Putin is on borrowed time – and the clock keeps ticking

The Russian president appears more emboldened than ever, but there is one thing that could really stop him in his tracks

- OWEN MATTHEWS

Vladimir Putin is living on borrowed time - at least if Donald Trump keeps his word and follows through on the threat he made last week to crash Russia’s economy if there is no ceasefire within 50 days.

Over the last three years, 18 announcements of European Union sanctions have failed to make much of an economic dent in the Kremlin's war machine. That is because, despite its rhetoric around support for Ukraine, Europe still keeps the money flooding into Moscow. Russia is still its third-largest supplier of liquefied natural gas (LNG), and it increased its imports from Russia by 25 per cent in 2024.

If Trump went ahead and imposed his threatened secondary sanctions on countries importing Russian oil, gas and uranium - a customer list headed by China, India, and the EU itself - then Putin would quickly find himself running out of money.

Yet somehow, the Russian leader does not seem to be quaking in his boots. If anything, he seems to be upping the ante. Despite Trump's threats to impose sanctions that could cripple the Russian economy, Volodymyr Zelensky said yesterday morning that more than 420 drones and at least 20 missiles, including ballistic missiles, had been fired at cities and communities across Ukraine in waves of intense overnight attacks.

While the UK defence secretary John Healey has used a meeting of the European Ukraine Defence Contact Group (UDCG) to back Trump's proposal and pledge that the UK will “play our full part in its success to bolster Ukraine's immediate fight”, Putin clearly does not take Trump's threat remotely seriously. Indeed, Russia's president hasn't deigned to comment on Trump's latest threats at all - and nor has Russia's state-controlled media given Trump's threat any serious airtime.