Indian diplomacy is experimenting with a new posture that has gone beyond studied neutrality in a global conflict to pro-active efforts at peace. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trip to an active war zone in the heart of Europe was a bold and risky diplomatic mission—the first time an Indian leader had ventured into a warzone with advocacy for peace. The diplomatic posture must be seen in the larger context of Modi 3.0’s June meetings with G7 leaders in Italy, his July summit with Putin, the August foray into Kyiv, the telecons with Putin and Biden to brief them on the outcomes of his trip to Ukraine, as also the upcoming conversations in the United States (US) in September and Russia in October for the BRICS Summit.
The geopolitical balancing act is important, given that India has strong equities in both the warring camps, the US and Russia. Both these global powers are critical to India’s strategic, security, energy and technology needs. And a multi-pronged engagement with all major powers is central to India’s current foreign policy doctrine. But India’s approach in the Central Europe outreach clearly went beyond geopolitical balancing, to serve multiple other important objectives.
A “Polished” Partnership
Modi’s stop in Poland on 22 August effectively helped India increase its footprint in central Europe, in a country that is the European Union’s (EU) fifth largest and will hold the rotating EU Presidency from 1 January 2025. With the visit, bilateral ties were elevated to the level of a ‘strategic’ partnership (within the framework of an India-EU strategic partnership), a diplomatic nod to the fact that it has been a trouble-free relationship with much positivity and reasonable political, defence and economic convergence of interests. With India’s close to 40 strategic partnerships, the diplomatic signal is more important than the substance of India’s strategic ties, even though the two sides did finalise a social security agreement promoting mobility of workers.
A train to a warzone
Poland is more than just the face of New Europe; it is NATO’s eastern frontline, a crucial supply link in Ukraine’s war effort. Poland is referred to at times as the ‘51st state’, given its eager proximity to the US. Poland also served as Modi’s staging post for the Kyiv visit, given that airspace was closed thanks to the war. Modi got into a bullet-proof Polish train, ‘Rail Force One’, to chug for 10 hours each way from the Polish trans-Carpathian province of Rzeszow to Kyiv. The trip was reminiscent of another risk for peace: Modi’s goodwill visit to Lahore in 2015, when he ventured into a Pakistani chopper to attend a wedding in the family of then PM Nawaz Sharif.
Modi’s visit to Moscow in July also took place amidst active conflict. But this time, India’s PM had stepped into a conflict zone where the ongoing war had dangerously escalated, with Ukraine’s ‘invasion’ of Russia’s Kursk region in the previous fortnight and Russia’s steady incursions in Ukraine’s Donetsk. Air raid sirens had gone off the night before Modi’s arrival. Both sides in the 30-month war seemed to be busy creating territorial buffers to strengthen their negotiating positions in any future peace talks. And the bloodshed worsened after the Indian PM left.
While it was no doubt an objective, Modi’s visit was more than just a geopolitical balancing act to appease Western partners. Despite the chasm in their positions and there being no love lost between their leaders, both Russia and Ukraine were willing to discuss the conflict with Modi at a time when few other global leaders may enjoy similar trust on both sides, and the UN Security Council remains paralysed by major power vetoes.
Fresh from hosting a Global South virtual summit in Delhi, Modi could credibly talk up the painful impacts of this conflict on global food, energy and health security, that disproportionately affects poorer nations. Modi’s proposed ‘global development compact’ for the South, perhaps needs to be supplemented by a ‘peace compact’—strong advocacy against wars that rich nations fight, and poor ones suffer.
Not just Moralpolitik
For India, this proactive peace posture was not just gratuitous moralising from the land of Buddha and Gandhi. It served multiple pragmatic objectives—creating diplomatic space for India’s multi-vector global engagement, which gives it greater room to engage fruitfully both with the US and Russia; bolstering India’s reputation as a responsible peace-seeking rising power, distinguished from China; mitigating risks of derailment from conflict to its own economic trajectory; and strengthening its leadership of the Global South, by acting as their voice.
It is also important for Indian diplomacy not to remain caught up by the multiple woes of South Asia, but to have a global vision and to be able to defend its wider interests. Modi was not just checking the box but taking his mission seriously. He was accompanied by his top foreign policy and security team, including the external affairs minister and national security advisor.
