Quad discusses Ukraine war, concrete steps in Indo-Pacific

A day after US President Joe Biden delivered the state of union address, the quad leaders got together to quietly discuss both the Ukraine crisis and the development in Indo-Pacific.

Published on: Mar 3, 2022, 22:48:50 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi participated in the virtual summit of Quad alliance with US president Joe Biden, Australian premier Scott Morrison and Japanese PM Fumio Kishida over the developments in Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific region. The Quad virtual summit reviewed the developments on the initiatives taken with respect to the alliance since the September 2021 summit. All the four leaders agreed on accelerating cooperation, with an objective to achieve concrete outcomes by the summit in Japan later this year, the joint statement read.

Leaders of Quad member countries: Japan PM Fumio Kishida, US President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Australian PM Scott Morrison.

While the quad physical summit is expected after Australian general elections in may, the quad leaders came on same page on the two critical issues facing the democratic world.

The Quad leaders discussed the present situation in Ukraine. Prime Minister Modi called for the need to return to the path of dialogue and diplomacy.

Also Watch: Is Putin planning to invade Moldova after Ukraine?; Belarus President’s battle map photo sparks questions

The prime minister also underlined that the Quad must remain focused on its core objective of promoting peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region. He called for concrete and practical forms of cooperation within the Quad, in areas like humanitarian and disaster relief, debt sustainability, supply chains, clean energy, connectivity, and capacity-building.

Read: Indo-Pacific: How India is countering China

The leaders also discussed other topical issues, including developments in ASEAN, the Indian Ocean region and the Pacific Islands. Prime Minister reiterated the importance of adhering to the UN Charter, international law and respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The leaders agreed to stay in touch and to work towards an ambitious agenda for the forthcoming Leaders’ Summit in Japan.

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