Karl Merton Ferron/The Baltimore Sun/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Many of the noncitizens who were deported pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act on Saturday did not have criminal records, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said in a sworn filing overnight.
In a sworn declaration, ICE Acting Field Office Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations Robert Cerna argued that “the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose” and “demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile.”
“While it is true that many of the [Tren de Aragua gang] members removed under the AEA do not have criminal records in the United States, that is because they have only been in the United States for a short period of time. The lack of a criminal record does not indicate they pose a limited threat,” Cerna said.
The admission that many of the men lacked criminal records – and were deported on the assumption that they might be terrorists – comes as top Trump administration officials insist that the men were violent criminals, with President Donald Trump labeling them “monsters.”
Cerna wrote that some of the men have been convicted or arrested for crimes including murder, assault, harassment, and drug offenses, writing that ICE personnel “carefully vetted each individual alien to ensure they were in fact members of TdA.”
To determine whether a noncitizen was a “member of TdA,” he said law enforcement allegedly used victim testimony, financial transactions, computer checks, and other “investigative techniques.”
“ICE did not simply rely on social media posts, photographs of the alien displaying gang-related hand gestures, or tattoos alone,” Cerna said.
The declaration was included in the Trump administration’s recent motion to vacate Judge James Boasberg’s temporary restraining orders blocking deportations pursuant to the AEA.
“These orders are an affront to the President’s broad constitutional and statutory authority to protect the United States from dangerous aliens who pose grave threats to the American people,” Department of Justice lawyers argued.
Boasberg ordered the Department of Justice to submit, by noon Tuesday, a sworn declaration about how many noncitizens were deported under the AEA and when they were removed from the country.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump is holding a high-stakes call with Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Tuesday as he tries to win his approval of a 30-day ceasefire with Ukraine.
Trump began the call with Putin at 10 a.m. ET and it was still ongoing as of 10:54 a.m. ET. Dan Scavino, the deputy chief of staff, posted on X that the call was “going well, and still in progress.”
The encounter is the first known call between Trump and Putin since peace talks between U.S. and Ukrainian officials a week ago in Saudi Arabia yielded Kyiv agreeing to an immediate, temporary stop to hostilities should Russia do the same.
“It’s a bad situation in Russia, and it’s a bad situation in Ukraine,” Trump said on Monday. “What’s happening in Ukraine is not good, but we’re going to see if we can work a peace agreement, a ceasefire and peace, and I think we’ll be able to do it.”
That positive assessment follows his prediction Sunday night that “we’ll see if we have something to announce — maybe by Tuesday,” saying “a lot of work” had been done over the weekend. “Maybe we can. Maybe we can’t, but I think we have a very good chance.”
Since then, Putin has been noncommittal on the proposal while fighting intensifies in Kursk.
Putin said he was “for” a ceasefire but raised concerns and set out his own conditions, such as certain security guarantees. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, has accused the Russian leader of obstructing peace and “prolonging” the war.
Trump on Monday said the only reason he was involved in negotiations is “for humanity.”
“A lot of people are being killed over there. And, we had to get Ukraine to do the right thing. It was not an easy situation. You got to see a little glimpse at the Oval Office, but I think they’re doing the right thing right now. And we’re trying to get a peace agreement done. We want to get a ceasefire and then a peace agreement,” he said.
Ukraine’s Zelenskyy will monitor the conversation between Trump and Putin with caution and great interest, a Ukrainian official informed about the matter told ABC News.
“We agreed to the U.S. ceasefire proposal with zero conditions, and if Putin is gonna start playing with Trump setting demands — it will not work,” the source added.
A key question moving forward is how far Trump will go in pressuring Russia to agree to a ceasefire and ultimately bring an end to the three-year conflict, which began when Putin’s forces invaded its sovereign neighbor.
The Trump administration took drastic steps in stopping military aid and pausing some intelligence sharing with Ukraine after the Oval Office clash between Trump and Zelenskyy. Those two tools resumed after Ukraine agreed to the ceasefire last Tuesday.
