With only two days to go before the expiry of his latest ultimatum to end the Russian aggression against Ukraine, US president Donald Trump dispatched his envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow for the fifth time on August 6. After three hours of talks in the Kremlin with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Trump announced that “Great progress was made!” This, according to US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, includes a Russian ceasefire proposal that Witkoff was bringing back from his meeting with Putin. At a subsequent press conference, Trump indicated that he could soon meet in person with Putin and Zelensky.
However, there was no indication of an imminent breakthrough. In a phone call with Zelensky and European leaders, Trump appeared optimistic that a diplomatic solution was possible but would take time to achieve. Rubio also expressed some caution and noted that “a lot has to happen before” a Trump-Putin-Zelensky summit as there were “still many impediments to overcome”.
For once, Trump appears to realise that he will only make progress on ending the war if he keeps the pressure up on Putin.
Shortly after the meeting between Putin and Witkoff concluded, Trump issued an executive order explicitly stating that “the actions and policies of the Government of the Russian Federation continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
This is hardly surprising, given that Trump’s frustration with Putin has steadily built up since the end of April. However, unusually, Trump has publicly and specifically endorsed an earlier executive order, issued by his predecessor, Joe Biden, just days after the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in March 2022.
Increasingly seeing Putin as the main obstacle to peace in Ukraine, Trump initially imposed a 50-day deadline for his Russian counterpart to agree to a ceasefire, which he subsequently shortened to ten days. Under the terms of the ultimatum, failure by Russia to comply would lead to severe economic disruption for Moscow’s war economy.
If activated, sanctions threatened by Trump are likely to target Russia’s so-called shadow fleet of oil tankers that the Kremlin uses to sell oil at prices above the G7-imposed price cap of currently US$60 per barrel of seaborne crude oil and other petroleum products.
The US president is also considering the imposition of 100% tariffs on imports from countries still buying Russian oil. This would particularly affect China and India, who remain Russia’s largest costumers. If Beijing and New Delhi were to decrease their imports from Russia, this would deprive the Russian war economy of a much-needed revenue source. But this is a big ‘if’. There are serious doubts that China can easily be pushed to wean itself off Russian oil supplies, and India has indicated that it will not bow to pressure from the White House. While trade negotiations between Washington and Beijing are still ongoing, those with India have broken down for the time being.
But as a likely indication of Trump’s determination to get serious on increasing pressure on the Kremlin and its perceived allies, the US president has now, as part of his executive order, imposed an additional 25% tariff rate on Indian imports to the United States. This will be on top of the existing 25% rate and come into effect within three weeks.
China and India might continue to resist US pressure in public. However, given the billions of dollars of trade at stake for them, they might try to use their influence with Putin to sway him towards at least some concessions that may lead to a ceasefire — however temporary or partial it might be. This might give Trump and Putin both a face-saving way out, albeit not one that would move the dial substantially closer to an actual peace agreement in the war against Ukraine.
There is also the question how Russia would respond — and concessions do not appear to be foremost on Putin’s mind.
Expect more nuclear sabre rattling of the kind that has become the trademark of Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and now one of the Kremlin’s main social media attack dogs. In public, such threats were mostly ignored in the past. But in another sign of his patience wearing thin, Trump responded to Medvedev’s latest threat by announcing on his Truth Social platform that he had ordered “two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that.”
Neither the Kremlin nor the White House are likely to go down the path of military, let alone nuclear escalation. But, like Washington, Moscow, too, has economic levers to pull. The most potent of these would be for Russia to disrupt the Caspian oil pipeline consortium, which facilitates the majority of Kazakh oil exports to western markets through Russia. There is precedent for this. A Russian court halted flows back in July 2022 under dubious pretexts. And the Kremlin flexed its muscles again in April this year by partially shutting down the consortium’s terminal in the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. If completely shut down, this would impact around 1% of worldwide oil trade and could lead to a spike in prices, increase Russian revenues on remaining oil sales, and negatively affect global economic growth.
Trump’s economic statecraft will thus likely at best produce mixed results and do so only slowly.
However, the US president has also recommitted to supporting Ukraine militarily — at least by letting Kyiv’s European allies buy US weapons and supply them to the country’s beleaguered military. Germany was the first to agree the purchase of two much-needed Patriot air defence systems from the US for Ukraine. Since then, this new way of funding arms for Ukraine has been formalised as the so-called Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List.
It will require substantial financial commitments from Nato countries to turn this new support mechanism into a sustainable military lifeline for Ukraine. But the scheme got off to a relatively smooth start with the Netherlands and three Scandinavian members of the alliance — Denmark, Norway and Sweden — quickly following in Germany’s footsteps.
Developments over the past two weeks, thus, appear to indicate that Trump has finally accepted that, rather than trying to accommodate Putin, he needs to put pressure on him and his backers economically and militarily. If the US president wants a good deal, he needs more leverage over Putin — and weakening the Kremlin’s war economy with further sanctions and blunting the effectiveness of its military campaign by arming Ukraine are steps that might get him there, provided he does not blink first in what remains a contest of wills between him and his Russian counterpart.
When and how the war in Ukraine ends will ultimately be determined at the negotiation table. But how soon the belligerents get there and what the balance of power will be between them will be decided on the battlefields of eastern and southern Ukraine. The stronger Kyiv and the weaker Moscow will be when they sit down to end this war, the more likely will it be that a just and sustainable peace agreement can be achieved.
An earlier version of this analysis was published by The Conversation on August 7, 2025.
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