NSA Doval heads to Russia as BRICS seeks to end the Ukraine war

PM Modi was carrying Putin’s ideas to end war when he went to Ukraine. He was not appeasing the US.

Updated on: Sep 8, 2024, 18:30:32 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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New Delhi: After Russian President Vladimir Putin and Italy Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have publicly expressed that both India and China can play a key role in resolving Ukraine conflict, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval will go to Russia on September 10-11 for the BRICS NSA conference . Chinese NSA Wang Yi will also be present with Ukraine war top of the agenda.

PM Modi with EAM S Jaishankar and NSA Ajit Doval.

It is quite evident that Prime Minister Narendra Modi conveyed the “interesting ideas” discussed with President Putin during his July Russia visit with Ukraine President V Zelensky during his August visit to Kyiv. PM Modi in his remarks during a meeting with President Putin on July 9, 2024 made it clear that peace cannot be found in battlefields and that loss of lives of children and innocents in the Ukraine war was terrible. NSA Ajit Doval accompanied the PM during the Russia and Ukraine visit and knows all about ‘special ideas” to end the war.

While Modi and India baiters feel that the PM went to Ukraine on August 23 to balance foreign relations with the west, the fact is that Zelensky had invited him to Ukraine during the 2021 Climate Change conference in Glasgow. That the PM could not visit Kyiv earlier as war had broken out between Ukraine and Russia.

Also read: What are ‘Dragon’ drones used by Ukraine to drop molten metal on Russian troops? 10 points

“India and the world want the Ukraine war to end and in that context PM 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. The telephonic conversation with US President Joe Biden and Russian President Putin after the PM's visit to Ukraine should be seen in the context of war resolution and not as a balancing act.

It is understood that PM Modi discussed the ‘special ideas’ with President Zelensky during his Kyiv visit and was totally unfazed by the vocal reaction of the Ukraine President to the Indian media.

Also read: Italian PM Meloni sees role for India in resolving Russia-Ukraine conflict

NSA Ajit Doval will be meeting his BRICS counterparts including those from China and Brazil to discuss on how the multi-grouping can support the no war initiative and put an end to the suffering. Already both President Putin and PM Meloni have urged India and China to play a role in conflict resolution with PM Modi having close ties with leaders of Russia and Ukraine.

President Putin and PM Modi have a strong bond as both are nationalist leaders and the two have spent hours discussing global affairs. Just as President Putin trusts PM Modi, the Indian leader has given no grounds for President Zelensky to mistrust him. Fact is that India has no options but to buy crude oil from Russia in order to keep inflation in check and that Russia continues to be a major defence supplier to India. Ukraine also has significant military and bilateral cooperation with India.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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