India stresses avoiding military escalation on Russia-Ukraine border, stops short of criticising Putin

India has been avoiding siding with the US and other western nations on the issue of Russia’s military build-up around Ukraine

India on Tuesday stressed on avoiding military escalation along Ukraine’s border with Russia, but stopped short of calling out President Vladimir Putin, who signed decrees in Moscow to dispatch troops to Donetsk and Luhansk after declaring the two enclaves in the East European nation as independent republics.

“We cannot afford to have a military escalation,” T S Tirumurti, India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, said at an emergency meeting of the Security Council.

India has been avoiding siding with the United States and other western nations on the issue of Russia’s military build-up around Ukraine.

“The escalation of tension along the border of Ukraine with the Russian Federation is a matter of deep concern. These developments have the potential to undermine peace and security of the region,” New Delhi’s envoy to the UN said. He, however, avoided directly criticising Putin for ordering deployment of Russian troops to the two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine.

Also Read — Over 20,000 Indians live in Ukraine, their well-being is of priority to us: India at UNSC meet

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US envoy to the UN, told the Security Council during that emergency meeting that Russia’s move to recognise Donetsk and Luhansk as independent republics was part of its attempt to create a pretext for a further invasion of Ukraine.

She also said that Russia had completely violated the Minsk Agreements, which had been signed in 2014 and 2015 to stop fighting and find a political settlement of the crisis over Ukraine.

India did call for adherence to the Minsk Agreements just as it had done during the earlier meetings of the UN Security Council on the situation in Ukraine on January 31 and February 18.

The US was joined by France, Germany and the United Kingdom in condemning Russia’s latest move against Ukraine. They also moved to impose new sanctions on Russia.

“We need to give space to the recent initiatives undertaken by parties which seek to diffuse tensions. In this context, we welcome the intense efforts underway, including through the Trilateral Contact Group and under the Normandy Format,” Tirumurti told the UN Security Council. “We need Parties to exert greater efforts to bridge divergent interests.”

India has been finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the delicate balance between its ties with Russia and the US after the tension escalated over Ukraine.

Though India has been speaking out against China’s aggression along their disputed boundary, it refrained from siding with the US and abstained from voting against Russia on the issue of Ukraine at the UNSC on January 31. Even as the US has been trying to draw a parallel between China's belligerence against India and other nations in the Indo-Pacific region and Russia's military build-up around Ukraine, New Delhi last week rejected the argument, saying the situations in the two regions have not been “analogous”.

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