Plus, U.S. officials have said it would be unrealistic for Ukraine to return to its prewar borders and expressly ruled out its bid for NATO membership.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has not publicly made similar demands of Putin.
Trump on Sunday said land and power plants were on the table for Tuesday’s discussion, as well as “dividing up certain assets” between the two countries.
“Well, I think we’ll be talking about land. It’s a lot of land. It’s a lot different than it was before the wars, you know. And we’ll be talking about land, we’ll be talking about power plants. That’s a big question, but I think we have a lot of it already discussed, very much by both sides,” he told reporters on Air Force One.
Trump last week said his administration could ramp up pressure on Russia but hoped it wouldn’t be “necessary.”
“There are things you could do that wouldn’t be pleasant in a financial sense,” he said. “I can do things financially that would be very bad for Russia. I don’t want to do that because I want to get peace.”
ABC News’ Oleksiy Pshemyskiy and Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump is ending U.S. Secret Service protection for former President Joe Biden’s adult children.
Trump made the announcement on his conservative social media platform on Monday evening.
Earlier Monday, as he toured the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Trump was asked by a reporter about the security detail assigned to Hunter Biden as he vacationed in South Africa.
“That will be something I’ll look at this afternoon. OK. I just heard about it for the first time,” Trump responded. His Truth Social post came hours after the exchange.
Shortly after his inauguration, Trump revoked Secret Service protection for John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Mark Milley, despite threats against their lives from Iran because of their work in the first Trump administration. He also removed the security detail assigned to Dr. Anthony Fauci, who faced threats over the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“When you have protection, you can’t have it for the rest of your life,” Trump told reporters at the time.
Presidents, vice presidents and their families are given Secret Service protection throughout their time in office.
Former presidents and their spouses can keep their details for the rest of their lives after leaving office, unless they choose to decline it. Federal law also provides security for children of former presidents until age 16, though outgoing presidents can extend it. Hunter Biden is 55 and Ashley Biden is 43.
When Trump left office after the 2020 election, his four adult children and their two spouses received Secret Service protection for an additional six months.
Before leaving office, Joe Biden issued a controversial pardon for his son over tax evasion and federal gun charges. ABC News recently reported that Hunter Biden now finds himself in debt and without a permanent home, according to court documents.
Plus, Hunter Biden continues to be a target of Republican attacks, including criticism from Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
(WASHINGTON) — The Treasury Department has promoted two IRS whistleblowers who accused the Justice Department under President Joe Biden of granting his son, Hunter Biden, special treatment during a yearslong probe into his tax affairs.
Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, two veteran IRS investigators, will serve as senior advisors to incoming Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who said in a statement on Tuesday that he was “pleased to welcome Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler to the Treasury Department, where they will help us drive much-needed cultural reform within the IRS.”
Shapley and Ziegler came forward in 2023 with allegations that the Biden administration improperly interfered in an investigation into Hunter Biden’s unpaid taxes led by then-U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss — claims that Justice Department and FBI officials fiercely disputed at the time.
“It appeared to me, based on what I experienced, that the U.S. Attorney in Delaware in our investigation was constantly hamstrung, limited and marginalized by DOJ officials,” Ziegler said during congressional testimony in July 2023.
Days after Shapley and Ziegler testified on Capitol Hill, a plea deal negotiated by Hunter Biden and the Justice Department fell apart under questioning from a federal judge. The deal would have allowed Hunter Biden to plead guilty to a pair of tax-related misdemeanors and enter into a pretrial diversion agreement on a felony gun charge.
Weiss, the Trump-appointed prosecutor who led the probe into Hunter Biden, repeatedly refuted the claims leveled by Shapley and Ziegler and asserted that he faced no political pressure from Biden administration officials to grant Hunter Biden any special treatment.
Hunter Biden later pleaded guilty to nine tax-related charges, including multiple felonies. His father granted him a sweeping pardon in the waning weeks of his presidency.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, touted his role in securing promotions for Shapley and Ziegler in a statement Tuesday. Grassley said he wrote Bessent multiple letters encouraging him to promote the two whistleblowers.
