The decree, which is set to be published in the US Federal Register on Friday, extends the 10-year-old state of emergency over the situation in Ukraine.
The sanctions were first declared on March 6, 2014, under then-President Barack Obama in response to the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea joining Russia. The decree also extends related sanctions imposed by Obama, PressTV reported.
Trump is about to host Friday the Ukrainian leader for which he said has a "lot of respect" after recently calling him a "dictator".
The meeting comes after the Trump administration shocked its Western partners by holding the first high-level US talks with Moscow since the war between Russia and Ukraine broke out just over three years ago.
Trump had appeared to blame Zelensky for the war and chided him for not starting peace talks earlier.
He has said his Friday meeting with the Ukrainian president has in store a potential “trillion-dollar deal” offering the US easy access to a bonanza of rare earth minerals.
“We’ll be dig, dig, digging,” Trump told reporters on the eve of Zelensky’s visit. “The American taxpayers will now effectively be reimbursed for the money and hundreds of billions of dollars poured into helping Ukraine defend itself.”
On February 12, Trump said negotiations to end the Ukraine war will start “immediately” after holding a “lengthy and highly productive” telephone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
Last week, diplomats from the two countries held the first round of US-Russia talks over Ukraine in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
On Thursday, Russian and US officials met in Istanbul to discuss normalizing the operations of their respective diplomatic missions which in recent years were hit hard by mutual expulsions of large numbers of diplomats, closures of offices, and other restrictions.
SD/
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