India ready to help find peace, Modi tells Zelensky

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a historic visit to Ukraine, telling President Volodymyr Zelensky he was ready to play a personal role in bringing peace.

The Indian leader was criticized by President Zelensky last month when he hugged Russian President Vladimir Putin during a trip to Moscow on a day of deadly Russian strikes, including one on Kiev’s largest children’s hospital.

Mr Modi, 73, said he told Mr Putin that problems could not be solved on the battlefield.

“Both sides will have to sit down together and look for ways out of this crisis,” he said after meetings in kyiv.

Mr Modi arrived in the Ukrainian capital by train from Poland, the first international leader to visit Ukraine since Ukrainian forces swept into Russia’s Kursk region in early August, seizing more than 1,250 square kilometres of territory, according to the military.

Six weeks ago, President Zelensky expressed “great disappointment” at seeing Mr Modi warmly hug the Russian leader.

On Friday, it was the Ukrainian president’s turn to be greeted by Modi, although the greeting seemed more awkward. Zelensky appeared to be frowning, but that may also have been the sun shining in his eyes.

Smiles were rare.

More than 40 people were killed in Russian strikes on the day of Modi’s visit to Moscow. The Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in kyiv was directly hit.

It is surely no coincidence that the first place Mr Modi was taken on Friday was the History Museum of Ukraine, where he was invited to tour an exhibit remembering the 570 Ukrainian children believed to have been killed since Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The two leaders crouched down to place stuffed animals at a makeshift shrine, and the Indian prime minister later said his heart was filled with sorrow for the young people “martyred” during the war.

At one point he put his arm around the Ukrainian president’s shoulders – an image posted on Mr Modi’s social media account with the message that his heart went out to the families of the dead children.

He later personally offered to help launch peace talks, with Mr Modi stressing that only dialogue and diplomacy could end the fighting.

India has never been neutral in the war, he insisted. “From day one, we were at peace,” he said, noting that he came from the country of Mahatma Gandhi, whose statue he had visited in Kiev earlier.

But behind the language, the fact remains that India never condemned Russia’s full-scale invasion and, in fact, helped fuel Moscow’s war economy, with Delhi overtaking Beijing last month as the largest importer of Russian oil – at a time when it was hit by Western sanctions.

Mr Modi and President Zelensky discussed Ukraine’s ongoing incursion into Russian territory, although the specific content of the conversation is not known.

India attended a peace summit hosted by Ukraine in Switzerland in June, to which Russia was not invited, and Mr Zelensky urged Mr Modi to sign a joint communiqué stressing the territorial integrity of Ukraine and all other states.

He did, however, thank his visitor for “supporting our sovereignty and territorial integrity”, a sentiment Mr Modi repeated shortly afterwards – with both men hailing the day as historic.

They then issued a joint statementcommitting to strengthening relations between the two countries in defense and trade.