Tag: Russian Invasion Of Ukraine

Ukraine Two Years On

Ukraine, Two Years On

By Jasdev Singh Rai

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, in what it called ‘special operations’, I had written that the conflict will be short given the unequal nature of the two countries. Ukraine is a middle ranking country with a high corruption index, divided by ethnicities and lacking the financial muscle to be major military power. Russia on the other hand is a world power with the highest number of nuclear weapons, huge stock of tanks, artillery and arms manufacturing base as well as population to recruit from. In that assessment I was both right and wrong.

The war hasn’t been that short, nevertheless it doesn’t appear it will be one of the protracted wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan. While still retaining its corruption status in the world, Ukrainians have shown considerable resolve to fight a formidable foe. The recent funding commitment by USA has further strengthened that resolve.

What was missed in the analysis was that the Russian incursion wasn’t just seen as an invasion of Ukraine, but of the Occidental based world order. It has been perceived as a challenge to western hegemony of international relations, particularly State boundaries, rather than a regional conflict.

The alleged violation of much vaunted rule based order and State sovereignty has been used by the Occidentalist countries to condemn Russian attack and justify arming, training and financing Ukraine as well as to isolate Russia economically and politically.

There is no doubt by now that it was American and British advisors as well as support structures that propped up Ukraine to resist Russia. The Ukrainians fought. The training, the strategies, the resources and the intelligence support was supplied initially by USA mostly and UK to some extent and followed soon by the EU and other countries in the Occidental camp, such as Japan and South Korea. It is a formidable coalition of the world’s richest and most powerful countries.

The ground force has been Ukrainians. Many, some put the figure over 800,000, have fled the country. Forced conscription ensured recruitment of reluctant young men into the army. With a mixture of professionals and civilians with basic training, it has to be admired that Ukraine has done well to hold back Russia from walking over the entire country. The causalities have been enormous, particularly as percentage of the population.

One feels sorry for the youth who had other ideas for their lives but forced to fight. A young person forced into fighting has no choice. If he flees, he is shot by his own, if he fights, he could be killed by the enemy. They have no option but to fight. Such is the nature of States at war. The few lucky dissenters with money have found people smugglers to get them out.

The Russians have been effectively in conflict with the Occidental world order and not just Ukraine. Even religion wasn’t spared as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church broke from the Russian Orthodox Church.  There are closer ties with the Catholic and Anglican Church now, the Church that dominates Occidental values systems.

ALSO READ: Propaganda War – Ukraine Through Facts and Fiction

Two years on the USA is losing interest as it usually does when the fight does not go its way. Its approach is often like a business venture. If the losses are heavy and there is no prospect of profit or success, it starts to wind down and invest elsewhere, taking the losses. However, the losses are only militarily and in regional power, not so much financial.

The United States military industrial complex siphons off the money from the taxes that ordinary Americans pay. The industry thrives on forever wars in the world. When the American taxpayer gets a bit tired of a particular war, the industry looks elsewhere for a new game. In some ways the American tax payer and in the case of Ukraine the British and European tax payer, has been paying for a venture that seems to be going nowhere. USA has now increased the funding by $61 Billion but most of it will go to its own industrial military complex to replenish its own domestic stock sent to Ukraine.

Russia however had the developing world on its side. Most countries also see the Occident as hypocrites. The attack on Iraq by USA and UK was also a violation of sovereignty and world order that is being protected now. Countries are largely weary of the order which is interpreted at will. Hence they haven’t quite been convinced by the arguments pushed by Occident.

The developing world also sees hypocrisy in the occidental media. A prime example is the BBC and Guardian who carried a few articles on the Azov group being Nazis and effectively running Ukraine before the conflict. However since the conflict, perhaps because of the infamous D notice that effectively imposes censorship on the media in times of war or national interest, both have been quiet on the influence of Nazi groups in Ukrainian establishment.

Very little if any reporting is done on the way youth have been forced into the war machine and the plight of those who try to run away.  Very little is reported on the enormous corruption or the many weapons given to Ukraine that have found their way in the black market around the world, nor about the bank accounts of those leading the war effort in Ukraine.

A lot of media attention is given to Russian corruption, Russian conscription etc. Perhaps the New York Times is the one paper that has broken with this censorship at times.

