MODI'S UKRAINE VISIT A FLEXURE IN FUTILITY

HY did Prime Minister Narendra Modi make the side-trip to Ukraine on his two-day visit to Poland? Why did he ignore suggestions from scouts that a visit to Ukraine was inadvisable at that moment? Was it because pressing agreements had to be signed? Or was superpower geopolitics using him as a messenger to forestall a potential global catastrophe? Consider this.

- KAJAL BASU

Modi had visited Moscow in early July to a show of camaraderie with Vladimir Putin. Even as a Russian missile struck a children's hospital in Kyiv on the first day of his visit, Putin called him "param dost" (ultimate friend). The optics couldn't have been worse.

Six weeks later, while India was fending off indignation from not only the Western anti-Russian coalition but also Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Putin announced on August 22 that incursive Ukrainian forces had tried to attack the Kursk nuclear power plant at Kurchatov using kamikaze drones. This was a serious escalation, because the Kursk nuclear plant, one of Russia's four largest, is the main node of the country's national energy network. In July 2023, one unit at Kursk was disconnected from the grid following a Ukrainian drone attack. The plant was saved partly because the drones were short-range and carried lowstrength thermobaric warheads.

But here's the thing: the two operating reactors at Kursk are from the Soviet era and of the same design as at Chernobyl, barely 500 km away. If Kursk blows up, it will irradiate a vast landmass. The Kursk plant is located 60 km from the Russia-Ukraine border and less than 50 km from the city of Kursk.