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Good conversation, says Jaishankar on phone call with Ukraine’s Dmytro Kuleba
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticised PM Modi’s visit to Russia on July 8-9, when he held the annual India-Russia Summit with President Putin
NEW DELHI: External affairs minister S Jaishankar and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba discussed ways to develop bilateral relations during a phone conversation on Friday, weeks after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Russia.
Jaishankar said on X that he had a “good conversation” with Kuleba. “Spoke about further developing our bilateral relationship,” he said without giving further details.
In a separate post on X, Kuleba said: “Building on my visit to New Delhi earlier this year and the meeting between President Zelenskyy and Prime Minister Modi in Italy, I spoke with my Indian counterpart @DrSJaishankar about the further development of Ukrainian-Indian bilateral relations.”
Kuleba visited New Delhi in March to persuade India to participate in a peace summit hosted by Switzerland in June. India skipped the meeting and didn’t sign up for the communique issued at its conclusion, mainly because Russia wasn’t part of the summit. Modi and Zelenskyy had met on the margins of the G7 Summit in Italy.
External affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told a regular media briefing that Jaishankar and Kuleba discussed bilateral issues of mutual interest. “We have several engagements with Ukraine. We have bilateral and institutional mechanisms, we keep on talking to each other on various matters and that is where it is,” he said.
Zelenskyy had criticised Modi’s visit to Russia on July 8-9, when he held the annual India-Russia Summit with President Vladimir Putin. Zelenskyy said in a post on X: “It is a huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts to see the leader of the world’s largest democracy hug the world’s most bloody criminal in Moscow on such a day.”
People familiar with the matter said the Ukrainian ambassador had been called into the external affairs ministry for discussions on Zelenskyy’s comments. The matter also figured in the conversation between Jaishankar and Kuleba, they said.
Jaiswal said Modi had, during his visit to Russia, made it “very clear that the solution to any war does not lie in the battlefield”.
He added, “He also made it clear what he thinks about violence and children and innocent people being impacted in violence. All these issues were made very clear in his statements, when he spoke to the media and public.”
Modi’s arrival in Moscow had coincided with a Russian missile strike on Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital in Kyiv. In the presence of reporters, Modi raised the matter at his meeting with Putin at the Kremlin and told the Russian leader that solutions cannot be found on the battlefield.
