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South Korea must navigate the ‘Trump risk’ at key summits in Japan and US

South Korea must navigate the ‘Trump risk’ at key summits in Japan and US
The meetings come after Seoul and Tokyo reached trade deals with Washington that spared them from the Trump administration’s highest tariffs, but only after pledging hundreds of billions of dollars. (AP)
Updated 22 August 2025

South Korea must navigate the ‘Trump risk’ at key summits in Japan and US

South Korea must navigate the ‘Trump risk’ at key summits in Japan and US
  • The meetings come after Seoul and Tokyo reached trade deals with Washington that spared them from the Trump administration’s highest tariffs, but only after pledging hundreds of billions of dollars

SEOUL: South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung faces a pivotal foreign policy test barely two months after taking office, with back-to-back summits in Tokyo and Washington that reflect the wider struggle of US allies to navigate Donald Trump’s unilateral push to redefine postwar orders on trade, security and alliances.
The meetings come after Seoul and Tokyo reached trade deals with Washington that spared them from the Trump administration’s highest tariffs, but only after pledging hundreds of billions of dollars in new US investments.
Trump’s transactional approach with long-standing allies extends beyond trade to security and has fueled fears in South Korea that he will demand higher payments to support the US troop presence in the country, even as he possibly seeks to scale back America’s military footprint there to focus on China.
The looming concerns about a US retreat in leadership and security commitments come as South Korea and Japan confront growing cooperation between their nuclear-armed adversaries, North Korea and Russia, partners in the war in Ukraine and in efforts to break isolation and evade sanctions.
Here is what is at stake for the Asian allies of the US as they deal with an America-first president who’s more unyielding than his predecessors:
Asian allies pulled closer by Trump
A day after confirming his Aug. 25 summit with Trump, Lee’s office announced he will visit Japan on Aug. 23-24 to meet Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, a rare diplomatic setup that underscores how Trump is drawing closer two often-feuding neighbors with deep-rooted historical grievances.
The meeting on Saturday in Tokyo of Lee and Ishiba — who last met on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit in June — is largely about projecting leverage as the countries seek to coordinate their response to Trump, said Choi Eunmi, an analyst at South Korea’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies.
“There is now the Trump risk,” Choi said. “There’s especially a lot of uncertainty in the business sector, so they might discuss ways to ease that uncertainty … not necessarily in joint efforts to confront Trump, but within the framework of trilateral cooperation.”
Yukiko Fukagawa, a professor at Japan’s Waseda University, said Lee’s visit to Tokyo will also be seen positively in Washington, long frustrated by its Asian allies’ persistent disputes over Japan’s colonial rule of Korea before the end of World War II, and the way these tensions hindered three-way security collaborations.
“Because they have to deal with increasingly challenging mutual counterparts, such as China and America, both Japan and South Korea are under pressure to set aside minor differences to cooperate on larger objectives,” Fukagawa said.
Yoshimasa Hayashi, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, said Lee’s visit will help promote the “stable development” of bilateral ties as their countries work together on international challenges by utilizing the “shuttle diplomacy” of regular summits.
Lee and Ishiba could discuss restarting long-stalled free trade talks and South Korea’s potential entry into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP, a 12-member Asia-Pacific trade pact that Ishiba has pushed to expand amid tensions over US tariffs.
Ishiba, who has met Trump twice in person — at the White House in February and at the G7 in Canada — could also offer Lee tips ahead of his summit in Washington.
