NEW DELHI – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for a “return of peace” Wednesday as he left for Ukraine, weeks after Kyiv condemned him for hugging President Vladimir Putin during a visit to traditional ally Russia.
Modi, 73, will first visit Poland before traveling on to Ukraine on Friday.
“As a friend and partner, we hope for an early return of peace and stability in the region”, Modi said on social media.
The premier has trodden a delicate balance between maintaining India’s historically warm ties with Russia while courting closer security partnerships with Western nations as a bulwark against regional rival China.
His government has avoided explicit condemnations of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in Feb. 2022, instead urging both sides to resolve their differences through dialogue.
It will be Modi’s first visit to Ukraine, and he said he would discuss with President Volodymyr Zelensky “perspectives on the peaceful resolution of the ongoing Ukraine conflict”, as well as the “deepening the India-Ukraine friendship.”
Modi’s visit to Moscow in July came hours after a Russian barrage hit multiple cities across Ukraine, killing more than three dozen people and heavily damaging a children’s hospital in Kyiv.
Meanwhile, Russian air defenses shot down 11 Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow, “one of the largest” such strikes ever against the capital, officials said Wednesday.
“Eleven drones were destroyed” over Moscow and its surrounding region, the defense ministry said.
“This is one of the largest ever attempts to attack Moscow with drones,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.
Sobyanin said in an earlier post no damage or casualties had been reported.
Drone attacks on Moscow are rare, with Russia saying in May it had downed a drone outside the capital, forcing restrictions to be imposed at two major airports in the city for under an hour.
Kyiv has repeatedly targeted oil and gas facilities in Russia since the conflict began in 2022, some hundreds of kilometers from its borders, in what it has called “fair” retaliation for attacks on its energy infrastructure.
Ukrainian drones attacked an oil storage facility in Russia’s southern Rostov region on Sunday, sparking a large fire, the local governor said.
The blaze in the city of Proletarsk was still raging on Tuesday, with around 500 Russian firefighters working to put it out.
Earlier this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised his forces for hitting oil facilities in Russia, saying the attacks would help bring a “just end” to the conflict.
The drone attacks come as Ukraine mounts an unprecedented cross-border assault into Russia’s Kursk region, where it claims to control more than 80 settlements.
Modi was pictured hugging Putin at his country residence a day earlier, drawing condemnation from Zelenskyy.
India and Russia have maintained close links since the Cold War, which saw the Kremlin become a key arms provider to the South Asian country.
Russia has also become a major supplier of cut-price crude oil to India since the Ukraine conflict began, providing a much-needed export market after the imposition of Western sanctions.
That has dramatically reconfigured their economic ties, with India saving billions of dollars while bolstering Moscow’s war coffers.
However, Russia’s fight with Ukraine has also had a human cost for India.
New Delhi has pushed Moscow to return several of its citizens who signed up for “support jobs” with the Russian military but were later sent to fight on the frontlines in Ukraine.
At least five Indian soldiers have been killed in the conflict.
Western powers have cultivated stronger relations with India as a hedge against China, while also pressuring New Delhi to distance itself from Russia.
India is part of the Quad grouping with the United States, Japan and Australia that positions itself against China’s growing influence in the Asia-Pacific region.
