PM Narendra Modi invited President Volodymyr Zelensky to visit India
New Delhi:
The global media has covered Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Ukraine and his meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky as a positive step. PM Modi is the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Ukraine since its independence in 1991.
Here’s your 5-point cheat sheet to this story
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The New York Times: “Mr Modi has carefully calibrated his country’s relations with the two warring nations. On a trip to Moscow last month, Mr Modi hugged President Putin, and India has remained an important trading partner with Russia. India sent a representative to a Ukrainian-organised peace summit in June that Kyiv hoped would win backing for its negotiating positions in potential talks. But India did not join the nations that signed a communique at the end of the summit supporting three points of the Ukrainian plan.”
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BBC: “India had never been neutral in the war, he [PM Modi] insisted. ‘Right from the first day our side was peace,’ Mr Modi argued, pointing out that he came from the land of Mahatma Gandhi, whose statue in Kyiv he visited earlier. But behind the language, the fact remains that India has never condemned Russia’s full scale invasion and, in effect, has been helping to power Moscow’s war economy with Delhi overtaking Beijing last month as the biggest importer of Russian oil – at a time it has been hit by Western sanctions.’
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The Guardian: “The trip is the first to Ukraine by an Indian leader since the country’s 1991 independence from the Soviet Union. It follows a period of strained relations. Zelenskiy criticised Modi’s recent trip to Moscow, which came on the same day Russian missiles flattened a children’s hospital in Kyiv.”
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Nikkei Asia: “Despite Western pressure, India has not explicitly condemned traditional ally and weapons supplier Russia for invading Ukraine. Instead, it has repeatedly called for resolving the conflict through dialogue and diplomacy. At the same time, the South Asian country has been doing brisk business with Moscow, particularly through buying discounted Russian oil.”
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Le Monde: “Zelensky called Modi’s visit a ‘historic moment.’ But neither side showed signs of a breakthrough, with Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar later saying that it was ‘clearly a complex issue’ and that India believes Moscow should be involved if peace efforts were to progress.”
