“We first and foremost note that any attempts to make demands — especially ultimatums — are unacceptable for us,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in response.

“The number of sanctions announced against us is already unprecedented,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, downplaying the possible effect of Trump’s new threat. “We are coping. I have no doubt that we will cope.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt explained on Thursday that the secondary sanctions would be placed on countries that purchase Russian oil, which she said would do “deep damage to Russia’s economy.”

Russia continues to launch attacks on Ukrainian cities far from the front lines of the battlefield, and those almost certainly will continue during the 50-day time frame the president set out for the Kremlin to return to the negotiating table.

“I don’t think it’s super helpful,” John Hardie, deputy director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Russia Program, said of Trump’s 50-day ultimatum. “I think the Russians, first of all, are kind of dismissing the threat. I think they think they’ve endured sanctions before, and they can again. So it’s incumbent on the U.S. to bring pressure to bear in a way that would be more uncomfortable and kind of test that assumption for the Russians.“

China, India, and Turkey are the top buyers of Russian oil.

Beijing “firmly opposes any illicit unilateral sanctions and long arm jurisdiction,” Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, said on Tuesday following Trump’s remarks.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who was with Trump when he announced the 50-day plan, urged the leaders of Brazil (another country that purchases Russian oil), China, and India to pressure Putin to “get serious about peace talks,” because potential secondary sanctions “will slam back on [them] in a massive way.”

Lin reiterated his sentiment the next day when asked about Rutte’s remarks, saying, “Coercion and pressuring will lead nowhere.”

Retired four-star Army General Jack Keane told the Washington Examiner he does not believe Putin is “ready to stop,” adding that he expects “a bit of an escalation, initially, to demonstrate to his forces, to his country, that he’s not going to be intimidated by the president’s decision.”

Trump’s ultimatum comes in concert with the administration’s plan to allow European allies to purchase U.S. military equipment to provide for Ukraine, though the specifics of the plan are still being hammered out.

His announcement also comes as Russia continues its near-daily aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities in what have been some of the biggest attacks in the war that’s gone on for nearly three and a half years.

The aid conversation has primarily been about Patriot missile defense systems and the interceptor missiles required to operate them. Ukraine’s largest request from the United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries throughout the war has been air defense systems of all kinds to ensure Russia cannot obtain air superiority.

Ballistic and cruise missiles fired from outside Ukrainian territory are causing significant damage and killing civilians far from the front lines. The Patriot system “is one of the few air defense systems in the world that can defeat ballistic missiles,” Keane added.

“It is absolutely critical to the defense of Ukraine’s infrastructure,” he continued. “The Russians would not fire a ballistic missile at front-line troops. That would be a waste of a missile. They do fire at residential areas. They do fire it at hospitals, all of these are war crimes by the war, because they are targeting civilians, and they do fire at energy infrastructure.”

Trump also said this week that he would not support Ukraine carrying out long-range offensive operations targeting Moscow.

“No, [Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky] shouldn’t target Moscow,” he said.

With the looming 50-day ultimatum, a major question is what other tools the president could utilize if that deadline comes and goes, the sanctions and tariffs are implemented, and the war continues unimpeded.

“I don’t think that Russia is going to stop when the 50 days are up,” Hardie said. “I think Putin’s clear message has been he’s going to keep fighting until his goals are achieved, until he eliminates the so-called root causes of the war, which to him are Ukraine’s independence and what he would call NATO expansionism.”

One of Putin and the Kremlin’s long-held beliefs regarding the war is that Russia will be able to outlast Ukraine’s allies’ willingness and ability to support the embattled country, even if it means making minimal battlefield gains and suffering significant casualties in the meantime.

“Putin wanted to frustrate the president, but he was hoping that the president, out of that frustration, would indeed just pull away from Ukraine, and quite the contrary, the president has decided to significantly assist Ukraine militarily,” Keane added, calling it a “miscalculation” on Putin’s part.

The Kremlin looked well on its way to outlasting U.S. support for Ukraine with Trump’s return to the White House after former President Joe Biden’s administration declared it would aid Ukraine militarily for as long as necessary.

Trump returned to Washington, D.C., eager to end the conflict, after declaring on the campaign trail he could do so in 24 hours. He has spent months going back and forth, criticizing both sides, at times castigating Ukraine’s behavior even as the invaded entity, while choosing not to apply the same type of pressure on Moscow.

Leavitt said on Thursday that the president’s goal remains the same: to end the war. But in recent weeks, his ire has turned almost entirely on Putin, who he said has backed out of negotiations four times when they appeared to be nearing a breakthrough.

TRUMP’S UKRAINE WEAPONS PLAN IS FULL OF UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

Trump has, by his own admission, been frustrated with that behavior, and aggressive Russian attacks on civilian areas during and after the deals falling apart have prompted a shift in the administration.

By the time the president’s 50-day window ends, the conflict will have surpassed its three-and-a-half-year anniversary. Most experts believed Ukraine would lose the war in a matter of weeks, but its resolve to fight for its sovereignty surprised most people, as did the mistakes of the Russian military early on in the conflict. Instead, the conflict has largely turned into a stalemate war of attrition.