President Vladimir Putin said in remarks published on Sunday that Russia had sufficient strength and resources to take the war in Ukraine to its logical conclusion, though he hoped that there would be no need to use nuclear weapons.

Putin ordered thousands of Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022, triggering Europe’s biggest ground conflict since World War Two and the largest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the depths of the Cold War.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have been killed or injured and U.S. President Donald Trump, opens new tab has repeatedly said he wants to end the “bloodbath” that his administration casts as a proxy war between the United States and Russia.

In a film by state television about Putin’s quarter of a century as Russia’s paramount leader entitled “Russia, Kremlin, Putin, 25 years”, Putin was asked by a reporter about the risk of nuclear escalation from the Ukraine war.

“They wanted to provoke us so that we made mistakes,” Putin said, speaking beside a portrait of Tsar Alexander III, a 19th century conservative who suppressed dissent. “There has been no need to use those weapons … and I hope they will not be required.”

“We have enough strength and means to bring what was started in 2022 to a logical conclusion with the outcome Russia requires.”

Trump has been signalling for weeks that he is frustrated by the failure of Moscow and Kyiv to reach terms to end the war, though the Kremlin has said that the conflict is so complicated that the rapid progress Washington wants is difficult.

Former U.S. President Joe Biden, Western European leaders and Ukraine cast the invasion as an imperial-style land grab and repeatedly vowed to defeat Russian forces, which control about a fifth of Ukraine.

Putin portrays the war as a watershed moment in Moscow’s relations with the West, which he says humiliated Russia after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 by enlarging NATO and encroaching on what he considers Moscow’s sphere of influence.

Trump has warned that the conflict could develop into World War Three. Former CIA Director William Burns has said there was a real risk in late 2022 that Russia could use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, an assertion dismissed by Moscow.

Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who was handed the presidency on the last day of 1999 by an ailing Boris Yeltsin, is the longest serving Kremlin leader since Josef Stalin, who ruled for 29 years until his death in 1953.

Russian dissidents – most now either in jail or abroad – see Putin as a dictator who has built a brittle system of personal rule reliant on sycophancy and corruption that is leading Russia towards decline and turmoil.

Supporters cast Putin, who Russian pollsters say has approval ratings of above 85%, as a saviour who pushed back against an arrogant West and put an end to the chaos which accompanied the 1991 disintegration of the Soviet Union.

In the carefully choreographed state television film, which gave viewers a rare look behind the notoriously closed life of the Russian president, Putin was shown offering chocolates and a fermented Russian milk drink to Pavel Zarubin, a top Kremlin correspondent, in his private Kremlin kitchen.

Putin said that he first knelt in prayer during the 2002 Nord-Ost Moscow theater crisis, when Chechen militants took over 900 people hostage. More than 130 hostages were killed.

“I don’t feel like some kind of politician,” Putin said of his 25 years in power as president and prime minister.

“I continue to breathe the very same air as millions of Russian citizens. It is very important. God willing that it continues as long as possible. And that it doesn’t disappear.”

A federal appeals court on Saturday blocked a ruling, that had ordered the Trump administration to return more than 1,000 Voice of America employees back to work, Reuters reported.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth on April 22 ordered the administration to “take all necessary steps” to restore employees and contractors to their positions at the U.S. news service and resume radio, television and online news broadcasts and some grants.

The appeals court in a 2-1 decision suggested Lamberth lacked jurisdiction to order the employees to return to work and to require the restoration of $15 million in grants for Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks.

The U.S. Agency for Global Media placed over 1,000 employees on leave and told 600 contractors they would be terminated after the agency abruptly shut down the broadcasts in March under a directive from Trump.

The appeals court noted the government did not challenge the aspect of Lamberth’s ruling requiring it to restore Voice of America’s “statutorily required programming levels.” Numerous reports on Friday said VOA was preparing to resume broadcasts next week. USAGM did not immediately comment Saturday, read the report.

U.S. Circuit Judge Cornelia Pillard dissented from the ruling, saying it “all but guarantees that the networks will no longer exist in any meaningful form by the time this case is fully adjudicated.”

