WASHINGTON DC – The United States said on Tuesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “getting a sense of” his American counterpart’s anger “at the nature of what’s transpiring,” as State Department’s Tammy Bruce put it when describing Donald Trump’s latest broadside at Putin over stalled Ukraine peace efforts.
“I wouldn’t call it frustration,” Bruce told Kyiv Post’s Washington correspondent during a daily press briefing about Trump’s latest comments on Putin.
“It is a statement of the man who has led the effort for peace in so many different regions, making it clear and being completely transparent about his opinion about what’s transpired,” she said.
Trump lambasted Putin over the weekend after the Kremlin launched a record drone barrage at Ukraine, killing at least 13 people. On Tuesday, he warned the Kremlin leader he is “playing with fire.”
“What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD,” Trump noted on social media. “He’s playing with fire!”
Kyiv Post asked whether Trump’s criticisms were a harbinger of potential policy adjustments to the White House’s handling of the Russian war in Ukraine, Bruce hinted that the US leader was keeping all options open.
“There are many different things that the president [Trump] has at his disposal to make sure that our position is felt and that can be used to make an impact to stop this carnage,” she said, adding that the White House could use these instruments to impact the situation.
Bruce later added that Trump might be close to taking action against Russia. “As we’ve seen today with Putin. …There is a point that [Trump] looks at things differently, and how that manifests, just like with everything else in this administration, it will happen quickly,” she said.
The Kremlin on Monday reacted to Trump’s weekend comments, blaming them on “emotional overload.”
“I’m not going to speak about the president’s emotions; he’s transparent,” Bruce said when Kyiv Post asked about Moscow’s statements.
Instead, the spokesperson went on to add that Washington is monitoring reports that the drone and missile attacks this weekend were the largest since Russia began its war.
“If the Russians cared about the nature of how this is proceeding, they would be thinking less about that and more about what they could do, which is in their hands, to stop the carnage and the slaughter that’s happening right now,” Bruce said, urging Russia to take Trump’s statements “seriously.”
“We are calling for restraint and urge all parties to avoid further escalation,” she emphasized.
The spokesperson also said the US remains committed to brokering a peace deal, despite the Trump-Kremlin exchange.
Trump and Putin spoke by phone on May 19, with the US president posting on social media afterward that Russia and Ukraine would “immediately start negotiations toward a ceasefire and, more importantly, an end to the war!”
But nothing has happened since, to the US President’s apparent public frustration.