NEW DELHI: It is already overtime for the policy on the Russia-Ukraine war suggested by PM Modi be adopted by all sides.
On 23 August, for a period of eight hours, Prime Minister Narendra Modi travelled from the capital of an old friend of India, Poland, to Kiev, Ukraine, not by air but by Rail Force One, the Polish government’s special VIP train. His choice of rail over air symbolised his confidence in the future of Ukraine, once fighting ceases and rebuilding of the shattered country restarts. PM Modi is aware that the Ukrainian leadership is still living in the fantasyland of believing that Russia can be expelled from the 2014 pre-Maidan frontiers of Ukraine. Why Joe Biden is Cheerleader-in-Chief for a war which will be known in history as Biden’s Folly is unknown. What PM Modi did on 23 August was to show Ukraine and the rest of the world that the door to peace had been opened by him, and anytime President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wanted, he could walk through that door to meet PM Modi and consent to an immediate armistice. PM Modi is capable of getting his long-time friend Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin to agree to an armistice. Indeed, Putin had remained silent rather than dismissive of a suggestion made publicly and directly by Modi to him in 2022 that the present was not an “era of war”. India has never been neutral in Ukraine, for as PM Modi said, India has been on the side of peace ever since the Ukrainian conflict with Russia began on 24 February 2022. It hardly needs to be mentioned that if Zelenskyy had listened to PM Modi’s advice, Ukraine would have been saved from the loss of much blood and treasure. If not now, then once a new President of the US assumes charge at the White House on 20 January 2025, Biden’s Folly is likely to be halted by a shift in the US attitude towards a war that has distanced the US from the Global South and caused supply disruptions and inflation worldwide. Donald Trump as President or a President Harris who understands that Ukraine is, like Vietnam was during the 1960s, a lost cause, could end the war. The more Kamala Harris clings on to failed policies of Joe Biden (and there have also been numerous good policies of Biden), she is simply handing over the keys to the White House to Donald J. Trump.
What PM Modi has said from the start of the Russia-Ukraine war is that it ought to end, and the sooner the White House accepts that, the less chance there will be of the US getting into another quagmire as was the case in Vietnam. A desperate Zelenskyy is seeking to force NATO to enter the war against Russia, unable to comprehend that such a move would perhaps literally be suicidal for the US. PM Modi had opened the door to peace in 2022, and he has highlighted such a path to peace by his 8-hour visit to Ukraine on 23 August 2024. What a difference a few hours can make.
Mission Peace of PM Modi is potentially comparable to what happened in Dunkirk in 1940. There, what a difference a few hours over a few days made. For a few days every day, the skies clouded and became overcast over Dunkirk during 26 May-4 June 1940. As a consequence, Luftwaffe fighters and bombers were hindered in efforts to wipe out the remnants of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and French soldiers. Nearly 900 private boats, ranging in size from yachts to small fishing craft ventured across the English Channel, helping Royal Navy warships ferry around 350,000 BEF and French forces, where they formed the core of the army that was mobilised to combat a Nazi invasion of Britain which never came. Instead, Hitler invaded Russia at 3 am on 22 June 1941, sealing his doom and by 1945 condemning most of the Wehrmacht to death, injury or captivity in the USSR at the hands of Soviet forces replenished by US weapon stockpiles.
Someday, India despite its commitment to ahimsa may have to fight back against efforts at seizing territory by an aggressive superpower which shall go unnamed. Were the world’s most populous democracy to be replenished by US weapons stockpiles in the way an authoritarian USSR was during 1941-45, a conflict begun by the aggressive superpower would end with the world’s most seasoned armed forces entering deep into neighbouring territories annexed by the superpower during the 1940s and the 1950s. Someday, Rooseveltian wisdom may prevail in the White House. Had another US President and not Franklin Delano Roosevelt been in the White House in 1941, the policy of helping the USSR defeat Hitler may never have been adopted, to the glee of the Nazis. Or the glee of the CCP leadership as the war in Ukraine grinds on Vietnam-style. India and the US need to be partners if the Indo-Pacific is to be kept free, open and inclusive, something elements in the Biden White House have difficulty in accepting.
It is time for the sage policy on the raging Russia-Ukraine war that was suggested by PM Modi in 2022 itself be adopted by all sides to the conflict. 2025 may be the year when the Door to Peace will be walked through by Volodymyr Zelenskyy as he meets his well-wisher, Narendra Damodardas Modi to bring peace to his devastated yet wonderful country.