Donald Trump has said he was “very angry” and “pissed off” after Vladimir Putin criticised the credibility of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a phone call with Sky News’ US partner network, NBC News.
Mr Trump said the Russian president’s recent comments, calling for a transitional government to be put in place in Ukraine in a move that could effectively push out Mr Zelenskyy, were “not going in the right direction”.
It is a rare move by Mr Trump to criticise Mr Putin, who he has generally spoken positively about during discussions to end the war in Ukraine.
Last month, he also released a barrage of critical comments about Mr Zelenskyy’s leadership, falsely claiming that he had “poor approval” ratings in Ukraine.
The US leader added that if Russia is unable to make a deal on “stopping bloodshed in Ukraine” then he would put secondary tariffs on “all oil coming out of Russia”.
“That would be that if you buy oil from Russia, you can’t do business in the United States. There will be a 25% tariff on all oil, a 25 to 50-point tariff on all oil,” he said.
Mr Trump said Mr Putin knows he is angry, but added that he has “a very good relationship with him” and “the anger dissipates quickly… if he does the right thing”.
He said he plans to speak with the Russian president again this week.
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The comments directed towards Mr Putin come after a separate phone call on Saturday, in which Mr Trump threatened Iran with bombings and secondary tariffs, if Tehran did not make a deal with the US to ensure it did not develop a nuclear weapon.
“If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing,” Mr Trump told NBC. “But there’s a chance that if they don’t make a deal, that I will do secondary tariffs on them like I did four years ago.”
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Sunday that Iran had rejected direct negotiations with the US, but left open the possibility of indirect negotiations with Washington.
No one will be fired over Signal group chat blunder
Also addressing the national security blunder, which saw a journalist mistakenly added to a Signal chat group discussing planned strikes on Yemen, Mr Trump confirmed no one will be fired.
It was revealed this week that national security adviser Michael Waltz accidentally added The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a group chat with senior members of the Trump administration who were discussing plans to strike Houthi militants earlier this month.
The White House sought to downplay the incident, with Mr Trump repeatedly branding it “fake news” throughout an interview with Sky’s network partner NBC News.
The president said on Saturday: “I don’t fire people because of fake news and because of witch hunts.”
Mr Trump said he still had confidence in Mr Waltz and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was also in the Signal chat and sent a detailed timeline of the planned strikes before they happened.
The president added: “I think it’s just a witch hunt and the fake news, like you, talk about it all the time, but it’s just a witch hunt, and it shouldn’t be talked [about].
“We had a tremendously successful strike. We struck very hard and very lethal. And nobody wants to talk about that. All they want to talk about is nonsense. It’s fake news.”
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Mr Trump’s comments come amid calls – including from his allies – to fire Mr Waltz after Mr Goldberg wrote on Monday that he had been added to a chat group on a private messaging app.
The Trump administration has since repeatedly claimed the Yemen plans were not classified.
This story originally appeared on Skynews