These facts may not be in the ‘official’ public domain but most of the world is quite aware of them. Developing countries, are not influenced by the moral arguments of the occident but have shown remarkable self interest in international affairs. They try and remain neutral or some support USA and Ukraine for strategic reasons.

Russia has held itself remarkably both economically and politically despite the sanctions and freezing of its assets. It has deepened its ties with China and has continued to trade with India. Sanctions have had little effect on it, except Russians cannot openly buy ‘Prada’ etc.

Two years on, it appears the USA might abandon Ukraine slowly. Europe is a bit more evangelist and concerned about its place in the world order. It wants the fight to go on. It might prop up Ukraine for a bit more. However European public opinion is turning against EU’s continuing involvement in Ukraine.

Britain is now too small to lift the burden itself. Many British policy makers think they can influence America, but the last decade has shown that the USA looks after its own interests.

The ending does not look good for Ukraine. The war is no longer in American interest. Russia may have been weakened a bit but its war machine has strengthened and Putin’s hold on power has increased. Russian economy is doing well.

Ukraine is likely to lose the Donbas and may lose further land. Following the defeat, there may be internal coups and countries like Poland and Hungry have long been planning for the spoils, possibly land grab in western Ukraine.

It could all have been settled at the beginning and many a death could have been avoided. Had the Occidental powers not intervened, Ukraine may have engaged in ‘peace’ talks at the beginning. Nevertheless, it still appears this will be a short war when compared to Iraq and Afghanistan, where the US thought it was dealing with a very weak enemy and continued to hold hopes of success. Taking on Russia has been a different matter.

Ukraine – A Dangerous Military Rehearsal

By Jasdev Singh Rai

History has shown that liberal democracies tend to be the most dangerous in wars, using weapons that others hesitate from deploying. It was the United States that first used nuclear weapons in the Second World War in Hiroshima and, egged on by the British, a second one was lobbed at Nagasaki. There was no call for a second atrocity of that level.

The United States used napalm, Agent Orange, phosphorous and similar agents in Vietnam. It also used cluster bombs in Laos and some other countries. These are still being cleared. However, both Russia and Ukraine have used them. Cluster bombs are considered to kill more civilians than enemy soldiers.

That the USA is now sending these bombs to Ukraine may be a sign of the fatigue setting in United States or a realisation that Russia won’t be defeated. This war has essentially been a war for defending American global hegemony and, on the part of Russia-China, to push it back now and move on to a new world order.

That it is ultimately about the new world order rather than Ukraine, is evident from the constant usage of the words ‘challenge to world order’ or international rule based order. No one seems to be defining what this international rule based order is or what world order is being challenged. Words are used carefully to leave impressions without exposing what they are really meant to be.

The current world order is Pax Americana which seems to be weakening at the moment. Pax means peace. It is peace on America’s terms. The rule based order simply means that the rules of international relations, nation states etc are made by USA, UK and to some extent EU. They decide whose borders can change when and who can get independence etc.

There are other undercurrents that are at play in Ukraine. Eastern Europe and Russia were not involved in colonialism of the type the occidental world engaged in. These countries are less inclined to be evangelist about ideology.

EU and NATO on the other hand still have colonial mentality and seek to change the world into democracies of the kind they prefer. NATO has managed to recruit some of the Eastern European countries to this but is now pushing Ukraine to bring down Russia a peg or two to maintain belief in liberal democracy as a better system.

The difference between the Occident and Russia is that the Occident gains territory by converting rather than annexing it. It annexes it ideologically and makes it its foot soldier as it has done with Poland and much of Eastern Europe and now seeking to do with Ukraine. Russia and China gain territory by occupying and installing governments controlled by it. Ukraine thus is simply a pawn in this game. The average Ukrainian is a helpless victim in a global game of hegemony and being pushed by its own Ukrainian leaders to risk their lives in this. A lot of Ukrainian hierarchy have benefitted financially from this. The United States itself has admitted that corruption is widespread in Ukraine. The US can throw a lot of money at the opportunists in Ukraine who force their countrymen to join the war.

ALSO READ: Theatre of War Horrors in Ukraine

However, the USA seems to be getting a bit stretched by the resources on another yet wasteful war. It lost enough in Afghanistan and now is seeing Ukraine falling apart. In desperation, it is willing to use hideous weapons.