Seoul and Tokyo clearly share many crucial interests in the face of Trump’s efforts to reset global trade and US security commitments.
They are both under pressure from Washington to pay more for the tens of thousands of American troops stationed in their countries and also to increase their own defense spending. Their vital automobile and technology industries are vulnerable to Trump’s tariff hikes.
They navigate a tricky balance between the US and its main rival, China, a growing regional threat that is also the largest trade partner for Seoul and Tokyo. They are alarmed by North Korea’s accelerating nuclear program and its deepening alignment with Russia, which could complicate future diplomatic efforts after a long stalemate in US-led denuclearization talks.
It makes more sense for South Korea and Japan to work with the Trump administration under a trilateral framework rather than engage Washington separately, especially given how Trump mixes security and economic demands, said Ban Kil-joo, a professor at South Korea’s National Diplomatic Academy.
For example, the countries could propose a trilateral scheme to support Trump’s push to expand natural gas and other energy production in Alaska, rather than negotiating potential investments bilaterally, he said.
“Beyond the drilling project itself, they would need to address security, including protecting maritime routes for the LNG shipments, and that responsibility could count toward defense cost-sharing or higher defense spending,” which Trump demands, Ban said.
Modernizing the military alliance
Lee’s meeting with Trump could include talks to flesh out the details of South Korea’s $350 million investment fund for US industries, centered on cooperation in shipbuilding, a sector Trump has highlighted in relation to South Korea.
Seoul has one of the largest trade surpluses among Washington’s NATO and Indo-Pacific allies, and Trump is eager to hear from Lee on how his country intends to quickly bridge the trade gap, said Victor Cha, the Korea chair at Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
A more crucial topic for the leaders could be the future of their decades-long military alliance, a legacy of the brutal 1950-53 Korean War.
The US, which keeps about 30,000 troops in South Korea to deter North Korea, has long urged Seoul to accept greater flexibility to use them for missions beyond the Korean Peninsula — a demand that has intensified under Trump.
Comments by senior US government and military officials suggest that, in addition to pressing South Korea to pay more for hosting American forces, the Trump administration could seek to reshape US Forces Korea as part of a broader military focus on ensuring capability to respond to a conflict with China over Taiwan.
That shift would mean conventionally armed South Korea taking on more of the burden against the North, while the US turns its focus to China. This could affect the size and role of US Forces Korea, leaving Seoul with fewer benefits but higher costs and risks at a time when the North Korean nuclear threat is growing, experts say.
South Korean lawmakers have also expressed fears that Washington could ask for Seoul’s commitment to intervene if a conflict breaks out in the Taiwan Strait, a tricky prospect given South Korea’s reliance on China for trade and Beijing’s role in dealing with North Korea.
South Korea should enter the Trump summit with a clear stance on its role in regional security, Ban said, possibly supporting US efforts to maintain Indo-Pacific stability and opposing changes to the status quo, but without explicitly naming China as an adversary. Cha said Trump’s national security aides will want to hear more explicit South Korean commitments on its approach to China.
While potentially accepting a more flexible role for US Forces Korea, South Korea should also seek US commitments to ensure deterrence and readiness against North Korea aren’t compromised. American troop deployments off the peninsula could be offset by increased airpower or the arrival of strategic assets like bombers, helping prevent any miscalculation by the North, Ban said.


