India in touch with Russia, Ukraine to help end conflict: Jaishankar

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said India remains in continuous contact with Russia and Ukraine and is exploring ideas to help end the conflict. In Warsaw, he stressed dialogue, diplomacy and negotiations, while defending India’s Russian oil purchases as separate from resolving the war

Warsaw: India has been in continuous touch with both the Ukrainian and Russian sides and is trying to see if there are ideas and suggestions which can be developed in some way that will contribute to the mitigation or the cessation of the conflict, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Friday.

Jaishankar, who arrived in Warsaw from Kyiv where he held talks with top Ukrainian leadership on Thursday, made the remarks after he met Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Radosaw Sikorski. Addressing a joint press meet alongside Sikorski,

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Jaishankar said that he discussed the complex global challenges, including supply chain resilience and food, fuel and fertiliser security, with his Polish counterpart.

“The Deputy Prime Minister and I also understandably discussed some major global and regional issues, notable among them is the war in Ukraine, now in its fifth year… I myself have just come here from Kyiv,” he said, referring to his visit to Ukraine a day earlier.

Replying to a question, he said India has been in continuous touch with both the Ukrainian and Russian sides. “What we are trying to do is to see if there are ideas and suggestions which can be developed in some way in which they will contribute to the mitigation, ideally, the cessation of the conflict,” he added.

A day earlier, Jaishankar had said in Ukraine that India is ready to extend “any help in any manner” to end the Ukraine-Russia war. He had met President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiha in Kyiv on Thursday.

After talks with Jaishankar, Zelenskyy had said that he was “grateful to India for its commitment to ending this unjust war.” “This certainly must not be a time of war. Peace is needed. This is India’s clear position,” he said and hoped that other major world powers would also take a clear stance that this war must end and that a reliable peace must be achieved.

On Friday, Jaishankar reiterated that India believes that endless war must give way to an end to war. “These are wars without winners. Every additional day means more death, more destruction, more loss to the parties themselves, and more cost to the rest of the world,” he said in Warsaw.

He recalled that this concern was voiced publicly by Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently. “Our efforts must therefore focus on promoting dialogue and diplomacy. We must each do what we can in whichever way we believe could be most effective and support the efforts of others to bring this conflict to an end. This is India’s strong conviction, and we are acting on it,” he added.

On India’s purchases of Russian oil, the minister said the issue is a conflict, and its solution lies in negotiations, not in trade.”This war is not going to end… not because somebody chose to buy or not buy oil or alumina or fertilisers or metals and minerals. It will end when there is diplomacy, when there is dialogue and when there is negotiation. So, I think let’s diagnose the problem right,” he said while replying to another question.