Moreover, there are a number of US and British personnel now stationed in command centres in Ukraine training and directing the war. They probably run into thousands; Russia has hinted to USA that it will attack the command centres in a clear message that it will kill American and British officers if F-16 aircraft are handed to Ukraine.

The war therefore is being run by USA with NATO, but with Ukrainians as the soldiers. It is not surprising then that Zelensky gets frustrated quite often. He is quite aware that he is but a pawn. He angrily asks for more weapons so that he can ‘finish’ the job for USA. Ukrainian politicians are habitually saying that they are fighting for the survival of the West. They don’t say survival of Ukraine.

Ukraine was never under threat. All it had to do was accept autonomy for the Donbass as UK has done for Scotland and Northern Ireland. It could have retained its territorial integrity. However, as a few American politicians and Generals have said, Ukraine cannot decide without the USA agreeing to it. In effect Ukraine has become a vassal State for NATO under USA, and Russia is now seeking to break it to control parts of it.

Russia too has been quite brutal in this war. It is considered to have blown the Nova Kakhovka dam to sabotage the Ukraine counteroffensive. However, Russia has also been a bit naïve in some ways. It could have gone in all guns blazing at the start and taken over Kiev. It chose to send in forces to scare Ukraine and gain its agreement to its terms.

An agreement was reached with Ukraine to talk about mutually acceptable terms and Russia withdrew. But Ukraine under instructions from USA, then reneged on this. Russia has still been reluctant to use some of its most dangerous weapons. It is fighting an old-style territorial war with Ukraine. There may be many reasons for this.

As a senior NATO officer has said, Ukraine is also an experimental ground for both sides on how wars will be fought in future as well as real testing ground for some of the weapons. The USA has been handing out some experimental weapons and testing them in Ukraine. NATO and Israel have also tested their missile defence equipment against some of the most advanced Russian aircraft. Where they have been shown to be defective, lessons have been learnt.

Russia too has been doing that. Both have also increased the sale of their weapons worldwide. It is one thing to see missiles and fighter jets in an Arms show, but quite another when they are tested against sophisticated defence equipment. Britain’s Himars and American Patriot defence systems have both been show-cased here. Russia claims to have learnt a lot about sabotaging them while NATO is learning what needs to be re-engineered.

It has been surprising why Russia did not resort to the form of warfare that United States deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan. In both, America went in with the hammer, conquered everything and destroyed the defences. Russia could have destroyed all Ukrainian infrastructure such as railway lines, roads, airports etc. This could have made it difficult for any equipment to come into Ukraine. Russia however chose to destroy a few as warning and permitted an endless supply of weapons to Ukraine. The possible reason must be that both Russia and USA now see the war as a training ground for a future war.

There is another lesson that Russia may have learnt from American excursions in the last five decades. The USA goes in heavy but then gets stuck in a quicksand taking years to extricate itself from the trap. It eventually lost in Vietnam, in Iraq and in Afghanistan among other places. Russia has avoided that prospect and has perhaps been hoping for a shorter war lasting two to three years in which all will be decided.

The other dimension to this war may be the American establishment trying to take its revenge on Putin for having installed Trump in USA as President. It made the Pentagon and USA establishment a laughing stock. Putin was able to manipulate the American system and place a President at the highest office amenable to him. The American establishment want to send a clear message to Russia. Prigozhin revolt could have been an American stunt without the later knowing that he was a pawn. Putin has been more resilient.

The war will end sooner or later with Russia getting most of what it wants and rest of Ukraine becoming part of the ‘West’. There are however two other rogue elements. Poland is greedily eyeing parts of Ukraine and hopes the western part of Ukraine falls to it. So does Hungary which is looking at the Southwestern regions of Ukraine. Both countries are hoping that Ukraine will fall apart. Putin appears quite OK with this. In fact he hinted at this at the beginning of the attack on Ukraine.

One feels extremely sorry for Ukrainians. Ukraine has become the Afghanistan of the Balkan region. It is sought by great powers, not for resources but to entrench their own hegemony and power in the world. Afghanistan has been constantly on the menu of Pakistan and Iran who had hoped that it would disintegrate with each taking parts of it. Afghanistan has survived. Will Ukraine survive the great powers and their games and the opportunist designs of Uktraine’s neighbours?

