Prime Minister Modi arrives in Ukraine, aiming to bridge peace amid conflict. His visit follows a trip to Russia and precedes a UN General Assembly appearance.
India won’t pick a side, but it will act like a bridge of peace — this seems the big message as Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Ukraine on Friday, six weeks after he was in Russia. Modi is now among a select group of global leaders who have been hosted by both countries while they are at war.
Government sources say the sentiment reflected in both the PM’s departure message when Modi said he would share perspectives on the “peaceful resolution of the ongoing Ukraine conflict” with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the PM’s reiteration in Poland on Wednesday that “this is the not the era of war.”
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This line from Modi, said first by him to Vladimir Putin in 2022, then in the presence of US President Joe Biden in Washington in 2023, and again to Putin six weeks ago in Russia — has become a famous recall for world leaders on ‘India’s stand on the war’.
Zelenskyy just last month had severely criticised Modi’s Moscow visit and expressed his dismay at Modi after he hugged “the world’s most bloody criminal in Moscow’ — but is now welcoming Modi in Kyiv. The Indian PM is expected to reiterate the same message to Zelenskyy as he did to Putin this July — that “no solution can be found in the battlefield”. That these twin trips to Russia and Ukraine come before the PM’s highly anticipated visit to USA in September for the UN General Assembly, is also significant on the aspect of messaging and diplomatic posturing.
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Modi-Zelenskyy Equation
An Indian PM is visiting Ukraine after over three decades but Modi and Zelenskyy have met thrice in the last three years – in June, this year in Apulia at the sidelines of the G7 Summit, last year in Hiroshima on the margins of the G7 Summit, and in Glasgow on the sidelines of COP in 2021. They have also spoken to each other on phone multiple times since 2020. Earlier this March, the Foreign Minister of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba was in India. Clearly, both sides have been in touch.
Advocacy for peace will be Modi’s top agenda in his maiden Ukraine visit. The government has made it clear that it stands for diplomacy and dialogue to reach a negotiated settlement for enduring peace. Modi has earlier offered to provide all possible support and contribution required to help find peaceful solutions to what the Modi government concedes to be a “complex issue”. The government in a official briefing this week said India has substantive and independent ties with Russia and Ukraine. “And these partnerships, they stand on their own. I would like to say that this is not a zero-sum game,” the government had said.
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The same will be on test as Modi spends some hours in Kyiv on Friday.
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