India calls for independent probe into Bucha killings; says ‘deeply disturbing’
New Delhi
This is the strongest stance on the Russia-Ukraine war from India especially
from the perspective of Moscow.
India’s Permanent Representative to the UN T S Tirumurti told a meeting on Ukraine at the UN Security Council that “recent reports of civilian killings in Bucha are deeply disturbing".
"...We unequivocally condemn these killings and support the call for an independent investigation," he after the UNSC meet was addressed for the first time by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“The situation in Ukraine has not shown any significant improvement since the Council last discussed the issue. The security situation has only deteriorated, as well as its humanitarian consequences,” he said.
He also emphasised India's long-standing position on the issue to call for an immediate cessation of
violence.
"We have emphasised right from the beginning of the conflict the need to pursue the path of diplomacy and
dialogue. When innocent human lives are at stake, diplomacy must prevail as the only
viable option," he said.
It is worth mentioning that on March 30, Tirumurti had said, "India remains deeply concerned at the ongoing
situation, which continues to deteriorate since the beginning of the hostilities. We reiterate our call for
unimpeded humanitarian access to areas of armed conflict in Ukraine".
Earlier Ukrainian president Zelensky told the UNSC that the “most terrible war crimes”
since World War II are being committed in Ukraine.
“Yesterday I returned from our city of Bucha, recently liberated from Russian troops not far from Kyiv. There is not a single crime that they would not commit. The Russian military searched for and purposefully killed anyone who served our country.
They shot and killed women outside their houses when they just tried to call someone who is alive, they killed entire families, adults and children.
They tried to burn the bodies".
EU now proposes a ban on Russian coal after Bucha massacre.
ends
Russia-Ukraine Conflict: India gives precedence to national interest than 'Democracy'
During the last one month and more, Indian foreign minister Dr S Jaishankar and foreign secretary Harsh V Shringla have umpteen times referred to this phrase - 'national interest'.
In fact, the basis of this 'national interest' is based on history. But even in contemporary settings, Indian foreign policy mandarins say India has tracked the right road map.
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| Russian FM Lavrov and Jaishankar |
For India, keeping effective communication with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was important to ensure speedy evacuation of stranded Indians. "We had 20,000 of them and now in retrospect, many lives have been saved, there is not much talk about these," says an official.
(UCAN Report)
Being a democratic nation and following democratic principles in word and spirit at every step are two different things, especially amid 21st-century global threats and geopolitics.
So far "the world’s largest democracy," as India is fond of calling itself, has avoided condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On the contrary, India is seen standing alongside the autocratic and communist regimes of Russia and China.
There are many in the current Indian establishment who would prefer a stronger RIC (Russia, India and China) axis.
China too is taking RIC seriously as evident from Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s recent visit to India to ensure Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s participation in a BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and RIC leaders' meeting later this year in China.
In the past, India generally stuck to Western philosophies and would openly lambaste any autocracy like the one in Myanmar.
But the Narendra Modi government generally loves to play the hardline nationalist card and is willing to do the tightrope walk.
Some might say India lies “frozen on the fence” but its defense-related compulsions are genuine. Therefore, she chose to stick with Russia, albeit in a veiled manner, despite the global players who landed in New Delhi to try and convince the Modi government to condemn Putin’s war.
Russia is the world’s second-largest arms exporter after the US, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
And India tops the arms buyer charts, accounting for 11 percent of global arms imports in 2017-21, according to SIPRI.
India insists it faces a two-front threat from Pakistan and China, so the S-400 missile defense system coming from Russia is critical to its national security.
“We are friends … We will be ready to supply to India any goods which India wants to buy. And I have no doubt that a way will be found to bypass the artificial impediments which illegal unilateral sanctions by the West create,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov after bilateral talks with his Indian counterpart S. Jaishankar in Delhi recently.
Lavrov was also given an audience with Modi and reportedly passed on a special and personal message from President Vladimir Putin.
“Modi had not met the string of other foreign ministers to arrive in Delhi in recent days, including the UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss, and the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, so Lavrov looks to have been singled out for attention by the Indian leader,” said The Guardian newspaper.
Even the national security advisers from US, Germany and the Netherlands could not meet Modi.
New Delhi insists on its "national interest" and is unwilling to break years-old ties with Russia on matters of arms sales, gas and a future realignment of the global security architecture.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told a TV channel: “I would put my country's national interests first and I would put my energy security first ... Why should I not buy it [gas]? I need it for my people.”
New Delhi cannot forget that Moscow has used its veto power to block unpalatable resolutions against India numerous times. In 1957, Russia even blocked a proposal to deploy UN forces in Kashmir.
Moscow backed India in 1961 when the US, UK, France and Turkey moved a resolution condemning the military action to end Portuguese colonial sovereignty over Goa, Daman and Diu. Russia has backed India on its nuclear policy since the 1970s.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a key founding member of the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who became its first prime minister, as India’s foreign minister in 1978 described the Soviet Union as "the only reliable friend" of India.
The US, though a friend now, threatened India during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and instead fuelled the dictatorial regimes of Pakistan.
Even in 2022, the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Europe are seen doing precious little to help Ukraine other than painting the war as a fight between democracy and autocracy. India is not alone in not taking sides in the ongoing war. The United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and even Pakistan have so far preferred to stay uncommitted.
What could be alarming for India, though, are China’s growing ties with Russia, which faces isolation on the world stage.
But New Delhi is doing careful calculations keeping the past and its own future interest in mind.
In 2020, China pushed for international intervention after the Modi government stunned the world by ending the special status of Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcating the state into two union territories.
But Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s first deputy permanent representative to the UN, delivered a blow to both China and Pakistan by standing with India. “Russia firmly stands for the normalization of relations between India and Pakistan. We hope that differences between them will be settled through bilateral efforts,” he said.
Analysts see the merits in what New Delhi is doing right now. Even opposition Congress lawmaker Shashi Tharoor, a former undersecretary-general of the UN, recorded his appreciation. “This is the spirit in which foreign policy should be run,” he wrote in a blog.
UCAN
"It is not a case of compromising on India's democratic principles. It is a strategic move and if India had blatantly
opposed Russia, it would have gone against its own interest. Americans would never come running if Russia and China
get together against India," says Varanasi-based Tushar Bhadra.
Some analysts agree with him. Vidyarthi Kumar says in 1999, India's Permanent Representative to the UN,
Kamalesh Sharma had said at the UNSC debate: "What NATO has tried to do is to intimidate a government through the threat of attack ......There are several traditional descriptions for this kind of coercion, peace-keeping is not one of them".
The remarks, he says, sound relevant in 2022 as well because while the west lectures others, it did not get into a debate about the unscrupulous manner NATO expansion was encouraged.
At the end of the day even Putin gets some sympathies, it is purely because NATO expansion has been a hard fact of life.
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