New Delhi: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar today said that India’s position of dialogue and diplomacy as the only way to resolve the Ukraine conflict was “quite honestly not exactly applauded in every part of the world” in 2022-23, but there is much greater acceptance of it today.
Speaking at the Raisina Young Fellows Alumni, the EAM also said that if people feel that India has contributed by “awakening a common sense approach about the conflict” “I think we will have done some good”.
He said that India has always believed “that the conflict in Ukraine is tragic, it will not have a good ending, people are dying for reasons and purposes, which when we look back, you actually ask yourselves why did we let that happen”.
“We’ve always felt it is important to find a negotiated way, and a negotiated way obviously has to be negotiation between the two parties.
“On one side, we have tried to speak with the Russian leadership, and on the other side engage with the Ukrainian leadership, to tell one that it cannot be resolved by war, and to tell the other that look you have to talk, you have to engage the other party. And by lining up everybody else in the world other than the other party (Russia) you are not going to get a solution,” he said, in oblique reference to what the West was trying to do earlier by holding talks only with Ukraine as a means to resolve the war.
The position has changed with US President Donald Trump involving both Ukraine and Russia in the negotiations.
“So we have been in favour of not just negotiation, but actually direct negotiation in a way,” in reference to India’s insistence that both Russia and Ukraine have to sit across the table and talk.
“But in a larger sense we have tried to make take a commonsense position, that this war must end, that it is disastrous not just for the two parties concerned but hugely damaging for the rest of the world.
“And we see today that the positions we took in 2022-23, which quite honestly were not exactly applauded in every part of the world, there is much greater acceptance to it.
“At the end of the day there has to be a global commonsense approach to this conflict, and which is that there has to be negotiation, and ultimately, other than the parties it is for the parties and anybody else who has the ability to influence that negotiation to take a position.
“But eventually, if people feel that India contributed by awakening common sense about a conflict, about a very tragic and a very bloody conflict, I think we will have done some good.”
To a question on Ukrainian children being forcibly taken to Russia, he said that when the main problem – the Ukrainian conflict – is resolved then the other issues will automatically get fixed.
“When there is a conflict of this magnitude, you are not going to fix it by fixing parts of the problem, you are going to fix it by fixing the main problem, and then the parts, the different aspects of it will happen. But I understand the concern that you have expressed,” he told the questioner.