As Kremlin Bulldozes The Russian Dream…

By Amit Sengupta

Orwell, like the authors of the other negative utopias, is not a prophet of disaster. He wants to warn and to awaken us. He still hopes – but in contrast to the writers of the utopias in the earlier phases of Western society, his hope is a desperate one. The hope can be realized only by recognizing, so 1984 teaches us, the danger of a society of automations, who will have lost every trace of individuality, of love, of critical thought, and yet who will not be aware of it because of ‘doublethink’. Books like Orwell’s are powerful warnings, and it would be most unfortunate if the reader smugly interpreted 1984 as another description of Stalainist barbarism, and if he does not see that it means us, too.
– 1984 by George Orwell, Afterword by Erich Fromm

When I first visited the Red Square in Moscow as a journalist, it was a sparkling, chilly night, and it seemed that I was living a dream. The beautiful St Basil’s Cathedral stood shining in splendid splendour, even as priests in ornamental robes burnt incense sticks, while in the pebbled expanse next to the River Moskva flanked by the walls of the Kremlin, all the memories of Soviet Russia which I had read as a student flashed by in a cinematic kaleidoscope.

In the morning I joined the long queue at Lenin’s Mausoleum, with mostly Chinese tourists, even as soldiers paid solemn homage to the martyrs of the ‘War against Fascism’ nearby. Lenin was dressed in a black suit and tie. He was too still young and exhausted, when he died.

The night train took me to St Petersburg, formerly Leningrad (Lenin’s City), where the protracted and epical battle against the Nazi siege took place for months. Did 20 million people of Soviet Russia die fighting against the fascists, or many more? I think many, many more died defending their land, and the idea of revolution, with General Secretary Joseph Stalin at the helm.

Beyond the great art museum of Hermitage next to sublime River Reva in St Petersburg, the Tsarist palaces were on display, including the golden peacock. There are oral traditions of how the Bolsheviks entered the palace for the first time. You have to imagine the obscene opulence of the palaces to understand how the peasants and working class, oppressed, crushed and suffering, had no other option but to rebel.

This obscenity was multiplied a thousand times in the sprawling summer palaces near Peterhoff , next to the sea shore with Finland in the distance – glossy Italian architecture and the infinite luxury of cruel kings and queens who thought they were eternal and immortal. Indeed, if you read Russian literature of the times, especially Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy, you can measure the contrast between the existential suffering of ordinary times, the entrenched injustice, and the vulgarity of this unsurpassed hedonism before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

My visit was soon after the post-Gorbachev era; the times were heady, confused, liberating, with the economy having crashed. Soviet Russia had broken up. Glasnost and Perestroika was still in the air. Thousands of youngsters were crowding public places, drinking beer under the statues of Pushkin, and other greats, and next to the opera house where they would still play exquisite ballet; the young would talk incessantly, falling in love, celebrating a different kind of high. People could speak and loudly so, without the fear of being picked up, or spied upon.

Suddenly, I saw four communists, all elderly women in humble clothes, chanting slogans with a red flag at the Red Square – my heart skipped a beat. They were collecting donations in a tin box. I gave my bit – in American currency. They said, in a chorus, Red Salute! I repeated, surely, Red Salute Comrades!

At the Red Square, among the other revolutionaries, both Leon Trotsky and Stalin were missing. Bang opposite, a flashy mall loomed – it’s a new capitalism in Russia between the crony, the corrupt and the oligarch, the dead dictators and the latest, body-builder incarnation of the Tsar, a former KGB agent, ex-confidante of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. Now, a superstar. A new Stalin.

In her incredible collection of memories, footnotes, diaries, text, silences and anecdotes in the book, Second-Hand Time, writes Noble Prize-winning journalist, Svetlana Alexievich: “Twenty years have gone by… ‘Don’t try to scare us with your socialism’, children tell their parents… From a conversation with a university professor: ‘At the end of the nineties, my students would laugh when I told them stories about the Soviet Union. They were positive that a new future awaited them. Now, it’s a different story… Today’s students have truly seen and felt capitalism: the inequality, the poverty, the shameless wealth. They’ve witnessed the lives of their parents, who never got anything out of the plundering of our country. And they’re oriented towards radicalism. They dream of their own revolution, they wear red T-shirts with pictures of Lenin and Che Guevara.’”

