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WASHINGTON: Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Tuesday that he believes President Donald Trump is prepared to “crush” Russia’s economy with a new wave of sanctions if Russian President Vladimir Putin refuses to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the coming weeks.
Graham, who spoke with Trump on Tuesday morning, has pushed the president for months to support his sweeping bipartisan sanctions bill that would impose steep tariffs on countries that are fueling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by buying its oil, gas, uranium, and other exports. The legislation has the backing of 85 senators, but Trump has yet to endorse it. Republican leaders have said they won’t move without him.
“If we don’t have this thing moving in the right direction by the time we get back, then I think that plan B needs to kick in,” Graham said in a phone interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday. The Senate, now away from Washington for the August recess, is scheduled to return in September.
Graham’s call with Trump came less than 24 hours after high-stakes meetings at the White House with Zelensky and several European leaders. Trump and the leaders emerged from those talks sounding optimistic, with the expectation being that a Putin and Zelensky sit-down will happen soon.
Still, Trump’s comments to Graham, one of his top congressional allies, mark the latest sign that pressure is building — not just on Putin, but on Trump as well.
“Trump believes that if Putin doesn’t do his part, that he’s going to have to crush his economy. Because you’ve got to mean what you say,” Graham told reporters in South Carolina on Tuesday.
As Congress prepares to return to session in early September, the next few weeks could become a defining test of whether lawmakers and international allies are prepared to act on their own if Trump doesn’t follow through.
Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the lead Democrat pushing the bill with Graham, says there is a “lot of reason for skepticism and doubt” after the meetings with Trump, especially because Putin has not made any direct promises. He said the Russian leader has an incentive to play “rope-a-dope” with Trump.
“The only way to bring Putin to the table is to show strength,” Blumenthal told the AP this week. “What Putin understands is force and pressure.”
Still, Republicans have shown little willingness to override Trump in his second term. They abruptly halted work on the sanctions bill before the August recess after Trump said the legislation may not be needed.
Asked Tuesday in a phone interview whether the sanctions bill should be brought up even without Trump’s support, Graham said, “the best way to do it is with him.”
“There will come a point where if it’s clear that Putin is not going to entertain peace, that President Trump will have to back up what he said he would do,” Graham said. “And the best way to do it is have congressional blessing.”
The legislation would impose tariffs of up to 500 percent on countries such as China and India, which together account for roughly 70 percent of Russia’s energy trade. The framework has the support of many European leaders.
Many of those same European leaders left the White House on Monday with a more hopeful tone. Zelensky called the meeting with Trump “an important step toward ending this war.” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that his expectations “were not just met, they were exceeded.”
Still, little concrete progress was visible on the main obstacles to peace. That deadlock likely favors Putin, whose forces continue to make steady, if slow, progress on the ground in Ukraine.
French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters after talks at the White House that Trump believes a deal with Putin is possible. But he said sanctions remain on the table if the process fails.

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump has projected himself as a peacemaker since returning to the White House in January, touting his efforts to end global conflicts.
In meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders Monday, Trump repeated that he has been instrumental in stopping multiple wars but didn’t specify which.
“I’ve done six wars, I’ve ended six wars, Trump said in the Oval Office with Zelensky. He later added: “If you look at the six deals I settled this year, they were all at war. I didn’t do any ceasefires.”
He raised that figure Tuesday, telling “Fox & Friends” that “we ended seven wars.”
But although Trump helped mediate relations among many of these nations, experts say his impact isn’t as clear cut as he claims.
Here’s a closer look at the conflicts.
Israel and Iran
Trump is credited with ending the 12-day war.
Israel launched attacks on the heart of Iran’s nuclear program and military leadership in June, saying it wanted to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon — which Tehran has denied it was trying to do.
Trump negotiated a ceasefire between Israel and Iran just after directing American warplanes to strike Iran’s Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz nuclear sites. He publicly harangued both countries into maintaining the ceasefire.
Evelyn Farkas, executive director of Arizona State University’s McCain Institute, said Trump should get credit for ending the war.
“There’s always a chance it could flare up again if Iran restarts its nuclear weapons program, but nonetheless, they were engaged in a hot war with one another,” she said. “And it didn’t have any real end in sight before President Trump got involved and gave them an ultimatum.”
Lawrence Haas, a senior fellow for US foreign policy at the American Foreign Policy Council who is an expert on Israel-Iran tensions, agreed the US was instrumental in securing the ceasefire. But he characterized it as a “temporary respite” from the ongoing “day-to-day cold war” between the two foes that often involves flare-ups.
Egypt and Ethiopia
This could be described as tensions at best, and peace efforts — which don’t directly involve the US — have stalled.
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile River has caused friction between Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan since the power-generating project was announced more than a decade ago. In July, Ethiopia declared the project complete, with an inauguration set for September.
