Eye on peace, NSA to visit Moscow this week

NSA Ajit Doval will visit Moscow for BRICS talks on Ukraine, as Modi aims to facilitate peace discussions involving India and China.

After Russian President Vladimir Putin and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni publicly expressed that India and China can play a key role in resolving the Ukraine conflict, National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval will travel to Moscow on September 10-11 for the BRICS NSAs’ conference with an eye on brokering peace, people familiar with the matter said on Saturday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is said to have conveyed some ideas discussed with President Putin during his July visit to Russia when he met Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on his August visit to Kyiv. Modi in his remarks during a meeting with Putin on July 9 made it clear that peace cannot be found in battlefields and that loss of lives of children and innocent people in the Ukraine war was terrible. Doval accompanied the PM during the Russia and Ukraine visits

While some Modi and India baiters have claimed that the PM went to Ukraine on August 23 to balance foreign relations with western powers, the fact is that Zelensky had invited him to Ukraine during the 2021 Climate Change conference in Glasgow. Modi could not visit Kyiv earlier as the war broke out.

Chinese NSA Wang Yi will also be present at the conference, with the Ukraine war top of the agenda. Doval and Wang Yi are also special representatives for talks on the India-China boundary resolution.

“India and the world want the war to end and in that context Modi is talking to all parties. He has no desire to be a mediator between Russia and Ukraine but supports all initiatives to stop the war so that children and women are not targeted by missiles, rockets and bullets,” said a senior official.

Telephonic conversations with US President Joe Biden and with Putin after Modi’s visit to Ukraine should be seen in the context of war resolution and not as a balancing act, said the official cited above.

It is understood that Modi discussed some “special ideas” with Zelensky in Kyiv and was totally unfazed by the vocal reaction of the Ukrainian President to the Indian media.

Doval will meet his BRICS counterparts, including those from China and Brazil, to discuss how the grouping can support the no-war initiative and put an end to people’s suffering. Already both President Putin and PM Meloni have urged India and China to play a role in conflict resolution, with Modi having close ties with leaders of Russia as well as Ukraine.

India buys crude oil from Russia in order to keep domestic inflation in check and Moscow continues to be a major defence supplier to New Delhi. Ukraine also has significant military and bilateral cooperation with India.

Officials said Doval will also participate in a meeting of Brics-Plus high-level security officials. The meetings are being organised by Russia, current chair of Brics, ahead of the grouping’s summit in Kazan in October. Doval is also expected to hold several bilateral meetings, including with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu, people familiar with the matter said.

Meloni was the latest world leader to comment on the war, telling reporters after a meeting with Zelensky on Saturday that China and India “can and must play a role” in resolving the conflict.

Zelensky had proposed after his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Kyiv on August 23 that India can host the second summit for peace in Ukraine, given its leading role in the Global South, provided New Delhi signs on to the joint communique issued after the first peace summit in Switzerland in June. India sent a senior official to the first summit but didn’t endorse the joint communique, mainly because Russia wasn’t part of the meeting.

Last week, Putin said at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok that Brazil, China and India can be possible intermediaries for peace talks with Ukraine, since he has “relations of trust and confidence” with the leaders of these countries. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Izvestia daily the same day that India can help in establishing a dialogue on Ukraine.

The relationship between Putin and Modi “allows for a line to be taken to obtain first-hand information from participants in the Ukrainian conflict”, Peskov said. He added Modi “communicates freely” with Putin, Zelensky and the US, and India has “a very good chance of using its weight” on the global stage and its “influence to encourage the Americans and Ukrainians to take the peaceful path of settlement”.

Peskov, however, noted there were no specific plans about such an approach. “There are no specific plans, and it is unlikely that they could exist now, because... we do not see any preconditions for negotiations now,” he said.

India has not publicly censured Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its leadership has consistently called for a return to the path of diplomacy and dialogue and a cessation of hostilities. Modi told Putin at their last meeting in July that talks can’t succeed under the shadow of the gun, and he told Zelensky last month that a solution to the conflict can’t be found without engaging Russia.