She writes: “There’s a new demand for everything Soviet. For the cult of Stalin… A new cult of Stalin in a country where he murdered at least as many people as Hitler…Old-fashioned ideas are back in style: the great empire, the iron hand, the ‘special Russian path’…. The Russian president is just as powerful as the general secretary used to be, which is to say, he has absolute power. Instead of Marxism-Leninism, there’s Russian Orthodoxy…” (That she was born in Ukraine, tells a story.)

So does no one read anymore the stories of the Siberian death/labour camps under Stalin, as in that epical short novel called One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn? Is it so, really? Does no one read such literature anymore? Certainly, The Gulag Archepelago, they must have read that?

Or, do they read Dostoevysky, Anton Chekov, Anna Akhmatova? Nadhezda and Osip Mandelstam, the great poet  – how did he die in the labour camp at Vladivostok in Siberia, and what was his crime? Why was Akhmatova hounded?

Writes Eric Hobsbawm in the Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century – 1914-1991: “In turning himself into something like a secular Tsar, defender of the secular Orthodox faith, the body of whose founder transformed into a secular saint awaited the pilgrims outside the Kremlin, Stalin showed a sound sense of public relations. For a collection of peasant animal- herding peoples mentally living in the Western equivalent of the eleventh century, this was almost certainly the most effective way of establishing the legitimacy of the new regime, just as the simple unqualified, dogmatic catechisms to which he reduced Marxism-Leninism, were ideal for introducing ideas to the first generation of literates… Nor can his terror simply be seen as the assertion of a tyrant’s unlimited personal power. There is no doubt that he enjoyed that power, the fear that he inspired, the ability to give life or death, just as there is no doubt that he was quite indifferent to the material rewards that someone in his position could command…”

Writes Ivan Krastev, from an East European perspective (The Guardian, September 4, 2022), “The German poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger labelled him ‘the hero of retreat’. But does retreat produce heroes? For most westerners, what is difficult to grasp is that the man who destroyed Soviet communism was one of the few genuine Marxists in the Soviet leadership.” “I still see Lenin as our god,” Gorbachev confesses in Vitaly Mansky’s film (Gorbachev. Heaven)

Krastev writes: “…He freed us from the psychological abyss that tomorrow is nothing more than the day after today… He did not free us, but he gave us a chance to taste freedom… There are groaning shelves of volumes written by political scientists, dissecting ‘what constitutes open and closed societies. Far less is written about the striking difference between coming of age in a society that is opening its shutters and coming of age in a society, even a relatively open society, in which the air smells of fear and stagnation. This first Gorbachev was not the hero of retreat, he was the angel of opening…”

Imprisoned several times, playright Vaclav Havel, who led the second Prague spring and became the first elected president of the Czech Republic, said, “Sometimes when I sleep I feel that I will wake up in a prison cell… Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul… It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.”

Ukraine Crisis: A Diplomatic Opportunity for India

By Dr. Krishnendra Meena

India’s External Affairs Minister, Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, has had to deal with a very difficult foreign policy challenge for India that arose from the Russian invasion into Ukraine. However, his deft handling of the situation has proved his mettle. The diplomatic challenge needed juggling several interests and conflicts at the same time. So far, Indian Foreign Ministry has handled the issue with skill without coming under any pressure from the parties pulling in different directions, including USA, Russia and China as well as other smaller groups.

The 2+2 dialogue between India and the United States of America combined with the video call between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Joe Biden is significant for various reasons. It provided an opportunity for India and the US to better locate concerns of the other party vis-à-vis the Russian invasion.

For India it is important to pacify the world community about its reluctance to vote on numerous occasions on the Russian aggression, at the United Nations. Though India professes a neutral stand, it is part of a group with North Korea, Iran and China. This causes apprehensions among the US and its NATO allies as India has acquired respectability and status due to its economic strength and recently due to its efforts to mitigate the effects of COVID 19 pandemic. However, during the current situation, India has also maintained that any form of armed aggression upon another sovereign nation is unacceptable.

The 2+2 dialogue may have been an apt platform to clarify to the US, the reasons behind India’s neutral stand on Russia’s aggression. On the other hand, it is common knowledge that India’s defence sector and its numerous weapons systems are structurally dependent upon Russia’s arms and weapons industry. It is estimated that Russian arms equipment and weapons systems account for close to 70% of India’s defence supplies.

