WASHINGTON, DC – US President Donald Trump threatened fresh sanctions Thursday while slamming Russia’s military actions in Ukraine as “disgusting,” as strikes on Kyiv killed at least 16 people.
“Russia — I think it’s disgusting what they’re doing. I think it’s disgusting,” Trump told reporters.
Trump also said he would send his special envoy Steve Witkoff, currently in Israel, to visit Russia next.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has already met Witkoff multiple times in Moscow, before Trump’s efforts to mend ties with the Kremlin came to a grinding halt.
Washington has given Moscow until the end of next week to cease hostilities in Ukraine, under threat of severe economic sanctions.
Trump reiterated the deadline on Thursday.
“We’re going to put sanctions. I don’t know that sanctions bother him,” the US president said, referring to Putin.
Trump has previously threatened that new measures could mean “secondary tariffs” targeting Russia’s remaining trade partners, such as China and India. This would further stifle Russia, but would risk significant international disruption. AFP
The US president began his second term with his own rosy predictions that the war in Ukraine — raging since Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022 — would soon end.
In recent weeks, Trump has increasingly voiced frustration with Putin over Moscow’s unrelenting offensive.
In Kyiv, the death toll from Thursday’s Russian missile and drone strikes on Kyiv has risen to 26, including three children, Ukraine’s interior ministry said.
The toll previously stood at 16, including two children, but was revised Friday after “rescuers retrieved 10 bodies from the rubble of the residential building in Sviatoshynsky district, including the body of a 2-year-old child”, the ministry posted on Telegram.
It also said 159 people were wounded in Thursday’s strikes, including 16 children.
One person was also killed in a Russian attack early Friday on Zaporizhzhia, in southeast Ukraine, the region’s military administration said on Telegram.
Kyiv was observing a day of mourning after Thursday’s bombardment, among the deadliest the capital has seen since Russia launched its large-scale offensive in February 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged his allies on Thursday to bring about “regime change” in Russia, hours after the attack.
US President Donald Trump on Thursday blasted Russia’s actions in Ukraine, suggesting that new sanctions against Moscow were coming.
“Russia — I think it’s disgusting what they’re doing. I think it’s disgusting,” Trump told journalists.
On Monday, the US leader issued a “10 or 12” day ultimatum for Moscow to halt its invasion, now in its fourth year, or face sanctions.
Meanwhile, Russia’s announcement on Thursday that it had captured Chasiv Yar marks yet another blow for Kyiv after months of accumulating setbacks across the sprawling front line in eastern and southern Ukraine.
It underscores systemic problems plaguing the Ukrainian army, like manpower shortages and logistical problems, that have given Russian forces the edge after three and a half years of brutal fighting.
The Ukrainian army denied that the strategic hilltop settlement had fallen to Russian forces.
If confirmed, the capture would come after many months of intensive battles in the area that have seen Russia make painstaking but incremental gains.
Russian forces had advanced along the flanks of Chasiv Yar before pushing into the city, heavily bombing Ukrainian positions until it was untenable to hold them.
Images released by the Ukrainian military earlier this year, showing rows of smouldering and skeletal Soviet-era housing blocs and lines of shredded trees, attest to the ferocity of Russia shelling of Chasiv Yar.
The town had a population of some 12,000 people prior to the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The battle for Chasiv Yar began in earnest after May 2023, when Russian forces and units from the Wagner mercenary group captured the nearby town of Bakhmut.
That same month, AFP video journalist Arman Soldin was killed aged 32 by incoming rocket fire on the outskirts of the city.
Russian forces first crossed an important waterway in the town in 2024 and a turning point came when Ukrainian forces ceded a large industrial facility and a key defensive position in Chasiv Yar in January this year.
If confirmed, its fall will now pave the way for Russian forces to advance on remaining civilian strongholds in the eastern Donetsk region, like Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
The Kremlin has made the complete capture of the Donetsk region its military priority and already in late 2022 claimed that the industrial territory was part of Russia. AFP
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