NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte warned on Wednesday that countries such as Brazil, China and India could be hit very hard by secondary sanctions if they continued to do business with Russia.

Rutte made the comment while meeting with senators in the U.S. Congress the day after President Donald Trump announced new weapons for Ukraine and threatened “biting” secondary tariffs of 100% on the buyers of Russian exports unless there is a peace deal in 50 days. These secondary tariffs come into play as Trump tries to leverage sanctions to force Putin to agree to peace with Ukraine.

As per Reuters, a White House official in Washington said Trump intends to impose “100% tariffs on Russia” and secondary sanctions on other countries that buy oil from Russia if a peace deal is not struck in 50 days.

“We can do secondary,” Trump said. “We’re probably talking about 100 per cent or something like that. We can do secondary tariffs without the Senate, without the House, but what they’re crafting also could be very good,” the US President added.

Reports by Reuters further indicate that eighty-five of the 100 U.S. senators are currently in the process of co-sponsoring a bill that would give Trump the authority to impose 500% tariffs on any country that helps Russia.

This warning from NATO’s Secretary General comes a day after his meeting with Trump, where the US president announced the decision to supply ‘sophisticated’ new weapons for Ukraine, which will include Patriot missiles that experts speculate to be crucial for Ukraine’s air defences.

Yesterday, in an interview with the BBC, Trump further expressed his disappointment in Putin over his peacemaking efforts, stating, “I am disappointed with him (Putin), but I’m not done with him. “We’ll have a great conversation. I’ll say: ‘That’s good, I’ll think we’re close to getting it done,’ and then he’ll knock down a building in Kyiv,”  he added. 

Russia’s reaction

Responding to Trump’s comments, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov stated, “Russia is ready to negotiate after U.S. President Donald Trump, but ultimatums are unacceptable and will not bring any results.”

Former  Russian President and deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, also commented on the matter, stating that Moscow does not care about Trump’s “theatrical ultimatum”, further stating that such ultimatums were ‘pointless’ in nature.

Potential disruption for India

Presently, China, India and Turkey remain the biggest buyers of crude from Russia and could stand to face repercussions of Trump’s tariffs if the US president follows through on his claims.

(With Inputs from Reuters)