Trump turns $11.1 billion in US government funds into a 10 percent stake in downtrodden Intel

Trump turns $11.1 billion in US government funds into a 10 percent stake in downtrodden Intel
Updated 10 sec ago

Trump turns $11.1 billion in US government funds into a 10 percent stake in downtrodden Intel

Trump turns $11.1 billion in US government funds into a 10 percent stake in downtrodden Intel
  • US govt getting the stake through the conversion of $11.1 billion in previously issued funds and pledges, making a gain of $1.9 billion, on paper
  • Remarkable turn of events comes at a time that the chipmaker is in the process of laying off more than 20,000 workers in bid to bounce back from years of missteps

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Friday announced the US government has secured a 10 percent stake in struggling Silicon Valley pioneer Intel in a deal that was completed just a couple weeks after he was depicting the company’s CEO as a conflicted leader unfit for the job.
“The United States of America now fully owns and controls 10 percent of INTEL, a Great American Company that has an even more incredible future,” Trump wrote in a post.
The US government is getting the stake through the conversion of $11.1 billion in previously issued funds and pledges. All told, the government is getting 433.3 million shares of non-voting stock priced at $20.47 apiece — a discount from Friday’s closing price at $24.80. That spread means the US government already has a gain of $1.9 billion, on paper.
The remarkable turn of events makes the US government one of Intel’s largest shareholders at a time that the Santa Clara, California, company is in the process of jettisoning more than 20,000 workers as part of its latest attempt to bounce back from years of missteps taken under a variety of CEOs.
Intel’s current CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, has only been on the job for slightly more than five months, and earlier this month, it looked like he might be on shaky ground already after some lawmakers raised national security concerns about his past investments in Chinese companies while he was a venture capitalist. Trump latched on to those concerns in an August 7 post demanding that Tan resign.
But Trump backed off after the Malaysian-born Tan professed his allegiance to the US in a public letter to Intel employees and went to the White House to meet with the president, leading to a deal that now has the US government betting that the company is on the comeback trail after losing more than $22 billion since the end of 2023. Trump hailed Tan as “highly respected” CEO in his Friday post.
In a statement, Tan applauded Trump for “driving historic investments in a vital industry” and resolved to reward his faith in Intel. “We are grateful for the confidence the President and the Administration have placed in Intel, and we look forward to working to advance US technology and manufacturing leadership,” Tan said.
Intel’s current stock price is just slightly above where it was when Tan was hired in March and more than 60 percent below its peak of about $75 reached 25 years ago when its chips were still dominating the personal computer boom before being undercut by a shift to smartphones a few years later. The company’s market value currently stands at about $108 billion — a fraction of the current chip kingpin, Nvidia, which is valued at $4.3 trillion.
The stake is coming primarily through US government grants to Intel through the CHIPS and Science Act that was started under President Joe Biden’s administration as a way to foster more domestic manufacturing of computer chips to lessen the dependence on overseas factories.
But the Trump administration, which has regularly pilloried the policies of the Biden administration, saw the CHIPs act as a needless giveaway and is now hoping to make a profit off the funding that had been pledged to Intel.
“We think America should get the benefit of the bargain,” US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said earlier this week. “It’s obvious that it’s the right move to make.”
About $7.8 billion had been been pledged to Intel under the incentives program, but only $2.2 billion had been funded so far. Another $3.2 billion of the government investment is coming through the funds from another program called “Secure Enclave.”
Although US government can’t vote with its shares and won’t have a seat on Intel’s board of directors, critics of the deal view it as a troubling cross-pollination between the public and private sectors that could hurt the tech industry in a variety of ways.
For instance, more tech companies may feel pressured to buy potentially inferior chips from Intel to curry favor with Trump at a time that he is already waging a trade war that threatens to affect their products in a potential scenario cited by Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics for the Cato Institute.
“Overall, it’s a horrendous move that will have real harms for US companies, US tech leadership, and the US economy overall,” Lincicome posted Friday.
The 10 percent stake could also intensify the pressure already facing Tan, especially if Trump starts fixating on Intel’s stock price while resorting to his penchant for celebrating his past successes in business.
Nancy Tengler, CEO of money manager Laffer Tengler Investments, is among the investors who abandoned Intel years ago because of all the challenges facing Intel.
“I don’t see the benefit to the American taxpayer, nor do I see the benefit, necessarily to the chip industry,” Tengler said while also raising worries about Trump meddling in Intel’s business.
“I don’t care how good of businessman you are, give it to the private sector and let people like me be the critic and let the government get to the business of government.,” Tengler said.
Although rare, it’s not unprecedented for the US government to become a significant shareholder in a prominent company. One of the most notable instances occurred during the Great Recession in 2008 when the government injected nearly $50 billion into General Motors in return for a roughly 60 percent stake in the automaker at a time it was on the verge of bankruptcy. The government ended up with a roughly $10 billion loss after it sold its stock in GM.
The US government’s stake in Intel coincides with Trump’s push to bring production to the US, which has been a focal point of the trade war that he has been waging throughout the world. By lessening the country’s dependence on chips manufactured overseas, the president believes the US will be better positioned to maintain its technological lead on China in the race to create artificial intelligence.
Even before gaining the 10 percent stake in Intel, Trump had been leveraging his power to reprogram the operations of major computer chip companies. The administration is requiring Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, two companies whose chips are powering the AI craze, to pay a 15 percent commission on their sales of chips in China in exchange for export licenses.
 


