Trump Envoy to Visit Russia Amid Threats of Severe Tariffs

US President Donald Trump has announced that his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, will visit Russia next week to continue talks on the war in Ukraine. Speaking to reporters, Trump said Witkoff would travel to Russia on Wednesday or Thursday to discuss a potential deal to end the conflict. When asked what Russia could do to avoid looming sanctions, Trump replied, “Yeah, get a deal where people stop getting killed.”

This development comes as Trump has threatened to impose “very severe tariffs” on Russia if it fails to reach a ceasefire deal with Ukraine soon. In July, Trump announced a plan to impose 100% tariffs on Russia and secondary sanctions on countries that buy Russian oil. “We’re very, very unhappy with them. And we’re going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don’t have a deal in 50 days. Tariffs at about 100 percent, you’d call them secondary tariffs,” Trump said during a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.

The US president’s envoy, Witkoff, has already met with Russian President Vladimir Putin multiple times in Moscow in his role as a White House special envoy. Witkoff’s visit to Russia comes as Ukrainian and Russian officials have held several meetings in recent months in Istanbul, Turkiye, including a recent meeting that secured an agreement to exchange 1,200 prisoners.

Trump’s latest comments come after he described Russia’s actions in its war on Ukraine as “disgusting” following a Russian attack on an apartment block in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, that killed 31 people. The attack was part of a month-long surge in Russian long-range drone attacks on Ukraine, with a record 6,297 attacks reported in July, a 14-fold increase from July 2024.

Ukraine is looking forward to receiving a US-made Patriot surface-to-air missile system, which Trump has promised will be delivered, albeit with funding from Ukraine’s European allies, not the Trump administration. Ukraine has also continued to launch its own attacks on Russia, including a recent drone attack that sparked a fire at a railway station in Russia’s Volgograd region.