Despite India's rebuttal, Russia endorses Trump claims of brokering ceasefire with Pakistan

Meanwhile, Shehbaz Sharif has urged President Putin to assist in resolving the conflict with India, Pakistan PM's special aide Syed Tariq Fatemi said.

New Delhi: Notwithstanding repeated rebuttals from New Delhi, Moscow has now almost endorsed United States President Donald Trump’s claim about playing a role in halting the four-day-long cross-border flare-up between India and Pakistan last month.

Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin touched upon the cross-border military offensive and counter-offensive between India and Pakistan during a phone call on Wednesday. While they primarily discussed Russia’s ‘special military operations’ in Ukraine and the second round of direct talks between the two sides in Istanbul, the two leaders also touched upon the situation in West Asia as well as “the armed conflict between India and Pakistan”, according to Putin’s aide Yury Ushakov.

As the senior aide to Putin lent credence to the US president’s claims about brokering a ceasefire between India and Pakistan, the opposition Congress took on the government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party in New Delhi, demanding a clarification from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. New Delhi, over the past few weeks, repeatedly dismissed the US claim and insisted that India had accepted Pakistan’s request and bilaterally reached an understanding on May 10 to halt the four-day-long cross-border military offensive.

“Additionally, the Middle East was discussed, as well as the armed conflict between India and Pakistan, which has been halted with the personal involvement of President Trump,” Ushakov said, while briefing journalists at the Kremlin in Moscow, about the phone call between Trump and Putin.

“President Putin's aide Yury Ushakov has just revealed that the 4-day India-Pakistan conflict came up in the 75-minute telephonic conversation of President Putin and President Trump on June 4,” Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh posted on X. “Mr Ushakov has let it be known that it was the personal involvement of President Trump that halted the armed hostilities between India and Pakistan. Will the PM @narendramodi clarify?" Ramesh asked on the social media platform.

The US president repeatedly claimed credit for the ‘ceasefire’, which, according to him, had been brokered by his administration in order to prevent the death of millions of people in a “bad nuclear war” between India and Pakistan. New Delhi, however, dismissed the US president’s claim and stressed that the proposal for halting the cross-border offensives had come from Islamabad on May 10 after Pakistan’s airbases and other military installations had suffered severe damage due to missile and drone strikes by India.

Trump’s claims about brokering the ceasefire, as well as his offer to help New Delhi and Islamabad resolve the dispute over Kashmir, are contrary to India’s stand that its 1972 Simla Agreement with Pakistan and the 1999 Lahore Declaration had left no scope for any third party to play any role in resolving the issues between the two South Asian neighbours.

Trump’s comments, however, indicated that it was the fear of a nuclear conflict in South Asia that prompted the US to step up its efforts to make India and Pakistan stop the cross-border military actions. Modi, however, said that no “nuclear blackmail” would henceforth thwart India’s strong response against cross-border terrorism being promoted by Pakistan.