“Gary Shapley and Joe Ziegler put their entire careers on the line to stand up for the truth, and instead of being thanked, the Biden administration treated them like skunks at a picnic,” Grassley wrote in a press release. “I hope today is the first of many redemption stories for whistleblowers who’ve been mistreated.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department’s National Security Division has been in a scramble trying to meet President Donald Trump’s promise on Monday to release declassified information from the JFK assassination investigation today.
Trump, during a visit Monday to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, announced the government would be releasing all the files on Kennedy’s assassination on Tuesday afternoon.
Less than half an hour after that announcement, the Justice Department’s office that handles foreign surveillance requests and other intelligence-related operations began to shift resources to focus on the task, sources said.
In an email just before 5 p.m. ET Monday, a senior official within DOJ’s Office of Intelligence said that even though the FBI had already conducted “an initial declassification review” of the documents, “all” of the attorneys in the operations section now had to provide “a second set of eyes” to help with this “urgent NSD-wide project.”
Eventually, however, it was other National Security Division attorneys who ended up having to help, sources said.
Attorneys from across the division were up throughout the night, into the early morning hours, each reading through as many as hundreds of pages of documents, sources said. Only prosecutors with an impending arrest or other imminent work did not have to help, sources said.
A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
In promising the release of JFK files today, Trump said Monday that there is “a tremendous amount of paper.”
“You’ve got a lot of reading,” he said. “I don’t believe we’re going to redact anything. I said, ‘Just don’t redact. You can’t redact.'”
Trump in January signed an executive order directing the “full and complete release of records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy” in order to end the decades-long wait for the release of the government’s secret files on Kennedy’s 1963 assassination.
ABC News’ Hannah Demissie and Molly Nagle contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Last month, Jose Franco Caraballo Tiapa, a 26-year old Venezuelan migrant who was seeking asylum in the U.S., showed up to his routine check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Dallas, Texas, when authorities detained him, his wife told ABC News.
Ivannoa Sanchez, 22, told ABC News she believes her husband is one of the hundreds of Venezuelan men who this past weekend were sent by plane to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act.
According to Sanchez, the couple crossed the U.S. border in November 2023 and surrendered to authorities. After claiming asylum and being detained for a few days, ICE released them and ordered them to check in routinely with the federal agency.
Sanchez said the couple had gone to several of their scheduled check-ins without experiencing any issues. But on Feb. 3, Tiapa was not allowed to return home with his wife despite being scheduled to have his first court appearance in his asylum case in March.
Sanchez provided ABC News with documents that confirmed Tiapa’s scheduled appointment with an immigration judge on March 19.
“He went to his routine ICE appointment and he didn’t come out,” Sanchez told ABC News.
She said she was able to complete her check-in with ICE that day and has not yet received an appointment for another check-in.
Similarly, ABC News spoke with Sebastian Garcia Casique, who claims his brother was detained by ICE after his routine-check-in.
According to Casique, his brother Francisco Garcia Casique. who entered the United States in December 2023 and surrendered to authorities, was detained after going to an ICE office last month for his appointment.
“There, some police officers detained him because they saw his tattoos and said they were going to investigate him because of them,” Casique told ABC News.
Casique said that on Friday, his brother called his family from the detention center in Texas where he was being held to let them know that he believed he was being deported to Venezuela. But on Sunday, Casique said that he and his family recognized his brother in a photo posted on social media by the White House.
“It’s a nightmare,” Casique told ABC News.
Sanchez said that after being detained in Dallas, her husband was transferred to a detention center in Laredo, Texas, where she was able to speak with him regularly.
But on Saturday, she said her husband told her that he believed he was going to be transferred and possibly deported.
On Sunday morning, after Sanchez saw the video posted on X by the president of El Salvador showing Venezuelan migrants being sent there, she checked the ICE locator website that shares updated information about where migrants are being detained.
“I check the system, and he doesn’t show up,” Sanchez told ABC News. “I constantly think and know he’s there because he has tattoos, because he’s a barber, but he has no involvement with the group they’re associating him with.”
