India ready to help find peace, Modi tells Ukraine’s Zelensky

At one point he put his arm around the Ukrainian president’s shoulders – an image posted on Mr Modi’s social media account with the message that his heart went out to the families of children who had died.

Later on came his personal offer to help initiate peace talks, with Mr Modi stressing only dialogue and diplomacy would end the fighting.

India had never been neutral in the war, he insisted. “Right from the first day our side was peace,” Mr Modi argued, pointing out that he came from the land of Mahatma Gandhi, whose statue in Kyiv he visited earlier.

But behind the language, the fact remains that India has never condemned Russia’s full scale invasion and, in effect, has been helping to power Moscow’s war economy with Delhi overtaking Beijing last month as the biggest importer of Russian oil – at a time it has been hit by Western sanctions.

Mr Modi and President Zelensky discussed Ukraine’s ongoing incursion into Russian territory, although the content of that specific conversation is not known.

India did take part in a Ukraine-led peace summit in Switzerland in June, to which Russia was not invited, and Mr Zelensky urged Mr Modi to sign up to a joint communique that highlighted the territorial integrity of Ukraine and all other states.

However, he thanked his visitor for “supporting our sovereignty and territorial integrity”, a sentiment that Mr Modi repeated shortly afterwards – as both men hailed it an historic day.

They went on to release a joint statement, external, pledging to build on the two countries relations in defence and trade.