Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi held a one-to-one meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy on May 20, 2023 in Japan, for the first time since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine War on February 24, 2022. On the side-lines of the G-7 meeting in Hiroshima, the two leaders held talks for half an hour. During their meeting, Prime Minister Modi assured the Ukrainian President that he would do “everything necessary” to stop the war.

In the presence of India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and External Affairs Minister Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, the Prime Minister told President Zelenskyy: “You know much more than any of us the pain of war, but I could very well understand your pain and the pain of the Ukrainian people when our children narrated the circumstances in your country after they were brought back last year. I want to assure you that India – and personally myself – will certainly do everything that is necessary to resolve this crisis.” Later, President Zelenskyy invited Prime Minister Modi to visit Kiev.

Prime Minister Modi held several bilateral and multilateral meetings in Hiroshima upon his arrival in Japan on May 20. However, his meeting with the Ukrainian President grabbed global attention. Later, Indian Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra said that Kiev wanted New Delhi to play the role of a mediator in order to resolve the crisis. According to the Foreign Secretary, the Prime Minister made a couple of things clear to the President of Ukraine. India will send all kinds of humanitarian aid, especially medicines, to Ukraine, and the PM himself will try his best to find a solution to this conflict through dialogue and diplomacy. During the meeting, PM Modi further informed President Zelenskyy that the underdeveloped countries were in extreme danger due to this war.

Diplomats believe that the Indian Prime Minister continued his balanced diplomacy during his meeting with President Zelenskyy. The US and its Western allies have long been putting pressure on India in various ways in order to corner Russia, commercially, so that Moscow stops the war. However, India is yet to take an anti-Russia stance at international level. Whenever the US has brought resolutions condemning the Russian aggression at the UN, India has not participated in the voting. Instead, India has been importing huge quantities of crude oil from Russia at a cheap price in the past one year. Incidentally, President Zelenskyy did not raise this issue during his meeting with Prime Minister Modi.

According to diplomats, the Indian Prime Minister wanted to send a strong message to the US and Russia, simultaneously, by holding talks with the Ukrainian President. Russia’s closeness and wartime dependence on China is constantly increasing, and Pakistan is also with them. In the overall geostrategic context, India needs to have a strong option when it comes to negotiating with Russia. New Delhi is well aware of the fact that a possible India-Ukraine friendship would irk the Kremlin, and could bring Moscow closer to New Delhi. At the same time, the announcement to continue sending humanitarian aid to the Ukrainians would please the G-7 nations. This is what the Modi Administration needs right now in an attempt to safeguard its commercial and strategic interests.

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das