Doval Meets Putin: India Must Lead the Negotiations for Peace in Eastern Europe

India is well placed as the leading player on the world stage, having decent relations with both Russia and Ukraine.

Doval and Putin. 

(Photo: PTI)

The motivation to see peace in Eastern Europe is shared across large swathes of the world. India, holding independent and mutually exclusive relations with Russia and Ukraine, is well poised to bring the East and the West together to achieve this.

National Security Advisor Ajit Doval's visit to Moscow this week for discussions about a peace resolution suggests India is conducting hard talks while carrying President Zelenskyy’s message across as it negotiates the release of 45 of its citizens in distress who were trafficked and forced to fight for Russia.

India is Uniquely Placed

During his visit to Kyiv last month, PM Modi reiterated to the world community India’s impartiality about the Ukraine conflict. Coming on the heels of his Moscow visit earlier, Modi’s stance in Ukraine while standing in Kyiv with President Zelenskyy about respect for the territorial integrity of Ukraine as being non-negotiable adds gravitas to India’s position.

Furthermore, PM Modi stated that solving the war via military engagement alone in this era is not possible, and he reiterated his earlier stance taken at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting in Tashkent, where he had famously stated, “This is not the era of war.”

War fatigue is setting in the West. India is uniquely placed as the leading player on the global stage with diplomatic relationships with Russia and Ukraine, to help stem the loss of innocent Ukrainian lives.

India’s bilateral relations with the Russian Federation stretch back decades to the days of the Soviet Union (although Russia has done a false sequential inheritance of the friendships and goodwill of the USSR of which Ukraine was also a critical member).

One only needs to look at the synergy of the two nations’ strategic, nuclear submarine, nuclear energy, defence arsenal, and overall trust to understand the depth of the old Indo-Soviet, and the now Indo-Russia legacy. India cannot afford to compromise its relationship with Russia. Policymakers in Delhi recognise this reality but also understand the need to support territorial integrity, democracy, and the rule of law, which can be seen in Modi’s recent visit to Kyiv to counterbalance his reception in Moscow just weeks prior.

Some naive observers in the West as well as in Ukraine and Russia may misunderstand and denounce India’s statecraft as lily-livered; but doing so displays a complete failure to grasp geopolitical constraints and historical complexities of India’s history vis-à-vis the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) region and its own, ie, the complex threats from Pakistan, China, and others in the South Asia region.

More importantly, it shows a particular naivete by the West and others in the region in risking a total underestimation of the potential India holds for charting pathways to peace in such conflicts when other routes undertaken by less trusted external state parties from both sides have been exhausted.

The World Anxiously Waits

We only need to look back a few decades to see how third-party states with relationships with both sides, lead to some modicum of lasting resolutions to seemingly intractable conflicts, be it Sweden in the Vietnam War or Finland in the Iran-Iraq War. Today, countries like Egypt and Qatar are striving to do the same in the Israel-Hamas War. In the context of Russia and Ukraine, an effective mediator still needs to emerge from the international community, and a better and more acceptable one than India might be hard to find for both sides.

After two and a half years of gruelling combat, Russia and Ukraine are showing indications that they are ready to consider a peace settlement but not one that exchanges land for peace, or takes away fundamental security. Ukraine needs a security blanket, especially as its Budapest Memorandum of 1994 signed by world parties (US, UK, France, and Russia) assuring Ukrainian security in exchange for Ukraine’s nukes, is now not worth its weight in paper.

Both countries have set forward their own peace proposals and common ground is hard but it allows for starting discussions on positions. Meanwhile, battlefield decisions are being made, with incursions into Russia’s Kursk regions as possible future trades for Russia’s total withdrawal from occupied Ukrainian territories.

The world anxiously awaits a settlement. The war is wreaking havoc on the global economy and the Ukrainian loss of land and blood is especially marked and painful to see. Earlier this year, Russia was urged to start direct peace talks with Ukraine by China, which has outlined its own peace proposal for the conflict, which on 12 September Zelenskyy called “destructive”.

