would be “100 percent on board for taking the sanctions, especially on the Russian oil majors, to the levels that will bring the Russian Federation to the table” .

Bessent added that he believed the US sanctions on Russia set by Biden were “not satisfactory enough”.

Trump, who has questioned US military aid to Ukraine, said he hoped to meet Putin soon and the Kremlin said the Russian leader was willing to sit down with the US president, but no summit was scheduled.

In his post, Trump expressed his “very good relationship with President Putin” and said he was not seeking to “hurt” Russia, but to do it a “favor” by pushing it to reach a agreement.

Hours after being sworn in on Monday, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that Putin had “destroyed Russia” by continuing the war in Ukraine.

But the president’s announcement expressed his frustration that Moscow did not seem to heed his calls for a settlement.

“Putin doesn’t want to end the war, and doesn’t want to be forced into peace,” a senior Ukrainian official close to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the Financial Times in response to Trump’s comments.

Trump’s special envoy for the war in Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, told Fox News earlier this month that he hoped to find a solution within “100 days”.

Kellogg postponed a trip to hold meetings with key officials in Kyiv earlier this month, according to people with knowledge of the plans. The people said the envoy delayed his visit because Trump did not come up with a plan to get the Russians to the negotiating table and end the war.

Kellogg is expected to visit Kyiv next month but Ukrainians may first meet with him and other members of Trump’s team in Washington.

David Arakhamia, head of Zelenskyy’s party faction in the Ukrainian parliament, said a delegation from Kyiv plans to meet with members of the new administration in the US capital in the coming days.

“Active contacts between the delegation from the Ukrainian parliament and the new Trump team may begin in early February as part of the ‘Ukrainian Week’ to be held in Washington,” he told Ukrainian television on Tuesday.