NATO chief Mark Rutte on Tuesday warned countries purchasing Russian oil—such as India, China, and Brazil—of secondary sanctions if they were to continue doing business with Moscow.
His comments follow US President Donald Trump's own comments on the subject just a day ago, when Washington announced that Ukraine would receive Patriot defence systems to aid its conflict against Russia, and potentially, more of the US-made ATACMS missiles, as per a Financial Times report.
ALSO READ | Should Russian ally India be worried about Trump's 100 per cent secondary tariffs?
He also privately urged Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia, even reportedly asking Kyiv President Volodymyr Zelenskyy if he could "strike Moscow"—a claim that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later clarified was Trump “merely asking a question” and not “encouraging further killing”.
Trump had also warned of "biting" secondary tariffs of 100 per cent on the buyers of Russian exports like oil, unless the Russia-Ukraine conflict was resolved in 50 days.
"My encouragement to these three countries, particularly is, if you live now in Beijing, or in Delhi, or you are the president of Brazil, you might want to take a look into this, because this might hit you very hard," Rutte told reporters, as per a Reuters report.
"So please make the phone call to Vladimir Putin and tell him that he has to get serious about peace talks, because otherwise this will slam back on Brazil, on India and on China in a massive way," he added.
Rutte's comments come amid a NATO agreement with Trump, per which the US would "massively" supply Ukraine with weapons "not just air defense, also missiles, also ammunition paid for by the Europeans".
These NATO-US moves also align with the European Union's recently expressed intent to impose its next sanctions package on Russia. However, the 27-member bloc failed to approve the latest sanctions package, as EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas continues to hold out hope for its approval tomorrow.
Senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev, however, said on Tuesday that Moscow "didn't care", calling Trump's secondary tariff threat a "theatrical ultimatum".
However, he also stated that Trump's remarks were very 'serious', and that Russia "needed time to analyse what was said in Washington".