Gambian man sentenced to more than 67 years after US conviction for torture

Gambian man sentenced to more than 67 years after US conviction for torture
Updated 27 min 51 sec ago

Gambian man sentenced to more than 67 years after US conviction for torture

Gambian man sentenced to more than 67 years after US conviction for torture
  • Michael Sang Correa, a member of former Gambian dictator Jammeh’s death squad, was convicted by US jury in April
  • Rights groups say Jammeh carried out brutalities against critics and political dissenters

A Gambian man who was part of an armed unit run by former dictator Yahya Jammeh and was convicted of torture by a US jury in April has been sentenced to more than 67 years in prison, the US Justice Department said on Friday.
A Colorado jury convicted the Gambian national, Michael Sang Correa, for his participation in the torture of numerous victims in Gambia in 2006, including beating and flesh burning, because of the victims’ purported involvement in a coup plot against the then-president, the Justice Department said.
Correa, 46, was sentenced to 810 months in prison by Senior Judge Christine Arguello for the District of Colorado after conviction on one count of conspiracy to commit torture and five counts of torture, the department said in a statement.
The case marked the first criminal prosecution over involvement in the feared armed group known as “the Junglers,” which operated in Gambia’s police state during Jammeh’s rule. The former president seized power in 1994 and foiled several attempts to overthrow him before he lost a 2016 election.
Correa was arrested in 2020 under a law which makes it a crime for anyone in the US to commit torture abroad.
Jammeh denied torture during his rule.
The Junglers were a secretive offshoot of the Gambian army that took orders from Jammeh. Rights groups and former victims say they carried out brutalities that worsened after a failed coup in 2006.
Suspected coup plotters and other outspoken opponents of Jammeh were taken to the National Intelligence Agency near one of the capital Banjul’s white sand beaches, according to victims.
Some found themselves in a torture chamber where they were subjected to electric shocks, beatings and burning with acid, they said. (Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Edmund Klamann)


Being Muslim and American in the nation’s heartland

Being Muslim and American in the nation’s heartland
Updated 32 min 20 sec ago

Being Muslim and American in the nation’s heartland

Being Muslim and American in the nation’s heartland
  • The Muslim presence across the Midwest grew exponentially after a 1965 immigration law eliminated the quotas that had blocked arrivals from many parts of the world since the mid-1920s, Curtis said
  • Faroz Waziri jokes that he and his wife Mena might have been the first Afghans in town when they came in the mid-2010s on a special visa for those who had worked for the US armed forces overseas
  • “You can be a Muslim that’s practicing your religion and still coexist with everybody else around you,” said Hassan Igram, who chairs the center’s board of trustees

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa: The oldest surviving place of worship for Muslims in the United States is a white clapboard building on a grassy corner plot, as unassumingly Midwestern as its neighboring houses in Cedar Rapids – except for a dome.
The descendants of the Lebanese immigrants who constructed “the Mother Mosque” almost a century ago — along with newcomers from Afghanistan, East Africa and beyond — are defining what it can mean to be both Muslim and American in the nation’s heartland just as heightened conflicts in the Middle East fuel tensions over immigration and Islam in the United States.

Imam Taha Tawil of "The Mother Mosque of America" discusses the building's long history in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Friday, Aug. 8, 2025. (AP)

Standing by the door in a gold-embroidered black robe, Fatima Igram Smejkal greeted the faithful with a cheerful “salaam” as they hurried into the Islamic Center of Cedar Rapids for Friday prayers. In 1934, her family helped open what the National Register of Historic Places calls “the first building designed and constructed specifically as a house of worship for Muslims in the United States.”
“They all came from nothing … so they wanted to give back,” Smejkal said of families like hers, who arrived at the turn of the 20th century. “That’s why I’m so kind to the ones that come in from Somalia and the Congo and Sudan and Afghanistan. I have no idea what they left, what they’re thinking when they walk in that mosque.”

