By Shakir Husain
NEW DELHI, Sept 17 (NNN-Bernama) — Russian President Vladimir Putin told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that Ukraine has “abandoned” the negotiation process to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
The ongoing conflict was one of the issues that figured during a bilateral meeting the Indian and Russian leaders had on Friday on the margins of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Uzbekistan’s Samarkand city.
“I know that today’s era is not of war and we have spoken to you many times on the phone that democracy, diplomacy and dialogue are such things that touch the world,” Modi told Putin, according to a translation of his opening remarks released by India’s Ministry of External Affairs.
The Russian president in his statement said he understood Modi’s concern.
“I know your position on the conflict in Ukraine and the concerns that you constantly express,” Putin told the Indian leader.
“We will do our best to make it stop as soon as possible. However, unfortunately, the opposing side, the leadership of Ukraine, announced that it was abandoning the negotiation process and declared that it wants to achieve its goals by military means, ‘on the battlefield,’ as they say,” the Russian president said as per a transcript of his statement on the Kremlin’s website.
The Modi government has maintained that the Russia-Ukraine conflict should be resolved through peaceful means and avoided expressing strong opinions on it in public.
However, Modi’s comments, made in Hindi, during the meeting with Putin appear as India’s direct criticism of the military hostilities that erupted in February this year.
— NNN-BERNAMA