Roving Periscope: War-fatigued, Putin wants peace, and shifts Ukraine talks focus on BRICS bloc!

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: As the third biting winter approaches after the Russia-Ukraine war began in 2022, a war-fatigued President Putin may now be looking for an honorable exit from the prolonging zero-sum conflict and shift the focus of potential peace talks involving the West and its allies to the BRICS bloc—Brazil (Russia), India, China (and South Africa).

If this move succeeds, it may propel India’s diplomatic prowess worldwide in the shifting global power politics.

After he met with Putin in July and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in August, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the world’s most popular leader in the largest democracy, may become a key player in superpower-led geopolitics.

The significant development comes more than 900 days after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. On Thursday, President Putin said he was ready for talks with Ukraine, asserting that India, Brazil, and China could act as mediators, according to the media reports.

President Putin, who decorated the visiting PM Modi with Russia’s highest civilian award, the Order of St. Andrew the Apostle the First-Called, at St. Catherine’s Hall, in July, said the preliminary agreement reached between the Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in the first weeks of the war in Istanbul, Turkey (which was, however, never implemented) could serve as the basis for resuming peace talks.

“We respect our friends and partners, who, I believe, sincerely seek to resolve all issues surrounding this conflict, primarily India, China, and Brazil. I constantly keep in touch with our colleagues on this issue,” Putin was quoted as saying by a Russian news agency.

Separately, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Izvestia daily that India could help in establishing a dialogue on Ukraine.

Highlighting the existing “highly constructive, even friendly relations” between Modi and Putin, he said the Indian PM can “lead the line on getting first-hand information from the participants in this conflict,” as he “freely communicates with Putin, with Zelenskyy, and with the Americans.”

“This gives a great opportunity for India to throw its weight in world affairs, to use its influence that would drive the Americans and Ukrainians towards using a greater political will and entering the peaceful settlement track,” Peskov said.

He, however, said there are “no specific plans” for PM Modi to mediate on the issue. “At this time, they can hardly exist, as we do not see any preconditions for talks for now,” the Kremlin spokesman said.

PM Modi on August 23 visited Ukraine where he conveyed to President Zelensky that both Ukraine and Russia should sit together without wasting time to end the ongoing war and that India was ready to play an “active role” to restore peace in the region.

His nearly nine-hour visit to Ukraine, the first by an Indian PM since its independence from the then-Soviet Union in 1991, came six weeks after he held summit talks with President Putin that triggered anguish in some Western capitals.

In his talks with Zelensky in Kyiv, Modi said India was on the side of peace since the beginning of the conflict and he would even like to contribute personally to a peaceful resolution of the crisis.

Addressing Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said Russia was ready for talks, based on an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul in 2022, the terms of which were never made public.

“Are we ready to negotiate with them? We have never refused to do so, not based on some ephemeral demands, but on those documents that were agreed and signed in Istanbul.”

The Kremlin has repeatedly claimed Russia and Ukraine were on the verge of a peace deal in the spring of 2022, shortly after Moscow launched its offensive in Ukraine, indirectly hinting that the West and its allies sabotaged the move and provoked Kyiv to continue the war.

“We managed to reach an agreement, that is the whole point. The signature of the head of the Ukrainian delegation who signed this document testifies to this, which means that the Ukrainian side was generally satisfied with the agreements reached,” Putin said.

“It did not come into force only because they were given a command not to do so, because the elites of the United States, Europe — some European countries — wanted to achieve a strategic defeat of Russia,” the Russian president said.

Putin’s remark comes days after Zelensky said that he was set to travel to the United States later this month to present a “victory plan” to President Joe Biden.

Referring to Kyiv’s three-week-old incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, he said the move is part of the larger plan, which is focused on forcing Russia to end the war. The war would eventually end in dialogue but for that, Kyiv must first secure a strong negotiating position.
“And I want that very much – (that it would be) fair for Ukraine,” Zelensky said on August 28.

As of now, as Ukrainian troops are engaged in Russia’s Kursk region, Moscow is making advances in the eastern part of Ukraine, which it has been occupying since February 2022. Both countries have been launching massive drone attacks on each other, targeting key infrastructures.

Following Ukraine’s Kursk move, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, on August 19, that talks were out of the question. Ukraine controls more than 1,200 square km in the region now.

In the past, Putin said that dialogues with Ukraine would need to start with Zelensky’s acceptance of “realities on the ground.” This would mean Ukraine recognizing Russia’s control over significant portions of four Ukrainian regions, as well as Crimea.