RUSSIAN leaders today dismissed threats by US President Donald Trump to slap steep tariffs on Moscow if it does not negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine as “a theatrical ultimatum.”

President Trump had also announced on Monday that he was stepping up the supply of US weapons to Ukraine.

“My conversations with [Russian President Vladimir Putin] are very pleasant, and then the missiles go off at night,” President Trump said, criticising Mr Putin’s apparent reluctance to negotiate a ceasefire.

The US president complained that the war “just keeps going on and on and on.”

Mr Trump said that he would implement “severe tariffs” unless a peace deal is reached within 50 days.

He provided few details on how they would be implemented, but described them as secondary tariffs, meaning they would target Russia’s trading partners in an effort to isolate Moscow in the global economy.

In addition, President Trump that said European allies would buy “billions and billions” of dollars of US military equipment to be transferred to Ukraine, replenishing the besieged country’s supplies of weapons.

But Russian Security Council deputy chairman Dmitry Medvedev wrote on the X social platform that the US president had “issued a theatrical ultimatum to the Kremlin. The world shuddered, expecting the consequences. Belligerent Europe was disappointed. Russia didn’t care.”

One Russian lawmaker accused sponsors of the US president of being set to profit from the sale of US offensive weapons to Nato countries with their subsequent transfer to Ukraine.

Viktor Vodolatsky, first deputy chairman of the committee for the Commonwealth of Independent States affairs and Eurasian integration of the Russia State Duma, told the Tass news agency: “US presidents, both Democratic and Republican, are not independent in America.

“They will do anything the so-called deep state tells them to do. And the US weapons lobby is very powerful. They call the shots.”

He said: “Trump will do whatever his sponsors tell him to do.

A senior White House official was reported by Politico magazine as saying that President Trump believes that Russia has the upper hand in the conflict with Ukraine despite Washington’s additional weapons supplies to Kiev.

“The president’s view is Russia is going to win, it’s a matter of how long it takes,” the source said, adding that Russia had far more economic and military resources and manpower than Ukraine.

The source told Politico that the president “just wants to stop the killing.”