Sanchez said that her husband is being unfairly targeted by the Trump administration for being Venezuelan and having tattoos, after Trump on Saturday said he was invoking the 18th century Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
She provided ABC News with documents that show Tiapa does not have any criminal records in Venezuela.
Casique also told ABC News his brother has not committed any crimes beyond crossing the U.S. border.
Casique claims that after his brother surrendered to authorities, he was detained and investigated for a few days, then appeared before an immigration judge who ordered him to be released with an ankle monitor to be tracked.
Casique said his brother turned 24 while being detained
“Never in his life had he spent a birthday in that situation,” he said. “The depression must be getting to him.”
Casique said his brother had the American Dream of working as a barber in the U.S.
“[He] was hoping for a better future to help us, help all the family members, and look at the situation now,” Casique said.
A review of federal court records found no criminal court cases associated with Garcia Casique or Tiapa.
ABC News previously reported that advocacy groups and relatives of some of the Venezuelan migrants who were recently sent to the prison in Guantanamo Bay claim the administration provided no evidence the migrants were “high-threat” criminals or that they belonged to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
The Trump administration, over the weekend, announced that would begin deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century law that allows for the arrest and removal of non-U.S. citizens when their nation or government is at war with the United States. The Trump administration designated the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, calling it a “hybrid criminal state that is perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States.”
After the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act was challenged in court on Saturday, a federal judge verbally ordered two planes carrying alleged gang members to El Salvador to turn around and return to the U.S., but sources said administration officials made the determination that since the flights were already over international waters, the judge’s order did not apply, and the planes were not turned around.
On Monday, the judge held a “fact-finding” hearing over the whether the administration knowingly violated his court order, but did not issue ruling on the matter.
Sanchez and Casique told ABC News they reached out to ICE and the Department of Homeland security several times. but that the agencies have not provided any information about their relatives.
ICE and DHS officials did not responded to ABC News’ request for information on Tiapa or Garcia Casique.
“He has never done anything, not even a fine, absolutely nothing,” Sanchez said of her husband. “We chose this country because it offers more security, more freedom, more peace of mind. But we didn’t know it would turn into chaos.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump will hold a high-stakes call with Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Tuesday as he tries to win his approval of a 30-day ceasefire with Ukraine.
“It’s a bad situation in Russia, and it’s a bad situation in Ukraine,” Trump said on Monday. “What’s happening in Ukraine is not good, but we’re going to see if we can work a peace agreement, a ceasefire and peace, and I think we’ll be able to do it.”
That positive assessment follows his prediction Sunday night that “we’ll see if we have something to announce — maybe by Tuesday,” saying “a lot of work” had been done over the weekend. “Maybe we can. Maybe we can’t, but I think we have a very good chance.”
The Kremlin on Tuesday said it expects the call within a two-hour window beginning at about 9 a.m. ET. The encounter would be the first known call between Trump and Putin since peace talks between U.S. and Ukrainian officials a week ago in Saudi Arabia yielded Kyiv agreeing to an immediate, temporary stop to hostilities should Russia do the same.
Since then, Putin has been noncommittal on the proposal while fighting intensifies in Kursk.
Putin said he was “for” a ceasefire but raised concerns and set out his own conditions, such as certain security guarantees. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, has accused the Russian leader of obstructing peace and “prolonging” the war.
Trump on Monday said the only reason he was involved in negotiations is “for humanity.”
“A lot of people are being killed over there. And, we had to get Ukraine to do the right thing. It was not an easy situation. You got to see a little glimpse at the Oval Office, but I think they’re doing the right thing right now. And we’re trying to get a peace agreement done. We want to get a ceasefire and then a peace agreement,” he said.
Ukraine’s Zelenskyy will monitor the conversation between Trump and Putin with caution and great interest, a Ukrainian official informed about the matter told ABC News.
“We agreed to the U.S. ceasefire proposal with zero conditions, and if Putin is gonna start playing with Trump setting demands — it will not work,” the source added.
A key question moving forward is how far Trump will go in pressuring Russia to agree to a ceasefire and ultimately bring an end to the three-year conflict, which began when Putin’s forces invaded its sovereign neighbor.
