Russian Press Dubs Trump “A Magician” as Sanctions Vanish, But Warns His Stance May Shift

(MOSCOW, RUSSIA) – Russian newspapers have described Donald Trump as a magician after the US president made sanctions against Russia disappear, while warning that his position on Ukraine may not last.

The US president signed an executive order on Friday that lifted sanctions against Russia and against countries buying its energy, a sanctions law he had signed only a month earlier.

His administration says Trump is motivated by a desire not to harm peace efforts in Ukraine.

Yet Monday’s Russian papers show no sign that Moscow is interested in peace talks unless the Kremlin gets to dictate the conditions.

Moskovsky Komsomolets declares: “We will make a deal with Ukraine entirely on our terms.”

Komsomolskaya Pravda suggests Russia is after more Ukrainian territory, writing that the buffer zone in Kharkiv, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions is “destined to become territory of the Russian Federation”, adding that the borders of Russia “do not end anywhere”.

That line is a well-known quotation from the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and is widely seen as a threat.

Putin appears on the front page of the Russian government paper Rossiyskaya Gazeta under the headline “The front line is moving forward”.

The paper claims Trump has already split Euro-Atlantic unity and that deep fault lines have now appeared across the whole of so-called united Europe.

Moskovsky Komsomolets also celebrates Trump’s divorce from Volodymyr Zelensky, while another article suggests that from the point of view of Russian interests, Trump in his current phase is still “a beauty”.

But the paper adds a note of caution: “It’s not only the heart of a beautiful woman that is prone to unfaithfulness and change. This also applies 100% to the beauty that is America’s current leader.”

It notes that Russia remembers well what happened before and after Anchorage, the Alaska summit, saying that when Trump sees that someone is not bending, he is inclined to change his political trajectory, sometimes to the exact opposite.

“There is no reason to believe that Trump’s current position on the Ukraine issue is final and permanent,” the paper says. “Most likely this is another episode, another improvisation which tomorrow, after or even before the midterm elections to Congress in November, will be replaced by a completely different improvisation.”

Vedomosti reports that if Trump hoped his diesel deal with Putin would lower prices at American pumps, he will be disappointed. The paper says the diesel deal between Russia and the US has so far had no effect on the market.

Vedomosti also reports on Sunday’s large-scale Ukrainian drone attack on St Petersburg and the Leningrad region. Fires broke out at facilities in four districts of the northern capital and on the territory of the St Petersburg oil terminal. The Kantaki data centre and the Azison logistics centre were also hit.

Finally, Komsomolskaya Pravda’s back page carries jokes about the Russian economy and rising prices, including a tip for housewives: “It’s better to celebrate New Year’s now because it will be more expensive later.”