Against this background, it is perhaps easy to comprehend India’s neutrality and its absenteeism on crucial votes against Russia in the UN, which has wrongly been perceived as pro-Russia. The pressure, nevertheless, on India from the US and in general the West, has been unrelenting since the invasion began. India, though, has stuck to its position, bearing in mind the consequences thereof and the options it may possess. During this difficult period, however, the Indian establishment’s deft diplomacy and strategic autonomy has prominently been on display.

At the centre of this tumultuous and testing period for Indian diplomatic establishment, Dr Jaishankar has shown exemplary geopolitical acumen. Under his leadership the MEA anticipated Western response to India’s position and has crafted befitting and optimum rejoinders. Since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, statements from the MEA have been measured and calibrated to pacify the international community.

ALSO READ: Blood On Your Face, Putin!

India has maintained that any act of violent aggression against a sovereign state is deplorable and have urged the warring parties to resolve the crisis diplomatically. Such astute stance and demeanour have in turn led the international community to recognize that it is national interest that has driven India’s voting behaviour at the UN, the precise message that India wanted to convey.

In the contemporary world, any event of such magnitude like the Russian invasion of Ukraine has a ripple effect on the entire world. India’s recent proclivity toward the United States and the new alliances in the Indian Ocean and the Indo-Pacific region has also felt the tremors.

The formulation of the term Indo-Pacific and the subsequent implementation of a counter China strategy through the Quadrilateral Dialogue (QUAD) have been gradually gaining strength in the recent years. Ukraine Crisis and Indian response brought the QUAD and its members to reassess the situation, which is visible in the visits of Heads of states to New Delhi. The Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited New Delhi for an Annual Summit meeting under the ‘Special Strategic and Global Partnership’, but a large part of meeting was devoted to the Ukraine crisis. India accommodated Japanese concerns on the crisis in the statement issued after the deliberations.

Immediately after the Indo-Japan Summit, the Australian PM Scott Morrison also held a virtual summit with Prime Minister Modi. The Aussie PM, while condemning the Russian actions in Ukraine, elicited an understanding of the Indian stance. Further, he elaborated that “he and Modi were of the opinion that the conflict could not be a reason for diverting attention from issues of the Indo-Pacific region”. This indicated that the relationship is not affected. A subtext hidden in the outcome and statements of both summit meetings is a clear indication that geographical distance from an international event still matters. The location of the crisis at the western end of the Eurasian landmass and away from the Indo-Pacific space remains instrumental in geopolitical thinking of Japan and Australia.

The aforementioned summits and their timing point to India’s rising significance in the international system and particularly in the Indo-Pacific. It was only befitting that the Chinese Foreign Minister, Mr. Wang Yi visited New Delhi soon after. This holds tremendous weight in the wake of the ongoing crisis in Eastern Ladakh since the summer of 2020.

It was understood that the Chinese FM was here to invite and persuade the Indian PM to join the BRICS summit in China to be held later in the year. Under the circumstances, Indian diplomacy under the leadership of Dr. Jaishankar has been steadfast and clear in conveying to the Chinese that normalization of relations between the two Asian giants is possible only after complete disengagement at the LAC in Ladakh. Hopefully, before the BRICS Summit, negotiations on the issue will bear results.

Therefore it can be said that the Ukraine Crisis has been turned into a diplomatic opportunity by the Indian diplomatic establishment. The 2+2 summit, Modi-Biden virtual Summit, Indo-Japan Summit, Modi-Morrison virtual summit and finally the visit by the Chinese FM are a testimony to clarity in India’s diplomacy since the crisis began. Moreover, the British Prime Minister Mr. Boris Johnson and the President of the European Union, Ms. Ursula von der Leyen have also visited India in the last week.

Whether it is India’s stand on the crisis or its India’s economic strength or the West’s need, India has become the go-to-destination in the face of deep Russia-China partnership. India has been able to drive home the point that India’s national interests take precedence over international linkages and alliances under the able leadership of Dr. S. Jaishankar, the Minister of External Affairs. This perhaps is the proverbial feather in the cap for Modi government as the top diplomat was elevated to the post of External Affairs Minister in May 2019.