The Trump administration took drastic steps in stopping military aid and pausing some intelligence sharing with Ukraine after the Oval Office clash between Trump and Zelenskyy. Those two tools resumed after Ukraine agreed to the ceasefire last Tuesday.
Plus, U.S. officials have said it would be unrealistic for Ukraine to return to its prewar borders and expressly ruled out its bid for NATO membership.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has not publicly made similar demands of Putin.
Trump on Sunday said land and power plants were on the table for Tuesday’s discussion, as well as “dividing up certain assets” between the two countries.
“Well, I think we’ll be talking about land. It’s a lot of land. It’s a lot different than it was before the wars, you know. And we’ll be talking about land, we’ll be talking about power plants. That’s a big question, but I think we have a lot of it already discussed, very much by both sides,” he told reporters on Air Force One.
Trump last week said his administration could ramp up pressure on Russia but hoped it wouldn’t be “necessary.”
“There are things you could do that wouldn’t be pleasant in a financial sense,” he said. “I can do things financially that would be very bad for Russia. I don’t want to do that because I want to get peace.”
ABC News’ Oleksiy Pshemyskiy and Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Blizzard warnings are in place for parts of Kansas and Nebraska, with winter storm watches — which could turn to blizzard warnings — stretching northeast into Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and into the upper peninsula of Michigan.
Snow accumulations from 2 to 6 inches are generally expected, with higher amounts locally being possible. Wind gusts of up to 60 mph are also possible and could reduce visibility to a quarter mile or less for large parts of the day making travel difficult or even impossible in some areas.
The blizzard is expected to hit Wednesday morning and head east through the afternoon, stretching from Kansas City to Green Bay before it loses some strength.
Ahead of the snow, there is a likelihood a line of storms form along a cold front and some of these storm could turn severe due to damaging wind gusts and large hail, though tornadoes are unlikely.
A slight risk for severe weather also extends from Chicago to Evansville later this afternoon and into the evening with storms moving past Chicago around 6 p.m. CT.
The storm system is expected to give a dusting of snow to Chicago on Thursday morning and may make the commute a little difficult with reduced visibility.
On Thursday afternoon, showers will move into Washington, D.C. by 4pm and then move on to New York Coty later in the evening, ending around 7 a.m. Friday morning, but continuing for Boston and parts of the New England region until early afternoon.
(GAZA CITY) — Israel hit Gaza with a series of “extensive strikes” overnight Tuesday, vowing to open the “gates of hell” because Hamas has not released the remaining hostages.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said the Israel Defense Forces is targeting Hamas terrorists throughout the region and will act with “increasing military force” against Hamas from now on.
“Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on Tuesday.
The Ministry of Health, which is run by Hamas, said in a statement Tuesday that at least 404 people had been killed in the strikes. The human toll in Gaza had risen steadily throughout the morning, the ministry said in a series of updates. At least 562 others were injured, the ministry said.
“Tonight we returned to fighting in Gaza due to Hamas’ refusal to release the hostages and threats to harm IDF soldiers and Israeli communities,” Katz said in a statement.
“If Hamas does not release all the hostages, the gates of hell will open in Gaza,” he added.
The strikes are targeting areas in Gaza including Rafah, Khan Younis, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat, Al-Bureij, Al-Zaytoun, Al-Karama and Beit Hanoun. The IDF’s Arabic spokesperson issued a broad evacuation order covering of the entire perimeter of Gaza. Residents were warned to “evacuate immediately to the known shelters in western Gaza City and those in Khan Younis.”
An Israeli official told ABC News the preemptive offensive will continue “as long as necessary,” and will “expand beyond air strikes.”
The strikes targeted Hamas’ mid-ranking military commanders, leadership officials and infrastructure, the official said.
“The IDF is prepared and spread out in all arenas, both in personnel manning the borders and the Aerial Defence Array,” the official added.
Netanyahu and Katz said the changes to the IDF’s defensive guidelines come after Hamas “rejected all offers” on a conclusive hostage deal with Steve Witkoff, the U.S.’s special envoy to the Middle East.
