Zelensky welcomes New Delhi's commitment to peace in historical Indian visit

Ujust before, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar had met Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiga, who described this first bilateral visit as “historical”.

“ We are grateful to India for its commitment to end this unjust war, the war waged by Russia against Ukraine,” Zelensky said on social media.

“ This is certainly not the time for war. Peace is necessary. This is India’s clear position,” he continued after his meeting with Jaishankar.

On Monday, outside a summit in Kyrgyzstan, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged his “friend” Vladimir Putin to find a solution to the conflict.

“ Every day that war continues, mankind regresses, while every step toward peace offers a real hope. We must move from endless war to peace,” Modi supported alongside the Russian President.

According to Zelensky, today’s dialogue has also focused on the situation in the Black Sea, particularly “in threats to civil navigation”.

“ Russia's actions to block our ports, our food corridor and our supplies are seriously disrupting international relations. We must work together to ensure security,” the Ukrainian leader supported.

With thousands of citizens working in the maritime sector, India is among the most represented nationalities in commercial ship crews.

In July, four Indian citizens died in an attack on a ship near the Ukrainian port of Odessa, which Kiev imposed on Moscow.

At the end of July, India called the Ukrainian ambassador to New Delhi to condemn another attack attributed to a Ukrainian drone against a merchant ship in the Black Sea, which caused the death of an Indian crewman.

In his account of social network X, Jaishankar stated, for his part, that at the meeting with Zelensky they discussed in particular “ways of strengthening” cooperation between their respective countries.

Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, with the argument of protecting the pro-Russian separatist minorities in the east and “denazifying” the neighbouring country, independent since 1991 – after the collapse of the Soviet Union – and which has been moving away from Moscow’s sphere of influence and approaching Europe and the West.

The war in Ukraine has already caused tens of thousands of deaths on both sides, and the last months have been marked by large-scale air raids from Russia on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, while Kyiv's forces have targeted Russian territory and the Crimean peninsula, illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014, military, logistical and oil targets used to sustain the Russian offensive.

At diplomatic level, Russia has so far rejected any prolonged ceasefire and demands, in order to put an end to the conflict, that Ukraine give it four regions – Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporijia – beyond the Crimean peninsula, and forever renounce membership of NATO.

The United States-mediated diplomatic efforts to put an end to the war remain stagnant, more than four years after the start of the Russian invasion on a large scale of the neighbouring country in February 2022, maintaining the exchange of prisoners and military corpses as one of the few areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv.