PM MODI OPENS THE DOOR TO PEACE IN UKRAINE

It is already overtime for the policy on the Russia-Ukraine war suggested by PM Modi be adopted by all sides.

- MADHAV NALAPAT

On August, for a period of eight hours, Prime Minister Narendra Modi travelled from the capital of an old friend of India, Poland, to Kiev, Ukraine, not by air but by Rail Force One, the Polish government's special VIP train. His choice of rail over air symbolised his confidence in the future of Ukraine, once fighting ceases and rebuilding of the shattered country restarts. PM Modi is aware that the Ukrainian leadership is still living in the fantasyland of believing that Russia can be expelled from the 2014 preMaidan frontiers of Ukraine. Why Joe Biden is Cheerleader-in-Chief for a war which will be known in history as Biden's Folly is unknown. What PM Modi did on 23 August was to show Ukraine and the rest of the world that the door to peace had been opened by him, and anytime President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wanted, he could walk through that door to meet PM Modi and consent to an immediate armistice. PM Modi is capable of getting his long-time friend Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin to agree to an armistice. Indeed, Putin had remained silent rather than dismissive of a suggestion made publicly and directly by Modi to him in 2022 that the present was not an "era of war". India has never been neutral in Ukraine, for as PM Modi said, India has been on the side of peace ever since the Ukrainian conflict with Russia began on 24 February 2022. It hardly needs to be mentioned that if Zelenskyy had listened to PM Modi's advice, Ukraine would have been saved from the loss of much blood and treasure.