Earlier in the day as well, Russian officials dismissed Trump’s tariff threats and called the 50-day ultimatum “unacceptable”. A day after Trump threatened Russia with severe tariffs over the Ukraine war, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov responded on Tuesday by saying that the country was ready to cope with the new sanctions and wondered what was driving Trump to make such threats.
“We want to understand what the US President is moved by,” Lavrov said while addressing a press conference at the 25th Shanghai Cooperation Organization Foreign Ministers meeting in China. “I have no doubt we will cope with new sanctions,” he added.
Lavrov’s remarks come after Donald Trump said the US could impose “secondary tariffs” as high as 100% on Russia if it does not agree to a deal to end the Ukraine war within 50 days.
“We’re very, very unhappy with them. And we’re going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don’t have a deal in 50 days. Tariffs at about 100 per cent, you’d call them secondary tariffs,” Trump said on Monday. “I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy,” he said while talking about Putin.
According to the United States, 1.2 million people have been injured or killed in the Ukraine war so far, reported Reuters. Howevee, neither of the two countries have given full figures for their losses. Earlier in the day as well, Russian officials dismissed Trump’s tariff threats and called the 50-day ultimatum “unacceptable”.
Sergei Lavrov’s deputy, Ryabkov said on Tuesday, “We first and foremost note that any attempts to make demands — especially ultimatums — are unacceptable for us,” reported Russia’s state-run news service Tass.
Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said at a news briefing on Tuesday that the remarks made by Trump concern Russian President Putin “personally”.
“The latest statements from the US president are very serious. Something in them concerns President [Vladimir] Putin personally,” Tass quoted Peskov as saying.
“We will certainly need time to analyze the rhetoric from Washington,” he added.
