Weeks after visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian President Narendra Modi will travel to Ukraine on Friday for talks with President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Modi’s visit to Ukraine will be his first since the Russian invasion, the foreign minister announced in New Delhi on Monday. His visit to Putin in July was also the first time they met since the invasion.
Zelensky’s office confirmed the visit, which will come after a two-day visit by Modi to Poland. It said Modi and Zelensky would hold talks on bilateral and multilateral cooperation and sign a number of agreements, without providing details.
India, which has taken a neutral stance in the war, has not joined the West in imposing sanctions on Russia and has repeatedly called for dialogue to resolve the conflict.
It maintains good relations with both the West and Moscow and has increased imports of cheap Russian oil since the beginning of the war.
India is also heavily dependent on Russia for military equipment, even as it tries to reduce that dependency.
Zelensky criticized Modi’s visit to Moscow, which came shortly after Putin’s re-election as president and was seen in Russia as a sign of the value Modi attached to relations between the two countries.
Footage of the meeting, in which Modi and Putin embraced, went viral on social media at the time.
