As this year’s fighting season inches to a close in Ukraine, a new round of peace diplomacy is unfolding. As the war drags on into the third year, the incentives for ending it in both Moscow and Kyiv seem larger. Russian President Vladimir Putin the other day welcomed peacemaking diplomacy from Brazil, China, and India. The Ukrainian president too wants the leaders of the Global South to pitch in for peace.
Does the new context provide greater room for Indian peace diplomacy in Ukraine? As it considers a more active peacemaking role, Delhi should be clear about the possibilities and limitations of what it can do. To be sure, India is in favour of peace and has been pressing for dialogue and diplomacy since the very start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But calling for peace is very different from the capability to produce it.
While Delhi must try and make some contributions to peacemaking, it should be clear in its mind that peace in Ukraine, if and when it happens, will be about a new grand European bargain between Washington and Moscow. It was the US along with Russia that constructed the European order in 1945 after World War II and in 1991, at the end of the Cold War. Russia wants a new framework and only the US has the power to facilitate the reorganisation of the European security order. The talks between President Joe Biden and Putin in Geneva in June 2021 broke up by the end of the year and set the stage for the war for Ukraine.
Both Russia and Ukraine know that the keys to peace lie with the US, which will elect a new president in a few weeks. Putin and Zelenskyy have high stakes in the outcome of the election. If Putin is accused once again of meddling in the US elections, Zelenskyy is on a fresh offensive to ensure that Ukraine’s case will continue to get a favourable hearing after the elections. Zelenskyy is travelling to the US this month. He will address the United Nations General Assembly in New York and meet the top leaders of the US political establishment, with new ideas for peace.
Meanwhile, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has underlined this week the need for a new and vigorous peace effort. He also said Russia must be invited to the next peace conference, likely to be held in November and coordinated by Switzerland, and that Zelenskyy agrees with that proposal. Russia was not invited to the first conference in June.
Put simply, there appears to be a new momentum for peace in Ukraine and therefore, it makes sense for India to stay close to the efforts. External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar’s visit to Europe this week, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval’s trip to Moscow, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s travel to New York to attend a global summit and his consultations with the Quad colleagues do precisely that. Any Indian role in Ukraine will benefit from assessing the results of the most comprehensive recent peace effort in Ukraine by the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. During the summer, he met all the major actors in the conflict, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and former US president Donald Trump.
In his report submitted to the EU, Orban emphasised three points. Not everyone in Europe or the world agrees with his assessments. Orban is right to conclude there will be more fighting before peace talks. Both are trying to acquire more territory before winter arrives and makes ground battles difficult. Russia is making slow but definitive advances in eastern Ukraine and Kyiv is sustaining its Kursk offensive in Russia.
Orban argues that three powers have the capacity to influence the war dynamic in Ukraine — the US, China and the European Union. While Russia and Ukraine continue to play for influence over US policy, Orban bets that China is unwilling to be drawn deep into peace diplomacy unless the prospects for peace are high. Orban’s emphasis on the EU role may be overstated. The EU itself is increasingly divided on how to deal with the war in Ukraine. Brussels formally dissociated itself from the peace effort of Orban, who currently holds the rotating chair of the EU presidency. It insists that Orban’s freelancing should not be confused with the EU’s position on the conflict.
That has not stopped Orban, who claims that his peace efforts are ongoing and that there will be significant new moves for ending the war in the coming weeks. Orban’s adviser Balázs Orbán (no relation to the PM) was in Delhi recently briefing the Indian leadership on the Hungarian peace initiative. He also welcomed India’s recent peace moves in Europe. Meanwhile, the EU’s resolve to defend Ukraine against Russia is facing fatigue. Although Europe continues to talk about defending Ukraine with “whatever it takes”, there is a growing “peace party” across Europe. Financial difficulties and competing demands for resources and political resistance to Ukraine policy are nudging Europe towards the idea that talks are necessary; and so are compromises. Even more significant, there are forces on the extreme left and right that call for reconciliation with Russia and are ready to support territorial concessions by Ukraine.
Delhi’s focus should be on coping with the geopolitical consequences, intended and unintended, of the war in Ukraine. Major wars result in a rearrangement of the regional and global orders. Europe is certainly heading towards a restructuring of its geopolitics. Any potential rearrangement of the global order will have a great impact on India’s international relations. The war in Ukraine has put a significant squeeze on India’s economic and security policies. For Delhi, the restoration of peace in Europe and a new compact between Russia and the West is the most preferred outcome, for it makes it easier to accelerate India’s economic growth and pursue the goal of a secure Asia.
The writer is visiting research professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore andcontributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express
