Days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Russian President Vladimir Putin that the time had come to move from an \u201cendless war\u201d to an \u201cend of war\u201d, and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar travelled to Kyiv offering India\u2019s help to end the conflict, Moscow has signalled that it is open to New Delhi playing a role in the emerging diplomatic push to end the Russia-Ukraine war.<\/p>\n
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday said Russia welcomed India\u2019s willingness to contribute to efforts to settle the conflict, providing a significant opening for New Delhi as fresh negotiations involving Russia, Ukraine and the United States gather momentum.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do want the solution of the Ukrainian conflict by peaceful means and Russia is open for this process,\u201d Peskov told Indian journalists in a virtual interaction ahead of Putin\u2019s visit to India for the BRICS summit.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe welcome all the attempts to make any contribution in this sphere of Ukraine settlement. We welcome the willingness of the Indian side to contribute,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The remarks come against the backdrop of an unusually active sequence of Indian diplomacy on the Ukraine conflict.<\/p>\n
Modi met Putin on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek on August 31, telling the Russian President that the two sides needed to move from an \u201cendless war\u201d towards an \u201cend to the war\u201d and a cessation of hostilities. India, he said, supported all peace efforts.<\/p>\n
Just days later, Jaishankar travelled to Kyiv, where he held talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha. He said India remained ready to help end the conflict and was in continuous contact with both Russia and Ukraine. Zelenskyy, in turn, thanked India for its efforts to help end the war.<\/p>\n
The diplomatic moves have coincided with a renewed US-led attempt to revive negotiations. US special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner held more than three hours of talks with Putin in Moscow before travelling to Kyiv for discussions with Zelenskyy.<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian President has since said the envoys presented several promising ideas for ending the war, although no breakthrough has been announced. A possible trilateral meeting involving Russia, Ukraine and the US is also being discussed.<\/p>\n
Against this backdrop, Peskov\u2019s acknowledgement of India\u2019s willingness to contribute assumes greater significance.<\/p>\n
He said Moscow also hoped for the resumption of negotiations involving Russia, Ukraine and the US, with American negotiators currently travelling between Moscow and Kyiv to convey the positions of the parties. \u201cWe hope for restart of negotiations between three parties — Russian, Ukrainian and America,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Peskov, however, maintained Moscow\u2019s long-standing position that Kyiv was not showing sufficient flexibility and accused some European countries of continuing to push Ukraine towards a strategic defeat of Russia.<\/p>\n
At the same time, he insisted that Moscow remained ready for a peaceful settlement. \u201cEvery minute we are ready to switch to peaceful mode. It depends on Kyiv. This is the reality,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
For New Delhi, the developments mark a potential shift from repeatedly calling for dialogue and diplomacy to seeking a more practical role in the peace process.<\/p>\n
India\u2019s position has been that the conflict cannot be resolved on the battlefield and that dialogue between the parties is indispensable. Jaishankar, during his Kyiv visit, also argued that the war would not be resolved by countries buying or not buying Russian oil, stressing the need for diplomacy and negotiations.<\/p>\n
Peskov also said Putin and Modi would hold another bilateral meeting during the Russian President\u2019s visit to India. The talks, scheduled for Friday, are expected to cover bilateral trade and economic cooperation, energy, nuclear power, transportation, investments and other strategic issues, besides international developments.<\/p>\n
The Ukraine conflict is also expected to figure prominently, with Peskov saying Putin would brief his \u201cIndian friend\u201d on developments on the battlefield.<\/p>\n
He described the relationship between Modi and Putin as close and personal, saying their rapport allowed them to discuss sensitive international and bilateral issues in an open and constructive manner.<\/p>\n
The two leaders\u2019 latest interaction in Bishkek was, according to Peskov, \u201cvery personal\u201d and \u201cvery friendly\u201d. He said they had continued their conversation while travelling together to the opening of sporting activities.<\/p>\n
Peskov also acknowledged that India had repeatedly raised the issue of its nationals recruited into the Russian armed forces and sent to the battlefield in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
He said Moscow was working on a list of Indian citizens currently on the battlefield and that they would be sent back once identified. \u201cWe are in a very deep contact, profound contact, with the Indian side on this issue,\u201d Peskov said.<\/p>\n
His remarks came after Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said recently that 51 Indian nationals had died while serving in the Russian armed forces during the war.<\/p>\n
On the economic front, Peskov said Russian energy supplies to India continued to rise, though he declined to provide figures. \u201cEvery month we have a new record,\u201d he said when asked about India\u2019s imports of Russian energy.<\/p>\n
He also acknowledged the widening trade imbalance between the two countries, largely driven by India\u2019s purchases of Russian oil, and said Moscow was seeking to increase imports of Indian goods and encourage joint projects in India to help correct the imbalance.<\/p>\n
Nuclear energy, he said, would remain another major pillar of the partnership, with Moscow seeking further progress after its involvement in the Kudankulam nuclear power project.<\/p>\n
Peskov also highlighted cooperation in space, artificial intelligence, science and technology, healthcare, education and cultural exchanges.<\/p>\n
For the first time in the current sequence of diplomatic moves, Moscow has publicly said it welcomes India\u2019s willingness to contribute to the settlement \u2014 potentially giving New Delhi an opening to move from being a voice for peace to a participant in efforts to help achieve it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Russian President Vladimir Putin that the time had come to move…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[13491,8243,13492,38,13493,13494,13495,13496,12375,9931],"class_list":["post-39207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-newdelhi","tag-brics","tag-indiadiplomacy","tag-moscow","tag-narendramodi","tag-peaceprocess","tag-russiaukrainewar","tag-sjaishankar","tag-ukraineconflict","tag-vladimirputin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}