FLIP-FLOP DIPLOMACY IS A FAILING SCRIPT

IF Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent visit to Russia was to signal India's equidistant position between Russia and the US, it did not work.

- GURBIR SINGH

The optics were wrong. Perhaps, to emphasize India's Russian connection, the timing was carefully chosen. Prime Minister Modi selected Russia for his first foreign bilateral visit after being sworn in for his third term; and the fact that the NATO was holding a summit in Washington at the same time in support of Ukraine was not lost on all our hawk-eyed pundits of international diplomacy.

Even the bear hug Mr Putin got, now our PM's standard greeting for all male foreign heads of state, may have just about been digested. But then things went horribly wrong. Even as Putin was feting and bestowing awards on Mr Modi in Moscow, a supersonic Russian missile blew up a children's hospital in Kiev killing 37.

The reaction was swift. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a tweet called it 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."

Eric Garcetti, the United States' Ambassador to India, speaking at a conclave in Kolkata, scolded India saying: "there is no such thing as a strategic autonomy during a conflict", referring to the war in Ukraine. There was a warning too from Washington. In his speech, Garcetti, while referring to improving India-US ties, added: "But as I also remind my Indian friends, while it is wide and it is deeper than it's ever been, it is not yet deep enough."

FINDING A MIDDLE WAY