The US State Department is Calling on India to End the Conflict in Ukraine

On January 6, 2023, United States Department Spokesman Ned Price stated that India and other countries that have solid diplomatic relationships with Russia and Ukraine could play a proactive role in ending the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. 

“We took note of the Kremlin statement that the Kremlin is willing to engage in dialogue but only if the new territorial reality is recognized. That is a clear sign as any that Moscow has no genuine appetite to engage in dialogue and diplomacy that will lead to a just and durable peace. We ultimately hope to alter that calculus. We seek to alter that calculus by continuing to provide Ukraine with the security assistance it needs,” the spokesman said during a news conference.

“We are confident that countries like India at that moment may have a particular role to play and we welcome that,” he proclaimed.

Per Price, the US has been in “regular close contact with India regarding what we can do to hold Russia accountable and to impose additional costs on Russia” for its military incursion in Ukraine.

Price said that the US and India “may not always share precisely the same policy approaches, but we both share a commitment to upholding a rules-based international order that respects territorial integrity and sovereignty that is at the heart of our global strategic partnership with India.” He added, “We agree very much with India the restoration of an enduring peace in Ukraine is essential.”

Price concluded that “countries like India, countries that have a relationship with Russia and with Ukraine, may be in a position to bring about dialogue and diplomacy that could one day put an end” to the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.

India and Russia have strong relations that date back to the Soviet era. In the present, India is the largest buyer of Russian weapons. From 2018 to 2021, it spent $12.4 billion on weapons, with Russian imports making up  $5.51 billion of those imports. The US Deep State is doing everything possible to drive wedges between Russia and India, but the latter simply won’t budge. 

India is a well-established civilizational state and a nuclear power with an independent foreign policy, so it’s not going to always align with the universalist foreign policy mission that DC is promoting. DC policymakers are going to have to accept this reality in the multipolar world order that is unfolding before our very eyes. 

 

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