Following U.S. President Donald Trump's July 3 phonecall with the Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation Trump revealed the details of his conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday.
Trump told reporters before he boarded Air Force One for an "America 250" rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, "We had a call, it was a pretty long call, we talked about a lot of things, including Iran. We also talked about the war with Ukraine."
Trump shook his head and said, "I'm not happy about that," as the president remarked about the ongoing war he hoped to quickly end.
"No, I didn't make any progress with him today," Trump said when asked about a potential deal with Putin to end the Russian offensive in Ukraine.
In a surprise move on Monday, (13 July) the US president pledged to sell a “full complement” of weapons to Nato allies, which will then be turned over to Ukraine.
They include Patriot air defence missiles and batteries, as well as short-range missiles and Howitzer rounds in a deal worth as much as $10 billion (£7.4 billion).
In a further sign of his frustration with the Kremlin, Mr Trump threatened to impose 100 per cent tariffs on Russian trading partners if Vladimir Putin does not sign a peace deal to end the war in 50 days.
The countries that Trump would tariff would be the BRICS nations.
The thing about BRICS, which I think many overlook, is that it has been building mechanisms to make inter-BRICS trade opaque to outside parties.
Not using SWIFT is like removing all of the spies (IAEA) from your country. They don't know how much you have enriched, and to what level, or where it is stored.
Inter-BRICS trade, if using CIPS and non-US currencies, is very difficult for US financial authorities to track and measure.
Everyone who understands economics knows that prices are information; rational decision-making becomes impossible without information.
BRICS mechanisms are able to hide crucial information from the West which means the West will never be able to calibrate their tariffs and sanctions.
It might be like a business doing a lot of commerce, but it is steadily going broke because no one has audited the books to discover how much embezzlement is going on. The leak in the boat is opaque, which eventually leads to a disaster.
MeanwhileGovernments across Europe are pondering whether to take part in the $10bn arms initiative. It will involve Ukraine’s allies on the continent, along with Canada, buying “top of the range” weapons – including Patriot air defence systems – from Washington before giving them to Kyiv.
But without the release of key details, some countries have yet to make a decision on whether to join the scheme, which was presented by Mr Trump and Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, in the Oval Office on Monday. France and Italy have refused to participate.
A summary of the latest exchanges between Trump and Putin is thatTrump wants to pause the war while Putin sees an advantage for Russian troops in the field and wants to continue the war until its root cause, the NATO march towards Russia, is eliminated.
Trump could not impose his will on Putin. He was also under pressure from neoconservative parts of Congress to commit the U.S. to a longer war against Russia while his core supporters, the MAGA crowd, are demanding the USA backs off from involvement in foreign conflicts. The neo-cons asked for shipping more weapons to Ukraine and for penalties against countries which continue to buy oil and gas from Russia.
Amang the leaders of the backlash Marjorie Taylor Greene, a firebrand Republican and Trump ally, criticised the deal and said it went against the president’s campaign promise to avoid the US becoming involved in foreign entanglements.
“MAGA did not vote for more weapons to Ukraine,” she wrote on X in her strongest rebuke of the president to date. “MAGA voted for no more US involvement in foreign wars.”
Taylor Greene argued that by funnelling aid to Ukraine, Mr Trump was turning his back on the “America First” principles that got him elected.
“It’s not just Ukraine – it’s all foreign wars in general and a lot of foreign aid,” she told The New York Times. “This is what we campaigned on. This is what I promised also to my district. This is what everybody voted for, and I believe we have to maintain the course.”
Under the terms of the deal, announced in the Oval Office alongside Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, Mr Trump said that European nations would purchase “top of the line” weapons from the US and then transfer them to Ukraine.
Through these latest initiatives, NATO and the United States are demonstrating their full control over the conflict’s trajectory. The war is intended to continue as long as necessary to depopulate post-war Ukraine, while simultaneously ensuring that Russia not only fails to prevail, but emerges from the conflict thoroughly dismantled: politically, demographically, and as a nation-state.
The announcement of secondary sanctions had long been anticipated, and their effect is predictable: the collective West commands a consumer market exceeding one billion, while Russia, with a declining population, barely reaches one hundred and thirty million. It is increasingly evident that the West has resolved to conclude this confrontation and seize the remaining assets of what it now regards as a fully ripened Russian state.
In the wake of its strategic setback in Syria, the rise of internal nationalist movements, Armenia’s realignment, and Azerbaijan’s assertive posture in the Caspian region, it is clear the West believes the time has come to bring matters to a definitive close.
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