Muslims attend Friday prayer at the Islamic Center of Cedar Rapids on Friday, Aug. 8, 2025, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (AP)

The community now gathers in the Islamic Center. It was built in the 1970s when they became too many for the Mother Mosque’s living-room-sized prayer hall, and now they’re have outgrown its prayer hall, as well. Hundreds of fifth-generation Muslim Iowans, recent refugees and migrants pray on industrial carpets rolled onto the gym’s basketball court — the elderly on walkers, babies in car seats, women in headscarves and men sporting headgear from African kufi and Afghan pakol caps to baseball hats.
This physical space where diverse groups gather helps sustain community as immigrants try to preserve their heritage while assimilating into US culture and society.

Community members talk after Friday prayer at the Islamic Center of Cedar Rapids on Friday, Aug. 8, 2025, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (AP)

“You can be a Muslim that’s practicing your religion and still coexist with everybody else around you,” said Hassan Igram, who chairs the center’s board of trustees. He shares the same first and last names as his grandfather and Smejkal’s grandfather – two cousins who came to Iowa as boys in the 1910s.
Lebanese migrants ‘Mother Mosque’
Tens of thousands of young men, both Christians and Muslims, settled in booming Midwestern towns after fleeing the Ottoman Empire, many with little more than a Bible or a Qur’an in their bags. They often worked selling housewares off their backs to widely scattered farms, earning enough to buy horses and buggies, and then opened grocery stores.

Two young girls stand together outside of the Islamic Center of Cedar Rapids after Friday prayer on Aug. 8, 2025, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (AP)

Through bake sales and community dinners, a group of Muslim women raised money in the 1920s to build what was called the “Muslim Temple.” Like the Igrams, Anace Aossey remembers attending prayer there with his parents – though as children they were more focused on the Dixie Cream donuts that would follow.
“We weren’t raised real strict religiously,” said Aossey, whose father sold goods along the tracks from a 175-pound sack. “They were here to integrate themselves into the American society.”
Growing up Muslim in America
Muslims sometimes faced institutional discrimination. After serving in World War II, Smejkal’s father, Abdallah Igram, successfully campaigned for soldiers’ dog tags to include Muslim as an option, along with Catholic, Protestant and Jewish.

Mohamed Mahmoud, right, helps Afghan refugee Faroz Waziri, left, and his son select deserts at the halal grocery store he opened in 2022 after immigrating from Sudan on Friday, Aug. 8, 2025, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (AP)

But in Cedar Rapids, immigrants found mutual acceptance, fostered through houses of worship and friendships between US-born children and their non-Muslim neighbors. Smejkal’s best friend was Catholic, and her father kept beef hot dogs in the kitchen to respect the Muslim prohibition against pork. Smejkal’s father, in turn, made sure Friday meals included fish sticks.
“Arab-speaking Muslims were part and parcel of the same stories that inform our sense of what the Midwest is and its values are,” said Indiana University professor Edward E. Curtis, IV. “They participated in the making of the American heartland.”
Abdallah Igram is buried in the city’s hilltop Muslim cemetery, among the first in the United States when it was built in the 1940s. It’s next to the Czech cemetery – for the descendants of the migrants who helped establish Cedar Rapids in the 1850s — and the Jewish cemetery, whose operators donated trees to the Muslim one after damage from a derecho five years ago. Smejkal wishes the whole world’s faiths could collaborate this way.
“That’s when there’s no barriers anymore. I pray one day it’s really like that,” Smejkal said.
Being Muslim in the Heartland
The Muslim presence across the Midwest grew exponentially after a 1965 immigration law eliminated the quotas that had blocked arrivals from many parts of the world since the mid-1920s, Curtis said.
Mistrust flared again after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, especially in farming communities whose young people were fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, said Ako Abdul-Samad, an African-American who represented Des Moines for nearly two decades in the Iowa House of Representatives. He feared being Muslim would prevent his election when he first ran for office, but voters re-elected him again and again.
Immigration, including from Muslim countries, remains a contentious issue, even as Muslim communities flourish and increase their political influence in major cities like Minneapolis and Detroit.
But daily interactions between Muslims and their neighbors have provided some protection from prejudice, according to the Mother Mosque imam, a Palestinian who immigrated in the 1980s. “Stereotypes and things did not work” in Cedar Rapids, Taha Tawil said.
Bosnian Muslims say they’ve had similar experiences near Des Moines, where a new multimillion dollar mosque and cultural center is opening next month, an expansion of the first center established by war refugees 20 years ago.
“Our neighbors have been great to us, including the farmers we got the land from,” said its treasurer, Moren Blazevic. “We’re finally Iowans.”
Becoming Midwesterners
Faroz Waziri jokes that he and his wife Mena might have been the first Afghans in town when they came in the mid-2010s on a special visa for those who had worked for the US armed forces overseas. After struggling with “culture shock” and language barriers, they’ve become naturalized US citizens, and he’s the refugee resources manager at a non-profit founded by Catholic nuns.
While grateful for the aid and the safety they feel, the Waziris miss their families and homeland. And they fear that cultural differences — especially the individualism Americans express, like when they sit around a table for meals, instead of together on a rug — remain too vast.
“Mentally and emotionally, I never think I’m American,” said Mena Waziri. She’s a college graduate now, and loves the independence and women’s rights that remain unattainable in Taliban-run Afghanistan. But the family is keen for their US-born son, Rayan, to have Muslim friends and values.
These tensions are familiar for the descendants of the city’s first Muslim settlers, like Aossey, who keeps exhibit panels about Lebanese immigration and integration in the same garage where he stores ATVs on his recreational farm.
“My story is the American story,” Aossey said. “It’s not the Islamic story.”

