By Patricia Zengerle and David Brunnstrom
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -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.
“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, who met with Trump on Monday and agreed the new steps.
“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,” Rutte added.
Republican U.S. Senator Thom Tillis praised Trump for announcing the steps, but said the 50-day delay “worries” him.
He said he was concerned that “Putin would try to use the 50 days to win the war, or to be better positioned to negotiate a peace agreement after having murdered and potentially collected more ground as a basis for negotiation.
“So we should look at the current state of Ukraine today and say, no matter what you do over the next 50 days, any of your gains are off the table,” he added.
Rutte said Europe would find the money to ensure Ukraine was in the best possible position in peace talks.
He said that under the agreement with Trump, the U.S. would now “massively” supply Ukraine with weapons “not just air defense, also missiles, also ammunition paid for by the Europeans.”
Asked if long-range missiles for Ukraine were under discussion, Rutte said: “It is both defensive and offensive. So there’s all kinds of weapons, but we have not discussed in detail yesterday with the president. This is really being worked through now by the Pentagon, by the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, together with the Ukrainians.”
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and David Brunnstrom; Editing by David Gregorio)
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