Meanwhile, war fatigue is spreading across continental Europe and it took months of gruelling negotiations between cash-pressed EU member states to approve the latest €50 billion aid grant to Ukraine (this is ONLY because the pro-Russia Hungary was blocking it). That’s not to mention the separate battle that Kyiv has been fighting in vain on Capitol Hill to maintain the support of American legislators. A Republican victory in the upcoming US presidential election could be fatal for Ukraine’s war effort, and President Trump has repeatedly stated he will end the war in 24 hours if elected (with many fearing it to mean a settlement on Russian or quasi-Russian terms).

The war has disrupted Ukraine’s ability to act as a ‘breadbasket’ for Europe and, even more importantly, as a grains supplier for some of the world’s driest and most food-insecure regions, including the Sahel and the Middle East. Prior to the war, Ukraine supplied more than 15% of the world’s corn, 10% of the world’s wheat, and 15-20% of the world’s barley.

Despite facing war with all its tremendous loss of life and property, Ukraine, through its incredibly effective ‘Grain from Ukraine’ humanitarian initiative for which I serve as Ambassador for President Zelensky’s office, is working to donate and deliver vital humanitarian supplies to those that need it most, including most recently in Gaza and Sudan among many vulnerable parts of the Global South.

But the war, through assaults on its farmland and blockades on the Black Sea, has continued to hinder this effort greatly. Until there is a full cessation of fighting in Ukraine, countries reliant on Ukrainian imports will continue to suffer threats of food scarcity. Thus, even for their own reasons, it is perhaps also in the best interest of countries in the Global South to see a peaceful resolution as soon as possible.

New Delhi Must Take the Lead

To reiterate for the larger reading audience, President Zelenskyy, has long insisted on ten tenets for peace, including:

• Ukrainian sovereignty over all occupied mainland territories and Crimea

• Full withdrawal of Russian troops and cessation of hostilities

• Confirmation of the war’s end in a document signed by both parties

• Iron-clad security guarantees for Ukraine and the prevention of a wider escalation of conflict

• Justice and a special tribunal to prosecute Russian war crimes

• Release of all prisoners and deportees, particularly war prisoners and children Ukraine has accused Russia of abducting

• Food security and guaranteeing the continued supply of Ukrainian grain exports across the world as detailed above

• Radiation and nuclear safety and restoring security around Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, Zaporizhzhia

• Energy security and restoring Ukrainian domestic energy production and self-sustainability

• Environmental protection and preventing ecocide

Meanwhile, President Putin, in his own “peace proposal”, has indicated that Ukraine will need to withdraw from the occupied territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia, surrender its territorial claims to Crimea, and end its bid to join NATO.

On paper, both proposals demand an absolute victory for one and the unconditional defeat of the other. It is hardly surprising that neither Moscow nor Kyiv would declare concessions before negotiations even begin. But policymakers in both camps will be acutely aware of the pressure the war is placing on their nations’ budgets, morale, and alliances. If India were to bring the two sides together and establish a base consensus – potentially on prisoner swaps or a temporary ceasefire – more frank negotiating could soon follow.

India is not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and President Putin, who has been indicted by the ICC for war crimes along with other Russians, can land in Delhi free from threats of arrest. President Zelenskyy would, of course, be free and welcomed by New Delhi, as he already is, based on the invitation to visit India extended by PM Modi during his recent visit to Ukraine.

Thus, there is no reason, therefore, why New Delhi cannot be the site where one of the worst conflicts of this century is finally brought to a close.

India’s newfound globally neutral superpower style of leadership resulting in a peace negotiation between Ukraine and Russia would be a stark demonstration to all of its allies of the importance and benefits of maintaining strong ties with New Delhi. It would also serve as a poignant reminder that, in a world as intricate as this, lasting peace is better achieved through diplomacy grounded in empathy and mutual respect as shown by India, rather than simplistic narratives of good versus evil.

[The writer is an academic with extensive experience in leading initiatives in developing countries and a former holder of senior positions in the UN. He is a Goodwill Global Ambassador for President Zelenskyy’s Office, for the Grain from Ukraine programme. This is an opinion article and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.]