 


Trump threatens federal intervention in Chicago, government takeover in D.C.

Trump threatens federal intervention in Chicago, government takeover in D.C.
Updated 23 August 2025

Trump threatens federal intervention in Chicago, government takeover in D.C.

Trump threatens federal intervention in Chicago, government takeover in D.C.
  • Chicago, other cities do not share D.C.’s federal status
  • Violent crime has fallen in Washington, Chicago, data shows

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Friday he would probably expand his crime crackdown to Chicago, intervening in another city governed by Democrats, and threatened to take full control of Washington, D.C., rather than only its policing.
Saying without evidence that violent crime was out of control in the nation’s capital, Trump deployed D.C. National Guard soldiers and federal agents on the streets last week with a mandate to reduce crime.
“It was horrible and Mayor Bowser better get her act straight or she won’t be mayor very long, because we’ll take it over with the federal government, run it like it’s supposed to be run,” Trump told reporters, referring to Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser.
Recent statistics, which Trump dismissed, show crime has declined in the US capital since a 2023 peak.
Washington is a unique federal enclave, established in the US Constitution and falling under the jurisdiction of Congress, not belonging to any state.
In 1973, Congress passed the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, allowing residents to elect a mayor and council members.
Continuing his off-the-cuff remarks at the White House, Trump mused about extending his efforts to other cities. He has declined to explain how the federal government could intervene in local law enforcement in cities outside of the federal enclave of D.C.
“Chicago is a mess,” Trump said, deriding its mayor. “And we’ll straighten that one out probably next.”
Trump said some of his supporters in Chicago have been “screaming for us to come.”
“I did great with the Black vote, as you know, and they want something to happen,” he said. “So I think Chicago will be our next, and then we’ll help with New York.”
As in Washington, crime, including murders, has declined in Chicago in the last year.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said he took Trump’s comments seriously but has not received formal communication from the administration about federal law enforcement or military deployments.
The mayor said Trump’s approach has been “uncoordinated, uncalled for and unsound.” He added: “There are many things the federal government could do to help us reduce crime and violence in Chicago, but sending in the military is not one of them.”
New York City, also criticized by Trump, has reported a steady decline in violent crime in recent decades, and now has a relatively low murder rate among big American cities. Trump also threatened federal government intervention in San Francisco, another city governed by Democrats.
While the Republican president has cast his efforts as an urgent move to help residents feel safe again, Democrats and other critics say he aims to expand the powers of the president beyond the bounds of the Constitution and assert federal control over cities run by Democratic officials.
The US Constitution’s Tenth Amendment generally prevents the federal government from commandeering state or municipal officials and from intervening in states’ legal and criminal justice systems unless citizens’ constitutional rights are being violated. 