Hamas said in a statement Tuesday that overturning the ceasefire agreement and the series of strikes put “the prisoners in Gaza at an unknown fate.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an appearance on Fox News that the Trump administration was consulted by Israeli officials on their decision to strike Gaza.
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump took to his social media to threaten Hamas with a “last warning” about the remaining hostages.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on March 7 that “it will be OVER” for Hamas if it does not comply.
“I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job, not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don’t do as I say,” he added.
Witkoff reiterated the president’s threat at the time, saying, “I wouldn’t test President Trump.”
Fifty-nine hostages are believed to remain in Gaza — 24 of whom are presumed to be alive. Edan Alexander is the last American-Israeli hostage to remain alive in captivity.
ABC News’ Dana Savir and Guy Davies contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are expected to speak on Tuesday as the White House continues its campaign for a ceasefire and eventual peace deal to end Russia’s devastating war on Ukraine.
“It’s a bad situation in Russia, and it’s a bad situation in Ukraine,” Trump said on Monday. “What’s happening in Ukraine is not good, but we’re going to see if we can work a peace agreement, a ceasefire and peace, and I think we’ll be able to do it.”
Since Trump’s return to the White House in January, his new administration has sought to bring an end to Russia’s war by berating and pressuring Kyiv. Trump has repeatedly said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zeleneskyy “does not have the cards” to come out on top of the negotiations.
Meanwhile, Moscow has been offered normalization and hinting at territorial gains and sanctions relief.
Thus far, the carrot has been for Russia and the stick for Ukraine.
There remains only a slight indication of what concessions Trump is seeking from Russia. “When we talk about leverage, it suggests that he wants to use this leverage to get some concessions from Russia,” Oleg Ignatov, the International Crisis Group think tank’s senior Russia analysts, told ABC News.
“But is he really interested in serious concessions from Russia or not?”
Does Trump have ‘the cards’?
The president has hinted at ramping up pressure on the Kremlin if it fails to commit to peace talks. “There are things you could do that wouldn’t be pleasant in a financial sense,” he said last week.
“I can do things financially that would be very bad for Russia,” Trump added. “I don’t want to do that because I want to get peace.”
Earlier this month, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “I am strongly considering large scale Banking Sanctions, Sanctions, and Tariffs on Russia until a Cease Fire and FINAL SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT ON PEACE IS REACHED.”
The implementation of tariffs — a cornerstone of Trumpian foreign and economic policy — would be only a symbolic measure, given that Russian exports to the U.S. have fallen to their lowest level since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In a possible preview of things to come, the White House has already expanded the unprecedented sanctions campaign kicked off by former President Joe Biden in 2022.
This month, the administration said Russians were among 43 nationalities being considered for travel bans. It also allowed to lapse a sanctions exemption allowing Russian banks to use U.S. payment systems for energy transactions.
Trump may seek to further tighten the screws on Russia’s economy, in which inflation is rising and dollars are increasingly difficult and expensive to access.
“What the U.S. can do is put even more pressure on the Russian financing sector, increasing the sanctions against banks that that basically also have a stake in the oil and gas sector in order to compromise the financial sustainability of the Russian Federation and make it basically unsustainable for Russia to continue the war,” Federico Borsari of the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank told ABC News.
The U.S. may also seek further action to identify and penalize vessels in Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet,” by which Moscow has been able to continue exporting its fossil fuels and avoid sanctions, Borsari added.
Still, Russia has shown an ability to adapt to and skirt sanctions, even if the measures have undermined the national economy. The impact of new sanctions may not be immediate enough to force Putin to the negotiating table, Ignatov said.
Seeking to further curtail Russia’s energy exports or expanding secondary sanctions — meaning measures against those still doing business with sanctioned entities — may also bring the U.S. into conflict with key Russian customers like China and India.
“There is no magic bullet in terms of sanctions,” Ignatov said.
