ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½

This as Trump threatens to turn the screws on Russian President Vladimir Putin to force a negotiated settlement to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Whether his attempt will deliver the intended results is another matter.

Trump famously pledged to end the three-and-a-half-year-old war in the weeks between his November 2024 election victory and his January 2025 inauguration.

He has browbeat and publicly berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to obtain concessions that could usher in a deal. He has phoned, flattered and fawned over Putin, only to see the Russian leader’s platitudes about peace followed by drone and rocket attacks.

Trump claims to have used the extraordinary powers of his position to weigh in on conflicts between India and Pakistan, Thailand and Cambodia, Israel and Iran, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But the one war he promised on the election trail to end with a snap of his fingers continues to elude his grasp.

That comes as no surprise to Harper, who described the Russian leader on Monday as a real-life James Bond villain — without the sense of humour — and that he delighted in taking efforts to get under Putin’s skin when Russia began veering from the straight-and-narrow path of responsible global citizen back in 2014.

“In fairness to President Trump, I’ve watched Vladimir Putin deal with one American president after another and almost kind of try to convince them at the front end that somehow he’ll work with them and then realize with time that he never will,� he told the .

Only now, more than half a year into the Trump term has the impetuous president’s patience run thin enough to take a hardline approach to Russia that he has so far applied to trade partners and traditional allies.

On Monday, Trump shrunk a 50-day window for Russia to end the war down to less than two weeks, after which he would introduce new “sanctions and maybe tariffs� against Moscow.

It’s clear that Trump is running short on patience, but it’s not clear if his Russia shift is a tactic intended only to reach a deal or if it represents a new overall approach to America’s longtime adversary.

Harper, who was in power when Russia initially invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014 and took part in the decision to expel the country from the G8, clearly believes the latter is necessary.

“Vladimir Putin is an enemy of the United States. He lives, eats and breathes to dismantle American power in the world,� Harper said.

“The sooner the United States comes around to that realization and puts its shoulder back to the wheel (the sooner) we can stop and hopefully prevent Ukraine from falling, but certainly stop Putin’s adventurism, because it’s the big threat to everybody, especially Europe.�

So far, the sanctions route has isolated Russia diplomatically and economically, though they haven’t brought about economic collapse or resulted in efforts to toss Putin from his Kremlin throne.

Canada and the European Union in June introduced the , targeting Putin’s political entourage and branches of his family tree as well as Russia’s so-called shadow fleet of ships that have been used to export energy resources and import arms.

The Trump administration hasn’t announced any new Russia sanctions or penalties since coming to power and, in February, even that was established to freeze and seize assets from sanctioned Russian oligarchs.

Those American diplomatic carrots have failed to lure Russia into serious peace talks and Trump’s threats now to use a diplomatic stick could similarly fail to motivate Putin, a man who has grown quite accustomed to life in the geopolitical penalty box.

But an actual stick does exist.

In April, Republican Lindsay Graham and Democrat Richard Blumenthal that would authorize 500 per cent tariffs on any country that purchases and imports Russian energy.

They as a potential “sledgehammer� to prevent countries like China, India and Brazil from paying for Russian petroleum — money that goes directly into Putin’s Ukraine war chest. Starved of that revenue, the Russian bear would be greatly weakened.

“It is long overdue for the financial backers of Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine to pay a price for buying cheap energy products and marking it up in order to benefit their economies,� the senators said in a statement earlier this month. “The days of doing this without consequences are coming to an end.

It won’t be quite that easy, of course.

As Harper noted, Putin is a smart, hard-working and disciplined opponent, and not to be underestimated.

“He is a real psychological expert. He is a former intelligence officer and … he was very good at sizing up peoples’ weaknesses and exploiting them and getting them to think he was on their side when he wasn’t,� he said.

“He has a lot of great attributes, but the problem is he’s an evil man. He took a fledgling democracy and turned it back into a tyranny … I think this is a real tragedy for Russia, a real tragedy that someone with his ability wasn’t imbued with any sense of ideals or higher purpose.