Egypt and Sudan oppose the dam. Although the vast majority of the water that flows down the Nile originates in Ethiopia, Egyptian agriculture relies on the river almost entirely. Sudan, meanwhile, fears flooding and wants to protect its own power-generating dams.
During his first term, Trump tried to broker a deal between Ethiopia and Egypt but couldn’t get them to agree. He suspended aid to Ethiopia over the dispute. In July, he posted on Truth Social that he helped the “fight over the massive dam (and) there is peace at least for now.” However, the disagreement persists, and negotiations between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan have stalled.
“It would be a gross overstatement to say that these countries are at war,” said Haas. “I mean, they’re just not.”
India and Pakistan
The April killing of tourists in Indian-controlled Kashmir pushed India and Pakistan closer to war than they had been in years, but a ceasefire was reached.
Trump has claimed that the US brokered the ceasefire, which he said came about in part because he offered trade concessions. Pakistan thanked Trump, recommending him for the Nobel Peace Prize. But India has denied Trump’s claims, saying there was no conversation between the US and India on trade in regards to the ceasefire.
Although India has downplayed the Trump administration’s role in the ceasefire, Haas and Farkas believe the US deserves some credit for helping stop the fighting.
“I think that President Trump played a constructive role from all accounts, but it may not have been decisive. And again, I’m not sure whether you would define that as a full-blown war,” Farkas said.
Serbia and Kosovo
The White House lists the conflict between these countries as one Trump resolved, but there has been no threat of a war between the two neighbors during Trump’s second term, nor any significant contribution from Trump this year to improve their relations.
Kosovo is a former Serbian province that declared independence in 2008. Tensions have persisted ever since, but never to the point of war, mostly because NATO-led peacekeepers have been deployed in Kosovo, which has been recognized by more than 100 countries.
During his first term, Trump negotiated a wide-ranging deal between Serbia and Kosovo, but much of what was agreed on was never carried out.
Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Trump has played a key role in peace efforts between the African neighbors, but he’s hardly alone and the conflict is far from over.
Eastern Congo, rich in minerals, has been battered by fighting with more than 100 armed groups. The most potent is the M23 rebel group backed by neighboring Rwanda, which claims it is protecting its territorial interests and that some of those who participated in the 1994 Rwandan genocide fled to Congo and are working with the Congolese army.
The Trump administration’s efforts paid off in June, when the Congolese and Rwandan foreign ministers signed a peace deal at the White House. The M23, however, wasn’t directly involved in the US-facilitated negotiations and said it couldn’t abide by the terms of an agreement that didn’t involve it.
The final step to peace was meant to be a separate Qatar-facilitated deal between Congo and M23 that would bring about a permanent ceasefire. But with the fighting still raging, Monday’s deadline for the Qatar-led deal was missed and there have been no public signs of major talks between Congo and M23 on the final terms.
Armenia and Azerbaijan
Trump this month hosted the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan at the White House, where they signed a deal aimed at ending a decades-long conflict between the two nations. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called the signed document a “significant milestone,” and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev hailed Trump for performing “a miracle.”
The two countries signed agreements intended to reopen key transportation routes and reaffirm Armenia’s and Azerbaijan’s commitment to signing a peace treaty. The treaty’s text was initialed by the countries’ foreign ministers at that meeting, which indicates preliminary approval. But the two countries have yet to sign and ratify the deal.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a bitter conflict over territory since the early 1990s, when ethnic Armenian forces took control of the Karabakh province, known internationally as Nagorno-Karabakh, and nearby territories. In 2020, Azerbaijan’s military recaptured broad swaths of territory. Russia brokered a truce and deployed about 2,000 peacekeepers to the region.
In September 2023, Azerbaijani forces launched a lightning blitz to retake remaining portions. The two countries have worked toward normalizing ties and signing a peace treaty ever since.
Cambodia and Thailand
Officials from Thailand and Cambodia credit Trump with pushing the Asian neighbors to agree to a ceasefire in this summer’s brief border conflict.
Cambodia and Thailand have clashed in the past over their shared border. The latest fighting began in July after a land mine explosion along the border wounded five Thai soldiers. Tensions had been growing since May, when a Cambodian soldier was killed in a confrontation that created a diplomatic rift and roiled Thai politics.
Both countries agreed in late July to an unconditional ceasefire during a meeting in Malaysia. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim pressed for the pact, but there was little headway until Trump intervened. Trump said on social media that he warned the Thai and Cambodian leaders that the US would not move forward with trade agreements if the hostilities continued. Both countries faced economic difficulties and neither had reached tariff deals with the US, though most of their Southeast Asian neighbors had.
According to Ken Lohatepanont, a political analyst and University of Michigan doctoral candidate, “President Trump’s decision to condition a successful conclusion to these talks on a ceasefire likely played a significant role in ensuring that both sides came to the negotiating table when they did.” ___