FROM A LIMO CHAT TO A SPECTACULAR DIPLOMATIC TURN

Things have turned around remarkably since Putin and Modi rode together in Tianjin, with Trump warming up towards India soon after. Much depends on how the US manoeuvres Europe

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IN the complex tangle surrounding the conflict in Ukraine, things are moving in the direction that Russian President Vladimir Putin would have, conceivably, told Prime Minister Narendra Modi in strictest confidence during their 50-minute conversation while travelling together in the Aurus Senat, the presidential limousine retro-styled after the legendary ZiL used by Soviet leaders. They were heading towards their September 1 meeting at the American luxury hotel Ritz-Carlton in Tianjin, China, where the Russian delegation was staying.

For Putin, it must have been a moment out of the Psalms: "Blessed is the man to whom the lord imputes no guilt, in whose spirit is no deceit." As a deeply religious man, it must have been of the utmost criticality for Putin to hold Modi's hands away from the prying eyes of western intelligence at a sensitive juncture when India had come under immense pressure "just as in the colonial era", as he later told a small group of Russian journalists in Beijing.