Since long before his inauguration this week and his election in November, President Donald Trump has been promising to broker an end to Russia's war against Ukraine while providing few hints about how he would seek to get it done.
On January 22, two days after starting his new term, Trump laid out one lever he indicated he would use to get Russia to the negotiating table, a crucial and challenging initial step toward any deal: by slapping additional sanctions on Moscow if it proves recalcitrant.
"If we don't make a 'deal,' and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries," Trump wrote in a post on his social media website Truth Social.
Trump's past praise for Putin, his criticism of U.S. aid to Ukraine, and his apparent eagerness for a quick end to the fighting have led to concerns among Ukraine's supporters that he might sacrifice Kyiv's interests in the name of a deal, ultimately strengthening Russia.
But Trump has been talking tough this week. The January 22 post was the latest in a series of pointed comments suggesting the war is ruining Russia and that Putin should seek peace before it's too late: Russia's economy "is failing," Trump wrote.
'Is The Enemy At Our Gates?'
The tone and content have pleased Kyiv as well as Western advocates of pressure on Russia. Ukraine's foreign minister, Andriy Sybiha, said Trump's remarks sent a "strong signal."
Moscow, meanwhile, quickly set out to show that the threat of new sanctions won't work. Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on January 23 that the Kremlin doesn't see "any particularly new elements here."
Pro-Kremlin TV host Vladimir Solovyov was equally dismissive but used sharper wording -- a blustery effort to tell Russians they should not be concerned. "What, is it possible to talk to Russia that way?" he said in a video comment posted on Telegram. "What, are we losing the war? Is the enemy at our gates?"
Those comments echoed Putin's outward confidence that the war is going well for Russia despite the massive casualties Russia has been suffering as it makes gradual gains on the battlefield, and that the economy is doing fine despite high inflation and other troubles.
Beneath that veneer, however, concerns on both counts may lurk, and some experts said Trump's new sanctions threat will aggravate those worries.
"I think this will really have rattled the Kremlin," Nigel Gould-Davies, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, told RFE/RL.
'Putting Down A Marker'
"He's putting down a marker pretty much at the first possible moment," Gould-Davies said of Trump, adding Ukraine and its backers have worried that "his main way into the problem of ending the war would be to put pressure on Ukraine and cut back support…and leave Ukraine vulnerable."
At least in these recent remarks, Gould-Davies said, Trump's "framing of the problem of ending the war is in terms of forcing Putin to compromise, rather than forcing Ukraine to compromise…. It was far from obvious that he would do that."
In a January 23 report, Reuters cited "five sources with knowledge of the situation" as saying Putin "has grown increasingly concerned about distortions in Russia's wartime economy." It cited former Russian central bank Deputy Chairman Oleg Vyugin as saying, "Russia, of course, is economically interested in negotiating a diplomatic end to the conflict."
Mounting economic problems have "contributed to the view within a section of the Russian elite that a negotiated settlement to the war is desirable," Reuters cited two of its sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, as saying.
Trump's threats "put Putin in a tough spot," former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landisbergis wrote on X. "Now Putin has to choose ---accept that he fears new sanctions because his economy is a shambles, or prove that his imperialist ambitions will not be limited by these demands."
Some analysts are far more skeptical, saying the economic troubles won't prompt Putin to abandon the goal of subjugating Ukraine, even if a cease-fire or peace deal were to leave Russia in unofficial control of the roughly 20 percent of Ukraine it currently occupies.
"We should avoid overestimating the impact of these economic concerns on Putin's plans for Ukraine," Tatyana Stanovaya, senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, wrote on X. "In my view, no matter the economic situation, Putin will persist in seeking to end the war on Russian terms. For him, this is an existential conflict. He is deeply committed to the idea that without a 'friendly Ukraine,' Russia's long-term survival is at risk."
In addition, Trump's dire description "contradicts Putin's own convictions about the state of his economy," which he sees as "a source of pride, particularly when compared to Western economies," Stanovaya wrote in a separate post. "If Trump plans to use this belief [in the poor state that Russia's economy] as leverage to convince Putin to make concessions, he is bound to fail."
Secondary Sanctions And The 'Shadow Fleet'
Not so fast, other experts say, arguing that hitting the Russian economy hard enough could potentially change Putin's calculus.
Be that as it may, skeptics point to the fact that successive rounds of Western sanctions imposed since Putin launched Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 have not caused it to flag. Another question is what potential punitive measures remain following the Biden administration's imposition, just 10 days before Trump's inauguration, of what U.S. officials said were the most significant sanctions yet.
Substantial potential sanctions remain, Gould-Davies argued.
"The United States has this unique and fearsome weapon of secondary sanctions," he said, referring to measures imposed not on Russia itself but aimed to dissuade other countries and entities from conducting transactions that could help Moscow fight the war. Washington and the West could also step up sanctions on Russia's "shadow fleet," the often old and uninsured vessels used to bypass sanctions and keep oil revenues flowing in.
Rachel Ziemba, a sanctions expert at the Center for a New American Security, said enforcement of existing economic penalties and imposing secondary sanctions would be the most significant steps the Trump administration could take.
Russia has been able to mitigate the impact of sweeping U.S. sanctions and technology bans with the help of intermediates in third countries such as China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Ziemba said those countries would be vulnerable to secondary sanctions.
China has played a particularly important role in supporting Russia through the facilitation of dual-use technology shipments and purchase of oil.
"The question mark would be, would the Trump administration be more willing than the Biden administration to sanction Chinese banks for supporting Russia's military supply chains or buying Russian oil," she said.
"It's still an open question how much of it is rhetoric…versus action," she said.
