India’s Strategic meeting with Europe can change the world scenario.
Initiative for a new Beginning amid Ukraine-Russia Conflict
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold a meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Friday( August 23). Modi will be the first Indian high minister to visit Ukraine after political relations were established in 1992. On July 6, Modi met Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, a visit that both Zelenskyy and the United States had criticized.
The question arises, does Prime Minister Modi’s visit signal a break from India’s traditional foreign policy on Ukraine?
This is easily not a durability of India’s traditional foreign policy station. India was close to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Ukraine was born after the fall of the USSR in 1991, but India’s affection for the Soviet Union, and subsequently Russia, did not extend to Ukraine.
This is not different to India’s relation with Poland, the country the high minister visited on Wednesday and Thursday. During the Cold War, when Poland was a Warsaw Pact member, three Indian PMs visited the country Jawaharlal Nehru in 1955, Indira Gandhi in 1967, and Morarji Desai in 1979. But after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and with Poland moving down from post- Soviet Russia and near to the West, India has not set up an important time for the country. India, Poland announce strategic cooperation, social security pact PM Narendra Modi with Polish counterpart Donald Tusk in Warsaw on Thursday.( Reuters)
What has led India to depart from its aged foreign policy station towards Ukraine?
Bilateral relations took a megahit after the Russia- Ukraine war began in February 2022 the volume of India- Ukraine trade dropped from$ 3.39 billion in 2021- 22 to$ 0.78 billion and$ 0.71 billion in 2022- 23 and 2023- 24 singly, according to Ministry of Commerce data.
But the war has also created a new occasion for New Delhi to engage with Kyiv. While India has maintained a strategic balance on the conflict itself, over the former two times, the topmost situations of the Indian leadership have engaged directly with Ukraine.
The question, Could Modi’s visit to Ukraine impact India’s relations with Russia in any way? India- Russia relations are in no way linked to India’s engagement with Ukraine. At the end of the day, common interests are the driving force in transnational relations.
Russia and India continue to partake a strong relationship, India has been pivotal to keeping Russia’s economy round by helping it bypass Western clearances, and India continues to use Russian service attack in addition to cooperating on a range of other issues still, all this does not stop Russia from engaging with China, which is India’s biggest geopolitical rival, on the base of the common interests of those two countries.
In sum,
What’s the significance of the PM’s ongoing visit to Ukraine?
For decades after Independence, Europe remained a fairly low precedent for Indian foreign policy beyond the narrow focus on relations with Europe’s big four Russia, Germany, France, and Britain. This has changed under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi over the last decade. His visit to Ukraine( and Poland) is part of India’s larger Europe drive.
Pertaining to India’s policy ofNon-Alignment on Wednesday, PM Modi said” For decades, India’s policy was to maintain equal distance from all countries. moment, India’s policy is to maintain close ties with all countries.”
This drive to come” Vishwabandhu” includes a recognition of the occasion that lies in forging deeper ties in central and eastern Europe, and disentangling New Delhi’s engagement with the region from its relationship with Russia.
