US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio pressed President Donald Trump’s new, tougher public line against Russia, charging that Moscow isn’t doing enough to end the war and stop the killing in Ukraine.
Vance said on September 24 that Trump "doesn't feel like they're putting enough on the table to end the war...If the Russians refuse to negotiate in good faith, I think it's going to be very, very bad for their country."
Rubio, meanwhile, met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, reiterating Trump’s “call for the killing to stop and the need for Moscow to take meaningful steps toward a durable resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war.”
In response, Lavrov claimed there was a “mutual interest in finding peaceful solutions” to the war in Ukraine.
But he reiterated Moscow’s need to “eliminate the root causes of the Ukrainian conflict.” That is Kremlin talk for putting limits on Ukraine's military strength and a commitment not to join NATO, among a litany of other historical grievances -- most of which are unacceptable to Kyiv and the West.
Meanwhile, in Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the notion that Ukraine could retake all of its territory, saying the "idea Ukraine can recapture something is, from our point of view, mistaken."
The new line from the US administration comes after Trump, in a sudden shift, on September 23 said on social media that Ukraine could win back all of its Russian-occupied territory with the help of its European backers.
Russia currently controls around one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, including the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which was illegally annexed in 2014.
In the past, Trump and other US officials have strongly suggested that Ukraine would have to cede some land to Russia in any peace deal.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his country "are in BIG economic trouble,” Trump wrote in his Truth Social post.
"After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form," Trump wrote.
In his address to the General Assembly hours later, Trump said the United States was “fully prepared to impose a very strong round of powerful tariffs" if Russia isn’t “ready to make a deal to end the war. "
But he repeated his recent condition that Europe take similar action, saying that “for those tariffs to be effective, European nations…would have to join us in adopting the exact same measures."
The remarks represent a major turnaround in rhetoric by the US president.
Trump in past years has long praised Putin and often blamed Ukraine for the conflict -- which became a full-blown war after the Kremlin's unprovoked invasion of February 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was surprised by Trump's latest remarks but called them a positive signal that Washington would support Kyiv until the end of the war.
During comments to the General Assembly, Zelenskyy accused Putin of seeking to expand the Kremlin's war beyond Ukraine and called on the international community to stop the conflict to avoid a destructive arms race.
Zelenskyy warned that the use of drones and technology has brought a new dimension to the battlefield.
"The facts are simple: Stopping this war now and with it the global arms race is cheaper than building underground kindergartens or massive bunkers for critical infrastructure later," he told the assembly.