Putin’s hand
Trump has praised Putin’s supposed readiness for peace, instead framing Ukraine and Zelenskyy as the main impediments to a deal. Still, Moscow has shown no sign of downgrading its war goals, which still include the annexation of swaths of its neighbor, the “demilitarization” of Ukraine and its permanent exclusion from NATO.
Putin was non-committal to last week’s U.S.-Ukraine proposal of a 30-day ceasefire. Moscow is “for” the pause, the president said, but framed any pause as a military benefit for Kyiv and said several difficult conditions would need to be fulfilled before the Kremlin would give its full support.
Russia “needs” a pause in the fighting to reform its own shattered military, Pavel Luzin — a Russian political analyst at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy — told ABC News. “But at the same time, Russia does not have desirable conditions on the battlefield.”
“What Russia has been trying to do since the fall of 2022 is defeat a big group of Ukrainian forces as a pre-condition for negotiations about a break,” he added. “Russia wanted to demoralize the Ukrainian leadership and society. After two-and-a-half years, Russia was not successful.”
Ignatov said Moscow’s recent engagement with the Trump administration does suggest an appetite for some kind of deal.
“I think both Russia and the U.S. are looking at this negotiation seriously,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that both sides are thinking about any good deal for Ukraine, but I think that both sides want to finish this conflict.”
The Russians, he added, “want to avoid a direct confrontation with Trump, because they really value this process of normalization. I think what they tried to do is to decouple Ukraine from the normalization of the other issues. Even if they don’t succeed on Ukraine, they want to continue to work on other issues.”
Still, Moscow is “not ready to sacrifice their interests” in Ukraine, Ignatov continued. “They are not ready to make very big concessions — serious concessions, to leave territories or something like this.”
Opportunity, crisis for Ukraine
Trump’s radical pivot away from Ukraine in the opening months of his second term left Kyiv and its other foreign partners reeling. Though the pause to U.S. military aid and intelligence sharing was brief, it rattled leaders and commanders in Kyiv.
“We consider this turbulence to be part of negotiations, which I think was quite often used by Trump in his past when he was in business,” Yehor Cherniev — a member of the Ukrainian Parliament and the chairman of his country’s delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly — told ABC News. “So, we understand.”
Trump’s inherent unpredictability has given Ukrainians hope that his interactions with Putin may not necessarily play in Russia’s favor.
“Trump should say directly: ‘Vladimir, if you don’t agree unconditionally to my proposal then I’ll have to make a deal with a new leader of Russia instead of you,'” Oleksandr Merezhko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and the chair of the body’s foreign affairs committee, told ABC News. “If he tried it with Zelenskyy, then why not with Putin?”
A threat to expand American military aid to Ukraine could give such coercion bite, analysts and Ukrainian lawmakers who spoke with ABC News said.
Lifting restrictions on U.S. weapon use inside Russia, requesting more military aid funding from Congress, replenishing supplies of long-range ATACMS missiles and delivering new long-range strike weapons like the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile could all underscore the U.S. demand for Russia to negotiate.
But such steps would run counter to Trump’s repeated statements that the war must end as soon as possible — with or without American involvement.
“I’m not sure if he has any desire to escalate the war, because he’s the ‘peace president,'” Ignatov said, noting that any request for more funding from Congress could also touch off unwelcome domestic political disputes.
“He’s said that if we are not able to succeed, the U.S. will be out of the war,” Ignatov added. “So, it means that he is not going to escalate.”
It remains to be seen if Trump’s ambition for a deal will be enough to overcome the decades-long complexity of Russia’s aggression against its “brotherly nation,” as Putin was still describing Ukraine months into the 2022 full-scale invasion.
“The Russians have quite clearly showed already that they are not ready,” Cherniev said. “Now there are not so many options for Trump’s administration.”
“Trump wants to be a peacemaker,” he added. “If he just leaves these negotiations, that will mean that Putin wins. And I doubt that Trump will allow Putin to win.”
Trump’s turn against Ukraine begun to erode the trust built up by decades of American backing. But for now, at least, some hope remains.
The president “might” ultimately side with Moscow, Merezhko said. “But that goes against American values — Americans and public opinion in the U.S. have always been on the side of the underdogs.”
