War has tested Indian diplomacy’s mettle

K. P. Nayar

Strategic Analyst

THE second anniversary of the war in Ukraine was the rarest of rare occasions when India’s mainstream media was vindicated. It can take pride — not the media’s due these days — that almost all its predictions in the first year of the war have come true. This is in complete contrast to the wishful thinking and anti-Russian prejudices of most of the Western media, which tainted their reporting in the same period and continues to do so.

India should be guided by official Russian statistics, which show that the nation’s economy grew by 3.6 per cent last year.

The credit for enlightening Indian readers on the accurate state of the war, the future prospects and New Delhi’s balance sheet as the conflict enters its third year goes to India’s talented Kremlinologists. They remained faithful to their deep understanding of the Soviet Union of yore, most of them having continued their specialisation in post-Communist Russia. Many of them have served as Indian diplomats in Ukraine before and after Kyiv’s independence and in Eastern Europe. Central and Eastern Europe are where the biggest political churning since the fall of the Berlin Wall is taking place over support for Ukraine. This region has become more critical to this war now than in its first year of shock from what the Kremlin calls its ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine.

D Bala Venkatesh Varma, MK Bhadrakumar, Pankaj Saran, Arvind Gupta and PS Raghavan are some of those who should be thanked for preventing Indians who think independently from being brainwashed about the two-year war. Without their insights during public discourse, Indians would have been misguided in history’s current crossroads by an avalanche of Western media lies, distortions and exaggerations about Russia, its objectives in the conflict and the truthful and historical reasons that led to the war against Ukraine. These Kremlinologists have uplifted the Indian media at a time when its credibility is low, and newspapers are spending less on foreign bureaux and staff travel to global hotspots. Some of these Kremlinologists continue to play their part in shaping the Narendra Modi government’s Russia-Ukraine policies by virtue of their role in authority or in organisations whose inputs are valued by the political leadership. Above all else is the sage advice given to these Kremlinologists by Ronen Sen, who dedicated his entire professional life to studying the Soviet Union, even after he was plucked out of Moscow by successive Prime Ministers to serve as the Ambassador to the US and Germany and the High Commissioner to the UK. Sen was the second-longest serving Indian (six years) Ambassador in Moscow in a single continuous term. He almost never writes in the media or appears on television. To this day, his advice is privately sought by anyone who does serious work on India’s Russia policy.

On April 5 and 6, 2022, the Lok Sabha considered the ‘situation’ in Ukraine under its Rule 193, which allows ‘discussion on matters of urgent public importance’. A total of 28 members, both from the Treasury benches — including four ministers — and the Opposition, took part in the discussion. Not one of them supported Ukraine the way legislators in the West do when they discuss this war. They all lamented the shedding of blood and the loss of innocent lives. There was abundant praise for India’s historical relations with Russia. The only concern members expressed was that a deepening Russia-China relationship may present a strategic challenge for New Delhi in future. In addition to the Congress and the BJP, members from the DMK, BJD, Shiv Sena, TMC, YSR Congress and BSP spoke.

What emerged was a consensus on the situation in Ukraine — a rare feat in India’s polarised polity. No member criticised the Modi government’s Russia-Ukraine policy in ‘national interest’. So much so that PM Modi said at the end of the discussion that such bipartisanship augurs well for India on the world stage.

Four days after the Lok Sabha discussion, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh left for Washington for an India-US 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue with their American counterparts. The dialogue was preceded by a virtual meeting between PM Modi and US President Joe Biden. India was then under intense pressure to join the US-led illegal sanctions against Russia, stop abstaining from voting on Russia-Ukraine resolutions in the UN Security Council and at least condemn Russia, which it has not done to date. Jaishankar gave his interlocutors in Washington a summary of the Lok Sabha discussions. He expressed the government’s inability to go against the people’s wishes, as expressed in Parliament. In the US, the Houses of Congress have a status that is equal to that of the executive branch — the White House — and decisions made on Capitol Hill are inviolate. Jaishankar’s arguments made an impression in Washington. That was when the US began easing pressure on India to go along with the West in its campaigns to punish Russian President Vladimir Putin. Two years after the Ukraine war broke out, it is worth remembering that this was a turning point in Indian diplomacy on this issue.

Almost everything that India’s Kremlinologists said throughout 2022 about this war has come true. They said sanctions will not cripple Moscow’s ability to do what it wants. Today, Western sanctions are in such tatters that Europe is buying refined products from India using Russian crude oil that is supposedly under European Union sanctions. Of course, Muscovites have to endure the hardship of a life without Coca-Cola. Indian experts recalled the Red Army’s valiant fight against superior Nazi forces in World War II and argued that Russia could not lose this war despite Western money, weapons and army training for Ukrainians. The reason is that Ukraine, as a pawn in the Western military alliance, poses an existential threat to Russia, and Putin will do anything to eliminate this threat. India should be guided now by official Russian statistics, released this month, which show that the nation’s economy grew by 3.6 per cent last year. That is a higher growth rate than of the US and Europe. Significantly, these statistics have been endorsed even by instinctively anti-Russian institutions in the US, such as the RAND Corporation and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

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