United States President Donald Trump on Thursday claimed while speaking to Fox News Radio that the tariffs he imposed on India for purchasing oil from Moscow may have influenced Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to meet him.

Trump’s comments came a day ahead of his meeting with Putin in Alaska to discuss Moscow’s war on Ukraine. This will be the first meeting between the two leaders in six years.

It also comes amid diplomatic tensions between New Delhi and Washington after the Trump administration on August 6 doubled the tariffs on goods imported from India to 50% for purchasing Russian oil.

Trump has repeatedly accused that India’s purchase of Russian oil was “fuelling the war machine”.

The doubling of the levies came a week after Trump announced a 25% levy on Indian goods as part of the so-called reciprocal tariffs on dozens of countries that have not finalised separate trade agreements with the US.

In an interview to the US-based radio network on Thursday, Trump said that he believed “everything” had an impact for the reason behind his meeting with Putin, which included when he told India that “we’re going to charge you, because you’re dealing with Russia and oil purchases”.

This essentially took New Delhi out of buying oil from Russia, the US president claimed. Noting that India was the “second-largest buyer” of Russian oil, he alleged that New Delhi “was getting pretty close to China”, who was the largest importer.

“And then they [Russia] called, and they wanted to meet,” he said. “We’re going to see what the meeting means. But certainly, when you lose your second largest customer, and you’re probably going to lose your first largest customer, I think that probably has a role.”

AS Sahney, the chairman of the state-run Indian Oil Corporation, said that there was “no pause” in the import of Russian oil and that India’s intent to continue buying it was unchanged, PTI reported on Friday.

“We continue to buy, purely based on economic considerations, that is to say if the pricing and characteristics of the crude make sense in our scheme of processing, we buy,” he told reporters.

In response to Trump’s doubling of tariffs, New Delhi had said that it was “extremely unfortunate” that the US had chosen to impose additional levies on India “for actions that several other countries are also taking in their own national interest”.

“We reiterate that these actions are unfair, unjustified and unreasonable,” said the Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson. “India will take all actions necessary to protect its national interests.”

Negotiators from both countries had completed their fifth round of talks in Washington last month, with the next round scheduled for August 25 in New Delhi.

On August 1, the US president said that he had heard that India was “no longer going to be buying oil” from Russia.

This came after Reuters on Thursday reported that Indian state-owned refiners had halted oil purchases from Russia over the previous week. However, on August 2, ANI quoted unidentified Indian officials as saying that the state-owned refiners had continued to source oil from Russian suppliers.

The US president’s remarks on Friday had come just hours after India’s external affairs ministry responded to the Reuters report, stating that decisions on sourcing fuel are guided by market dynamics.