Describing India as a global power, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha today said his country welcomes Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to end the ongoing conflict between Ukrain and Russia. Ukraine stands ready for diplomacy, Sybiha said in a social media post as he met External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, who arrived Kyiv to hold bilateral consultations with his Ukrainian counterpart amid escalating hostilities between Moscow and Kyiv.
Jaishankar’s visit to Kyiv comes amid concerns in New Delhi over the killing of an Indian in the Ukrainian capital this week following a Russian strike. In his social media post, Sybiha welcomed Jaishankar to Kyiv terming it the first-ever dedicated bilateral visit of an Indian External Affairs Minister to Ukraine. He said that the two sides discussed the need to restore freedom of navigation in the Black Sea and global food security. India has been concerned over a series of attacks on merchant ships in the Black Sea in the last few weeks.
Sybiha said the two sides also discussed bilateral cooperation, from infrastructure and the pharmaceutical sector to technological innovation and digitalisation. He said both countries are ready to realise their full potential. At a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Bishkek on the margins of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit earlier this week, Prime Minister Modi called for ending the conflict through diplomacy and dialogue.
In August 2024, Prime Minister Modi visited the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv and conveyed to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that both Ukraine and Russia should sit together without wasting time to end the war. India has been consistently calling for ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict through dialogue and diplomacy.
