Russia defends India's trade rights, calls Trump's tariff threat unlawful

Russia on Thursday slammed Donald Trump for "illegally" pressuring countries like India to cut trade ties with Moscow, after the US President threatened to impose excess duties on Indian goods for purchasing Russian energy. "We hear many statements that are in fact threats, attempts to force countries to cut trade relations with Russia. We do not consider such statements to be legal," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters."We believe that sovereign countries should have and do have the right to choose their own trading partners, partners for trade and economic cooperation, and to choose for themselves the forms of trade and economic cooperation that are in the interests of a particular country," he added. The Kremlin spokesman added that such pressures against Russia's trading partners will be interpreted as "threats".

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump warning of levying additional tariffs within the next "24 hours." "India has not been a good trading partner, because they do a lot of business with us, but we don't do business with them. So we settled on 25 percent, but I think I'm going to raise that very substantially over the next 24 hours, because they're buying Russian oil. They're fueling the war machine," Trump said in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday.