New Delhi: The NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte drew flak from New Delhi on Friday after he claimed that President Donald Trump’s 25% tariff on India’s export to the United States to dissuade the South Asian nation from buying oil from Russia had prompted Prime Minister Narendra Modi to nudge President Vladimir Putin to end his war against Ukraine.

Rutte claimed that Trump’s 25% additional tariff – on top of a 25% levy already imposed – on India as a penalty for continuing to buy crude oil from Russia had prompted Modi to urgently call Putin and ask him about his strategy towards ending the ‘special military operations’ he had launched in Ukraine.

Rutte told CNN on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly that the new US tariffs on India immediately impacted Russia. “That me

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