Deutsche Welle :
India’s potential role as a mediator with Moscow, and its position as a vanguard of the Global South, is coming into focus for Ukraine as it seeks to expand international support for a peace plan more than two years after the Russian invasion.
After arriving in India on Thursday for a two-day visit, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told Indian media that New Delhi “is a very important player in the world and we need India to restore just and lasting peace in Ukraine.”
Kuleba’s agenda includes a meeting with his Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, and the deputy national security adviser.
“India can play a very important role in bringing together more nations from the Global South,” Kuleba told Indian broadcaster NDTV, adding: “If India sits at the table of the peace formula, the initiative put forward by Ukraine to find a diplomatic solution to the war, then many other nations will feel much safer and comfortable sitting next to India and they will come and join this effort.”
Indian political scholar Amitabh Mattoo told DW that a phone call last week between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a sign that India is positioning itself as a potential mediator or peacemaker in the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
“Ukraine is pushing for its own peace plan. After the Modi conversation, there is a feeling that New Delhi will be more sensitive to Kyiv’s interests,” said Mattoo, who is dean of the School of International Studies at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).
“Given that New Delhi has leverage with Moscow, much more than any Western country, Kuleba thinks it fit to reach out to New Delhi,” he added.
Since Russia launched its war in Ukraine, India has drawn Western criticism by staying neutral and not condemning Moscow’s unprovoked invasion, while maintaining trade and energy ties with Moscow, even as Western sanctions sought to strangle the Russian economy.
Kuleba himself criticized India in 2022 for purchasing Russian oil. But this week he told the Times of India newspaper that Ukraine was not against India’s economic engagement with Russia and emphasized that the “red line for Ukraine is financing Russia’s war machine.”
However, Kuleba has also stressed that India should be looking to build alliances for the future, and urged it to reevaluate its relationship with Russia.
“The co-operation between India and Russia is largely based on the Soviet legacy,” Kuleba said in an interview with the Financial Times.”But this is not the legacy that will be kept for centuries; it is a legacy that is evaporating,” he added.
“Kuleba’s statement that Ukraine is alright with India buying Russian oil as long as it does not fund Putin’s war machine is significant. It is an acknowledgement of the role that India can possibly play in finding a way out of the vexed situation that Ukraine finds itself in,” Archana Upadhyay, chair at the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies at JNU, told DW.
Ukraine seeks India’s help in ending war with Russia