Both sides, Modi counselled in Kyiv, would need to sit together and look for ways out of this crisis. He assured Ukraine that he personally ‘as a friend’, and India, would be ready to play an ‘active role in any attempt to move towards peace’. The two sides even worked out an India- Ukraine joint statement. This was surprising, given the vast gulf in their views on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Zelenskyy may have railed against Putin in private, but he saved his public diatribe against Russia’s leader for a post-visit press conference, where he accused Putin of bad faith and worse. India did underline its commitment to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, important for India given the historical and recent territorial incursions by traditional rivals China and Pakistan. Underlining these principles, while at the same time not joining western sanctions or condemning Russia’s war, has been a consistent position for India over the last decade, at least since Russia seized Crimea in 2014.
In the statement of 23 August, India also ‘reiterated the need for sincere and practical engagement between all stakeholders to develop innovative solutions that will have broad acceptability and contribute towards early restoration of peace’. This essentially implied that, in India’s view, no peace process could be meaningful without having Russia on the table, unlike in the Swiss–Ukrainian ‘peace summit’ in the Swiss town of Burgenstock, where India participated at the official level, without signing off on the summit communiqué.
India sensibly did not pull out a ‘peace plan’ for Ukraine, like those proposed by Switzerland, China, or Turkiye. But the signal was clear—that India would be willing to play any peace-making role for both sides, and particularly the US, request it to. For the moment, India has left a reminder with Zelenskyy to consider dialogue, while recognising that the war could escalate before it concludes. India has also hinted at humanitarian aid to Ukraine and support for its post-war reconstruction. India’s vote for diplomacy would have registered on the margins of Kyiv’s calculations. All these moves no doubt were discussed in advance with Russia and other key stakeholders in the US and Europe.
The long road
Three key takeaways can be drawn from this episode of India’s diplomacy around a European war. One, India has adopted a more proactive and less risk-averse posture of peace diplomacy, that goes beyond classical neutrality, to signalling willingness to get involved in active peace-making. It was for the first time that an Indian PM stepped into an active warzone in a distant conflict. Modi has given this approach a branding, suggesting that India was never neutral, but was taking the side of peace.
Two, India has already initiated that peace-making, apprising both warring parties of each other’s concerns. Zelenskyy was briefed privately on Modi’s July conversation on the war with Putin. Equally, the Russians would have got a detailed readout of Modi’s exchange with Zelenskyy. In fact, Modi himself spoke to Putin after his visit. He also spoke to the key western driver of the war, the US, when he conversed with President Biden on his return. These conversations together constitute a credible peace-making effort, even if they would have little impact on the current state of play in the escalating war. India would have enough time to develop proposals for a peace process, if it comes to that.
Three, sometime in the happier future, India could conceivably provide a neutral platform for a peace dialogue to all stakeholders. India could also host a global peace summit for this war. The timing would be hard to predict; the endgame of the conflict may have to await the US elections in November. A Trump presidency on current reckoning could hasten the war’s end even more. But regardless of a Trump or Harris White House, India is now firmly a key stakeholder in the peace process.
The world would hope that the Ukraine conflict does not trigger another world war in Europe, or worse, a nuclear conflagration. If it heads instead to resolution, it remains unclear whether the endgame in Ukraine will come as a ceasefire, a protracted ‘frozen’ conflict, or a negotiated peace settlement. While India has maintained a steady drumbeat for diplomacy to resolve this conflict, the geopolitical tightrope will be tougher to walk with more battleground bloodshed. For now, India has managed to retain space to make autonomous choices; the recent diplomacy has reduced the pressure on India from both Russia and the west. India continues to import arms from both sides; both Russian oil and western technology are flowing for the moment. India is likely to patiently await a phase in the war where both the US and Russia seek an off ramp, an endgame of ceasefire and talks. That time might come only after the US elections in November. India should be prepared in that scenario to play a larger role in the peacemaking, perhaps by offering a platform for talks or a ‘global peace summit’, if not a ‘peace plan’ of its own.
Ajay Bisaria is a Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation. This article was originally published on ORF website.