With no Ukraine peace deal, Trump again threatens Russia sanctions

With no Ukraine peace deal, Trump again threatens Russia sanctions
Updated 23 August 2025

With no Ukraine peace deal, Trump again threatens Russia sanctions

With no Ukraine peace deal, Trump again threatens Russia sanctions
  • Russia says agenda ‘not ready’ for Zelensky meeting
  • Work on Ukraine’s proposed security guarantees underway

WASHINGTON/KYIV: US President Donald Trump renewed a threat to impose sanctions on Russia on Friday if there is no progress toward a peaceful settlement in Ukraine in two weeks, showing frustration at Moscow a week after his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska.
“I’m going to make a decision as to what we do and it’s going to be, it’s going to be a very important decision, and that’s whether or not it’s massive sanctions or massive tariffs or both, or we do nothing and say it’s your fight,” Trump said.
He was unhappy about Russia’s deadly strike on a factory in Ukraine this week, he said.
“I’m not happy about it, and I’m not happy about anything having to do with that war,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, said on Friday that Russia was doing everything it could to prevent a meeting between him and Putin, while Russia’s foreign minister said the agenda for such a meeting was not ready.
Zelensky has repeatedly called for Putin to meet him, saying it is the only way to negotiate an end to the war.
Trump had said he had begun the arrangements for a Putin-Zelensky meeting after a call with the Russian leader on Monday that followed their Alaska meeting on August 15.
Zelensky accused Russia of stalling.
“The meeting is one of the components of how to end the war,” he said on Friday at a press conference in Kyiv with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. “And since they don’t want to end it, they will look for space to (avoid it).”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told NBC there was no agenda for such a summit.
“Putin is ready to meet with Zelensky when the agenda would be ready for a summit. And this agenda is not ready at all,” he said.
The statement echoed Moscow’s established rhetoric about a leaders’ meeting being impossible unless certain conditions were met.
Asked for his response to Lavrov’s comments and what the next steps are, Trump told reporters earlier on Friday: “Well, we’ll see. We’re going to see if Putin and Zelensky will be working together. It’s like oil and vinegar a little bit.”

‘He may be coming’
Trump had taken sanctions off the table in preparation for his summit in Anchorage with Putin. But at the same White House event where he mentioned possible sanctions, he showed a photograph of his meeting with Putin on the red carpet in Alaska, saying Putin wanted to attend the World Cup 2026 soccer tournament in the United States.
“I’m going to sign this for him. But I was sent one, and I thought you would like to see it, it’s a man named Vladimir Putin, who I believe will be coming, depending on what happens. He may be coming, and he may not, depending on what happens,” Trump said.
Trump’s comments did not address the fact that Russia was banned from international competitions such as the World Cup after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and has not taken part in qualification for the 2026 tournament, which will be hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico.
During a visit to a nuclear research center on Friday, Putin said Trump’s leadership qualities would help restore US-Russia relations.
“With the arrival of President Trump, I think that a light at the end of the tunnel has finally loomed. And now we had a very good, meaningful and frank meeting in Alaska,” Putin said.
Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Russia launched in 2022. Analysts estimate that more than a million soldiers on both sides have been killed or wounded and fighting is continuing unabated, with both sides also attacking energy facilities.
Russia has maintained its longstanding demand for Ukraine to give up land it still holds in two eastern regions while proposing to freeze the front line in two more southerly regions Moscow claims fully as its own and possibly hand back small pieces of other Ukrainian territory it controls.
Zelensky meanwhile has dropped his demand for a lengthy ceasefire as a prerequisite for a leaders’ meeting, although he has previously said Ukraine cannot negotiate under the barrel of a gun.
At the press conference with Rutte, Zelensky said they had discussed security guarantees for Ukraine. He said the guarantees ought to be similar to NATO’s Article 5, which considers an attack on one member of the alliance as an attack against all.
Rutte said NATO allies and Ukraine are working together to ensure security guarantees are strong enough that Russia will never try to attack again.
“Robust security guarantees will be essential, and this is what we are now working on to define,” he said.