• ·         Mr. Trump has renewed a threaten to impose sanctions on Russia if there is no any progress toward a peaceful settlement in Ukraine in two weeks, showing frustration at Moscow a week after his meeting with 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,” the US president said on Friday. He said he was unhappy about Russia’s strike on an American factory in Ukraine this week, which caused a fire that injured some of the facility’s employees.

  
  

  
  

  ·         The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile said Russia was doing everything it could to prevent a meeting between him and Putin. Zelenskyy has repeatedly called for Putin to meet him, saying it is the only way to negotiate an end to the war. He 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].”