A ranting Putin ally has accused Donald Trump of committing ‘an act of war against Russia’ by imposing sanctions on Moscow’s oil giants.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday it was now absolutely clear that the United States was Russia’s adversary and that U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent steps on Ukraine amounted to an act of war against the country.
Trump said during the U.S. election campaign that he would swiftly end the Ukraine war – which his administration has cast as a ‘proxy war’ between Washington and Moscow – though he has recently expressed frustration about President Vladimir Putin.
Trump, who has described Russia as a ‘paper tiger’, said on Wednesday he had called off a planned summit with Putin.
The move came as the U.S. Treasury slapped sanctions on two of Russia’s biggest oil companies, a decision which President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed as ‘resolute’.
‘The United States is our adversary, and their talkative ‘peacemaker’ has now fully embarked on the warpath with Russia,’ Medvedev, who serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, wrote on Telegram, referring to Trump.
‘The decisions taken are an act of war against Russia. And now Trump has fully aligned himself with loony Europe.’
Putin, Russia’s paramount leader since 1999, remains the final voice on Russian policy though Medvedev, an arch-hawk who has repeatedly goaded Trump on social media, gives a sense of hardline thinking within the elite.
Trump in August said that he had ordered two U.S. nuclear submarines to move closer to Russia in response to what he called ‘highly provocative’ comments from Medvedev about the risk of war.
Medvedev said that the move of the ‘Trumpian pendulum’ simply meant that Russia could now hammer Ukraine with a wide variety of weapons ‘without regard to unnecessary negotiations.’
Putin, who ordered Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in the country’s east between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces, has repeatedly said he is ready to talk about peace.
European leaders and Ukraine say they do not think Putin wants peace and have cautioned that Russia might one day attack a NATO member, a claim the Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed as nonsense.
Russia’s foreign ministry said that Moscow’s aims in Ukraine remained unchanged from 2022: that Ukraine should be neutral, non-aligned, demilitarised and ensure the rights of Russian speakers and Orthodox believers.
‘We need a configuration of negotiated solutions that will eliminate the root causes of the conflict and ensure reliable peace in the context of building a Eurasian and broader global system of indivisible security,’ spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
She cast U.S. sanctions as ‘extremely’ counterproductive and warned that if the Trump administration followed the example of previous U.S. administrations then it would fail.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday praised US President Donald Trump’s ‘resolute’ decision to sanction Russia’s energy sector, as Washington’s patience finally snapped with Moscow for stalling peace efforts.
Russia said the sanctions risked hurting diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine and that it had developed ‘strong immunity’ to Western restrictions. Its close ally China said they had ‘no basis in international law’.
But Zelensky called the measures ‘a clear signal that prolonging the war and spreading terror come at a cost’.
‘It is a strong and much-needed message that aggression will not go unanswered,’ he wrote on X as he arrived at an EU summit in Brussels.
Trump slapped sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies on Wednesday, complaining that his talks with Vladimir Putin to end the Ukraine war ‘don’t go anywhere’.
The US leader had held off pulling the trigger on sanctions against Russia for months but he eventually took the leap after plans for a fresh summit with Putin in Budapest collapsed.
Trump said that he hoped the ‘tremendous sanctions’ against Russian oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil would be short-lived. ‘We hope that the war will be settled,’ he said.
The US sanctions came as the European Union also imposed a 19th package of sanctions on Russia over the war – targeting Moscow’s key energy revenues.
‘This is a clear signal from both sides of the Atlantic that we will keep up collective pressure on the aggressor,’ EU chief Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X.
The US measures represent a major stepping up of its actions against Russia and reflect Trump’s growing frustration at being unable to persuade Putin to end the conflict despite what he calls his personal chemistry with the Kremlin chief.
Despite Trump’s outreach to Putin, Russia has continued its heavy bombardments on Ukraine, targeting key energy infrastructure ahead of the winter.
Zelensky said he hoped that Trump’s shift on sanctions would also herald a change of mind on giving Ukraine long-range Tomahawk missiles – after Kyiv came away from a meeting in Washington empty handed last week.
Kyiv and its supporters have already sought to seize on Trump’s demand for Russia and Ukraine to stop fighting along the current front line and shift the onus from Kyiv to Moscow to make concessions.
As part of the new EU measures, the 27-nation bloc brought forward a ban on the import of liquefied natural gas from Russia by a year to the start of 2027.
It also blacklisted over 100 more tankers from Moscow’s so-called ‘shadow fleet’ of ageing oil vessels and imposed controls on the travel of Russian diplomats suspected of espionage.
While Europe welcomed Trump’s latest move, it also was looking at ways to shore up Ukraine’s finances as the war drags on through a fourth year.
EU leaders were looking at their summit to give a preliminary green light to plans for a mammoth 140-billion-euro ($162-billion) loan for Ukraine using frozen Russian central bank assets.
Belgium, where the bulk of the money is held at international deposit organisation Euroclear, has demanded guarantees the rest of the EU will share any liabilities if Russia goes to court.
Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever said he was willing to agree if his conditions are met but warned he ‘would do everything in my power’ to block the plan if not.
While key questions remain, diplomats hope EU leaders will give the bloc’s executive the go-ahead to draw up a formal legal proposal for the loan that would only be paid back by Kyiv once Moscow coughs up for the damage it has wrought during its invasion of Ukraine.
Even if an initial nod is given at the summit, there still looks set to be months of wrangling over the small print before the loan can be finalised.
