Between the hug that Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave Vladimir Putin in Moscow on July 9 and the one he gave Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy on Thursday, August 23, lies the story of India's balancing act on a war in which India has refused to take sides, despite immense pressure to do so.
US Had Objected To PM Modi's Moscow Visit
The United States made no effort to conceal its unhappiness over Prime Minister Modi jetting off to Moscow to give his “dear friend Putin” a bear hug even as the Biden Administration was busy commemorating the 75th anniversary of NATO's founding.
The Americans had been trying to get Modi to put the trip off, if nothing else. Call it the exigencies of war or a signal of sorts, but the day Modi landed, Russians bombed a school in Ukraine that took 37 lives, including three children, and injuring 173 others.
Zelenskyy minced no words when he said, “It is a huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts to see the leader of the world’s largest democracy hug the world’s most bloody criminal in Moscow on such a day. Modi was constrained to deliver a lecture to his dear friend Putin. But lectures, as we know, world leaders, take in their stride, even as they move on.
American Ambassador Eric Garcetti's Words Of Caution
In Delhi, a peeved American Ambassador Eric Garcetti read out the riot act saying that New Delhi should not take Washington “for granted”, a signal suggesting that New Delhi could not afford to stay non-aligned on this.
It is not clear how long Modi's trip to re-engage with Europe was in the works before it surfaced in public, but there is no escaping the fact that Poland is a frontline US ally, a part of the American led “coalition of willing” that subsequently was to lay Iraq to waste in 2003, without having really solved the problem but instead widening the arc of instability.
Poland is now in the forefront of American efforts against Russia, on NATO's eastern flank. It was therefore no great surprise when reports soon emerged that Modi was to go to Poland and Ukraine, a twin trip, in what could turn out to be a balancing act.
Such are the exigencies of war that on a day Modi trained it to Kyiv, Russia accused Ukraine of trying to attack the Kursk nuclear power station in what it called an act of "nuclear terrorism". Moral equivalences have no place in war like situations as we have seen day in and day out in that other theatre of action, Gaza, where hospitals and school buildings seem to be everyday targets and people drop dead like flies.
Modi's Ukraine Trip A Balancing Act Or A Turning Point?
The question is whether Modi's Ukraine trip remains a balancing act or is it a turning point? There has been no joint statement itemising the blueprint of bilateral relations from now on which should have been the logical result of the first trip by an Indian Prime Minister to a country since diplomatic ties were established in 1992.
They inked four agreements on cooperation in areas of agriculture, food industry, medicine, culture and humanitarian assistance, which sort of amounts to hugging the foothills of diplomacy. Prime Minister himself has avoided the media which would have been fiercely anti-Russian, and where he would have been put through a wringer. The visit itself lasted barely seven hours. All he has said was an omnibus ‘India is on the side of peace’.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar parsed it a bit more when he said Modi has told Zelenskyy of India's willingness to contribute in "all possible ways" to facilitate an early return of peace to Ukraine, which is delightfully vague. One of the ways that New Delhi is contributing to early return of peace in Gaza, for instance, is to reportedly supply killer drones to Israel, reports that have not been denied by New Delhi.
Joining American Bandwagon Against Russia Not An Option For India
Joining the American bandwagon against Russia may not be an option, as long as Putin remains firmly in control. New Delhi has resisted similar pressure when the Americans wanted New Delhi to send troops to Iraq with the carrot of rebuilding Iraq once Saddam Hussein was overthrown, and it should be possible to resist that temptation again in Ukraine as well. As long as that country is being pulverised and is heavily on life support, bilateral agreements may not be worth the paper they are written on.
Not to put too fine a point to it, New Delhi has gained immensely from the ongoing Ukraine war by ramping up its energy supplies from Russia, a country that has been an all-weather friend in the UN on Kashmir, for instance, casting vetoes when it was needed, a country that has provided the foundation for our defence technologies, and nuclear technologies.
The American my-way-or-the-highway does not really cut ice with New Delhi which lives in a complicated neighbourhood which requires deft footwork. Which is what we said in Kyiv when Modi visited the Martyrologist Exposition, a kind of war memorial, when he placed a small toy in the memory of children dead in the war.