She added that it would result in “silencing Voice of America for the foreseeable future and eliminating Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks’ ability to see this case through to the end.”

Under Trump’s directive, Voice of America is not reporting the news for the first time in its 80-year existence. Its website has not been updated since March 15 and radio stations abroad relying on its programming have gone dark or only air music, Reuters reported.

Congress made the broadcasts mandatory and did not allow the executive branch to unilaterally terminate or defund them, Lamberth ruled.

Trump advisor Kari Lake announced the shutdown on March 15, placing nearly all USAGM employees on leave, saying the agency was “irretrievably broken” and biased against Trump. She said on social media Saturday the decision was a “huge victory for us.”

U.S. officials have finalized new economic sanctions against Russia, including banking and energy measures, to intensify pressure on Moscow to embrace U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to end its war on Ukraine, Reuters reported on Saturday.

The targets include state-owned Russian energy giant Gazprom and major entities involved in the natural resources and banking sectors, said an administration official, who like the other sources requested anonymity to discuss the issue.

The official provided no further details.

It was far from clear, however, whether the package will be approved by Trump, whose sympathy for Moscow’s statements and actions have given way to frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spurning of his calls for a ceasefire and peace talks.

The U.S. National Security Council “is trying to coordinate some set of more punitive actions against Russia,” said the source familiar with the issue. “This will have to be signed off by Trump.”

“It’s totally his call,” confirmed a second U.S. official.

“From the beginning, the president has been clear about his commitment to achieving a full and comprehensive ceasefire,” said National Security Council Spokesman James Hewitt. “We do not comment on the details of ongoing negotiations.”

The U.S. Treasury, which implements most U.S. sanctions, did not respond to a request for comment.

An approval by Trump of new sanctions, which would follow the Wednesday signing of a U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal that he heavily promoted as part of his peace effort, could signify a hardening of his stance towards the Kremlin.

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 the United States and its allies have added layer upon layer of sanctions on the country. While the measures have been painful for Russia’s economy, Moscow has found ways to circumvent the sanctions and continue funding its war.

Trump “has been bending over backwards to give Putin every opportunity to say, ‘Okay, we’re going to have a ceasefire and an end to the war,’ and Putin keeps rejecting him,” said Kurt Volker, a former U.S. envoy to NATO who was U.S. special representative for Ukraine negotiations during Trump’s first term. “This is the next phase of putting some pressure on Russia.”

“Putin has been escalating,” he continued. Trump “has got the U.S. and Ukraine now in alignment calling for an immediate and full ceasefire, and Putin is now the outlier.”

Since assuming office in January, Trump has taken steps seen as aimed at boosting Russian acceptance of his peace effort, including disbanding a Justice Department task force formed to enforce sanctions and target oligarchs close to the Kremlin.

He also has made pro-Moscow statements, falsely blaming Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for starting the conflict and calling him a “dictator.”

Meanwhile, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, has advocated a peace strategy that would cede four Ukrainian regions to Moscow, and has met Putin four times, most recently last week.

But three days after that meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated Putin’s maximalist demands for a settlement and Moscow’s forces have pressed frontline attacks and missile and drone strikes on Ukrainian cities, claiming more civilian casualties.

Reuters reported in March that the United States was drawing up a plan to potentially give Russia sanctions relief but Trump in recent weeks has expressed frustration with Putin’s foot-dragging on ending the invasion and last Saturday held a “very productive” one-on-one meeting in the Vatican with Zelenskiy.

The next day, Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform that he was “strongly considering large scale Banking Sanctions, Sanctions and Tariffs on Russia” that would remain until a ceasefire and final peace deal.

Volker said that Russia has been earning hard currency that funds its military through oil and gas sales to countries like India and China and that it would be “very significant” if Trump slapped secondary sanctions on such deals.

Secondary sanctions are those where one country seeks to punish a second country for trading with a third by barring access to its own market, a particularly powerful tool for the United States because of the size of its economy.