Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Ukraine amounted to a mere seven-hour conversation on a war of serious proportions and intricacies. He travelled on a luxury train journey euphemistically named “Train Force One” that took him to Kyiv in 10 hours.
It left time for just seven hours of direct engagement on war and mutual trade interests. In all Ukraine and India signed a mere four treaties.
The visit to Ukraine was the first visit by an Indian Prime Minister in modern Ukrainian history. It came at a volatile juncture in Russia's war against Ukraine, which began in February 2022.
Modi urged Ukrainian President Zelenskyy to meet with Russia's leadership to discuss ending the war and offered to help bring peace. Ukraine’s intent behind engaging India included probing ways of increasing support from the Global South. It clearly does not ask India for a mediating role.
Besides asking tough questions about India’s proximity and friendship towards Russia, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy displayed perplexity about why PM Modi was in Kyiv in the first place. Even after the seven-hour visit to Kyiv after a 10-hour train ride from Poland, the real import of this journey remains wrapped in mystery.
If the trip was about brokering peace, Ukraine did not call for India's services. Instead, it chose the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to organise a prisoner swap between the warring nations. And if the purpose was to organise a ceasefire after the Kursk occupation by Ukraine and work towards a land swap, then the fierce attack by Russia on Ukraine conveyed that both hostile parties are in no mood to talk.
Ukraine was clear that India is not viewed as an arbitrator. At best, India might mobilise more support for peace in Ukraine placate the West. Does India have that kind of clout?
The encounter itself may have just been about optics. Grim international questions cannot be left to concision. If PM Modi’s intent was to advance a veiled notion about India and his own persona which would grant India status as International factor in international relations and bring weight to bear on the two adversaries.
The ultimate political fact is that India is in the ‘Russia Camp’ for political and economic reasons. India has positioned itself as a neutral party to the war. Ukraine gave the Indian PM a chance of slanting the position by giving authenticity to the notion of neutrality by spelling out principles for talks and solutions.
Several countries and leaders have hoped that India could be a strictly ‘balancing partner’ that would utilise its historic ties with Russia to edge Russia into a dialogue of give and take. That hope was a total misread.
Since Russia first invaded Ukraine in February 2022, India has been opaque and tacitly maintained been closer to the Russian claims. India has abstained from all resolutions at the United Nations that dealt with the conflict that criticised Russia.
India shunned Western sanctions, particularly on payments for oil imports and defence hardware from Russia. India’s rejection of Ukraine’s requests to include it in the G-20 summit last year was yet another oblique indicator that India would not risk its sturdy partnership with Russia on many fronts.
Ukraine expected much more, including a critical censure of Russia’s actions. Ukraine’s expectation was that India could be persuaded to fully align with Ukraine’s cause.
This was the first by any Indian Prime Minister since Ukraine’s independence in 1991. During his short visit, the two leaders discussed the conflict, and later visited a memorial for children killed in the war.
It is normal for a leader who visits a war zone to meet with war victims or wounded soldiers and civilians. Important as they may be, the two sides confined themselves to signing agreements on cooperation in agriculture, culture, medical products and assistance for community development projects. There was enthusiasm, especially over the agreements on Agriculture and Pharmaceuticals.
Ukraine would have preferred more substantive dialogue and agreements on matters of strategic partnership, or supplies of telecom and medical infrastructure, and construction equipment that Ukraine had previously requested and been bypassed. On the defence front, the priority for India right now is to ensure continued supply of spares and components for Ukraine.
In regard to Ukraine’s pitch for co-production of a range of equipment including drones and electronic warfare systems, India was direct. Indian officials averred that the priority for India right now is to ensure continued supply of spares and components for Ukraine-origin platforms in service and their operational availability.
PM Modi also apprised Zelenskyy of his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin in September 2022 as well as in Moscow last month. Modi reiterated what he has always been saying that this is not the era of war.
A solution to any problem is never found on the battlefield but through talks, dialogue and diplomacy. The Ukrainian side shared the Joint Communiqué on a Peace Framework, adopted at the Summit on Peace held in Switzerland. India had attended the peace summit but stayed away from endorsing the joint statement.
There have been several rounds of peace talks to halt the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia's demands at the start of the invasion included recognition of Russia's annexation of Crimea, recognition of the Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic as independent states, as well as "demilitarisation" and "denazification" of Ukraine.
Russia claimed that Ukraine’s governments were neo-Nazis carrying out "genocide" in the Donbas. In June 2023, and January 2024 Zelensky said that Ukraine was not ready to negotiate with Russian representatives unless Russia withdrew its troops. This is a tall ask that Russia would instinctively dismiss.
Zelensky’s election came on the heels of moves by Ukraine’s parliament to incorporate goals of joining NATO and the European Union into Ukraine’s constitution in September 2018.
