Volodymyr Zelenskyy office dials Ajit Doval over UNGA vote
New Delhi, February 22
India has come under tremendous pressure from the West on a UN General Assembly resolution with National Security Adviser Ajit Doval receiving a call from his Ukrainian counterpart Andriy Yermak to side with the text which has incidentally been drafted by Kyiv.
Besides the US, which has been sending a stream of top officials to convince New Delhi, France and Germany let it be known that they too have urged India to fall in with the West. The UN General Assembly started discussions on Wednesday and is scheduled to vote later on a resolution that calls for lasting peace in Ukraine. The resolution calls for “a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in line with the principles of the Charter of the UN”.
Yermak’s office said he had spoken to Doval to seek India’s support and had described the current situation at the front, in particular about the “extremely difficult defence” of the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region. “We know that Russia is preparing certain offensive actions, and we are preparing to respond. The Russian army is very unmotivated, while Ukrainian warriors are showing extraordinary bravery and resilience. We will not stop until we liberate all our territories. We only need weapons,” said Yermak, head of the Ukrainian President’s Office.
India has mostly abstained on resolutions related to the Russia-Ukraine war in the UN, including in the Security Council, General Assembly and the Human Rights Council. “Cooperation with India is very important to us. We believe that you will support our resolution, as it contains very correct wording on the inviolability of borders and territorial integrity. Our goals are transparent and clear: we do not claim a single centimetre of Russian territory, we just want to get ours back,” said Yermak.
“We are absolutely convinced that the war can and should be ended this year, so that the anniversary of the beginning of the full-scale invasion will be the first and last in our history,” he added in the statement.