Ukraine’s leadership has directly pressed for membership since at least 2008, but has full democratic consent. If NATO would keep out, the greed of the Military-Industrial-Complex would be cancelled and could ease tensions and compromises made possible. Post the Cold War, WARSAW and SEATO were dismantled. In a world that should make peace an imperative, NATO must be dismantled.
In 2010, the country’s Parliament passed a law banning Ukraine from joining any military bloc, effectively banning it from entering NATO though maintaining opportunities for cooperation. A few years later in 2014, the mood had shifted drastically after protests deposed Ukraine’s then-president and Russia annexed Crimea.
A Ukrainian pollster found in July of that year that 44% of Ukrainians supported becoming a part of the alliance, representing the first time a plurality of Ukrainians being in favour. Just 19% of people had felt the same way in a similar question the group asked in 2012.
Ukraine was once part of the Soviet Union, and is now a buffer between Russia and European members of NATO, a military alliance led by the United States Ukraine’s leaders in recent years have made enthusiastic pleas about their desire to bring the country into NATO.
President Zelenskyy, came into office in 2019 on the heels of a move by Ukraine’s parliament to enshrine the goals of joining NATO and the European Union into the country’s constitution in September 2018.
Does NATO want Ukraine to Join? This is a more complicated question, largely stemming from the fact NATO requires unanimous approval from all its current member countries. The process has been largely stalled since 2008.
George Bush wanted Georgia and Ukraine into the Membership Action Plan. But Bush didn’t garner support from key allies, including France, Germany and others amid fears the decision would inflame tensions with Russia. And indeed, Putin and other Russians at the time lashed out against the idea that either country might move closer to NATO.
Little changed over the subsequent years among European leaders, whilst the US, if anything, has eased back from its once-enthusiastic position. While Biden in the past has supported Ukraine’s entry into NATO, in June 2021, when asked for a “yes or no” on whether Ukraine would be allowed to join, he said “It remains to be seen."
The move to bring Ukraine closer to NATO would surely be met with further critique from Russia, and European leaders have feared aggression could follow. Russia's annexation of Crimea and war in the eastern Donbas region between Ukraine and Russia-backed Separatist groups in 2014 also complicated the picture. Putin has repeatedly said that if push comes to shove, he would not hesitate to use limited nuclear arms.
Zelenskyy, while being a champion himself of Ukraine joining NATO, has acknowledged several times the seeming long-shot reality around the prospects of Ukraine joining the organisation anytime soon: “For years we have heard about the supposedly open door [to NATO], but we have also heard [lately] that we should not enter, and this is true and we must admit it.
Putin, who has served as either president or prime minister of Russia since 1999, has been clear and often outspoken about his belief Ukraine should never be allowed to join NATO.
In the days up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Putin rehashed to the Russian people historical arguments, including claims that Ukraine is not and was never actually an independent state. He described Ukraine as a “historically Russian land” that was stolen from the Russian empire.
Putin has also repeatedly claimed that much of NATO's expansion into eastern Europe in recent decades has violated a promise that Russia says the U.S. made in 1990, where U.S. Secretary of State James Baker in negotiations said they would move NATO "not one inch" farther eastward in exchange for Russia allowing a then-divided Germany to reunify.
Putin, ahead of the February 2022 invasion, demanded NATO remove its deployments east of where they were in 1997, which would nearly cut NATO nearly in half: the 14 countries that have joined from 1999 to 2020 were all in the Eastern half of Europe.
The ongoing war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine continues to cause large-scale human suffering and destruction, and to create risks and crises with global repercussions. At a high-level dialogue on pathways towards a comprehensive, a just and lasting peace must emerge before too many lives are lost.
- The dialogue firmly affirmed a common vision on the following crucial aspects:
- The threat or use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine is inadmissible.
- Global food security depends on uninterrupted manufacturing and supply of food products. It must not be weaponized.
- Ukrainian agricultural products should be securely provided to third countries.
- All prisoners of war must be released by complete exchange.
- All deported and unlawfully displaced Ukrainian children, and all other Ukrainian civilians who were unlawfully detained, must be returned to Ukraine.
- Real peace presupposes dialogue between all parties based on shared principles.
- This means accommodating the principles of respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty.
India's ability to mediate the Russia-Ukraine conflict is constrained by its own capabilities and willingness. India is neither a direct party to the conflict, nor a key third party, and its willingness to act as a mediator is more about enhancing its own influence.
Furthermore, for India, the importance of the India-Russia relationship far outweighs that of India-Ukraine relations, and its relations with Russia have not downgraded even under pressure from the US. Ukraine believes that India could host a second summit on peace, it comes with a precondition: the host country must sign the communiqué from the previous summit. This is a tall ask and too distant in India’s capacity to embrace.
The Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland in June failed to achieve Ukraine's goal of persuading major countries from the Global South to join in isolating Russia. India has just to report it as an event. No amount of exaggeration will take away from the fact that even as a topic it got us nowhere.
Ranjan Solomon is a writer and human rights activist. Views expressed are the writer’s own.