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Modi is going to do whatever it takes to keep super cheap under-market-rate Russian oil and minerals flowing to his rapidly growing economy. He's just as anti-democracy as Putin and couldn't give a fuck what happens to Ukraine otherwise.

There was a post about this in [email protected] the other day.

https://lemmy.world/comment/11950407

“We were not neutral from day one, we have taken a side, and we stand firmly for peace,” Modi said. Modi is paying the first visit to Ukraine by an Indian prime minister. As he pushed for a way forward on ending the Ukraine war, Modi urged Zelensky to sit down for talks with Russia and offered to act as a “friend” to help bring peace. “No problem can be resolved on a battlefield,” Modi said in Poland on Wednesday before heading to Ukraine.

At best, Modi is equivocating on taking a side while calling for "peace". At worst, he's using "peace" as a cudgel to pressure Ukraine into ceding the territory to Russia.

Incidentally I was banned for my comments in that post. All I said was basically that Ukraine has a right to defend itself, and one of their communist mods @[email protected] called that "pro war", removed my posts and banned me (modlog).

Modi is in the weird place of being an elected authoritarian, and so he uses that one foot in both worlds-ness to try and be the diplomatic pivot between those spheres.

The problem, is that Modi is a terrible diplomat, and people come to India not because of his talents, but because India is a sleeping economic giant that could pop off at any instant depending on how their government and society shakes out. Keep in mind that India is still a very much under construction country. India being a collection of colonies and princedoms us still in living memory, and even if it wasn't, America almost a quarter of a millenia old and even then it is an under construction state and society.

So, my understanding of India's interests here is that:

• India doesn't really have much of a dog in the race as regards the outcome of the conflict. It doesn't directly impact them a great deal who comes out better-off, and they don't care that much about Russia invading countries in Europe short of this turning nuclear or something.

• The conflict itself going on poses some serious problems for India. India relies on Russia for a number of critical things, like military hardware. However, if Russia is sufficiently isolated to the point of depending on China, then that gives China a lot of leverage over Russia. That in turn creates grave problems for India. India cannot have China getting control over things like their weapons supply.

• India has not done a lot in terms of pressuring or criticizing Russia regarding the invasion compared to, say, the US. But it's also important to note that India is not the US, had that pre-existing relationship and dicier balance of power to worry about. I read an article the other day from some Indian guy saying that what India really does not want to happen is being in an Asia where you have China, several neighboring countries like Pakistan that China has done a lot to cultivate a relationship with, and then an isolated Russia falling under China's influence. If that happens, then there are ways to try and counterbalance that, by building more links with the West, but my expectation is that this is not India's first choice, given that they could have just gone out and done so regardless of the Russia situation in the part and have not.

• I noted earlier that a while back that Russia blew up a turbine engine factory in Mykolaiv when Ukraine forced them to retreat. They didn't do so immediately, only when forced to retreat, so they probably wanted it intact. Many of Russia's warships depend on turbines made here, and Russia is short on replacements, and is trying to build and scale up domestic turbine engine production to try to fill the hole. However, what I thought was interesting was that when Russia blew it up, it didn't really impact the Ukrainian military, which at the moment has no ships to use them in. It didn't impact the Russian military, because Ukraine wasn't going to be sending them any turbines anyway during a war in which Russia is trying to annex Ukraine. The party that it did screw over was the Indian navy, who had a bunch of warships from Russia that they are now unable to get engines and replacements for. India did not go to try to purchase engines from the company in Russia. Instead, they purchased a controlling interest in the Indian arm of the Ukrainian manufacturer and started trying to ramp them up. I'd guess that that might have partly reflected frustration over Russia blowing the plant up.

So, keeping in mind that I am no India expert, have done limited reading on India's relations and such, my understanding is that the most-likely issue here isn't really India acting as a proxy for Moscow. In fact, India would probably rather have had Russia not initiate the conflict and is probably kind of annoyed with Moscow for having done so. A more-likely concern might be India just wanting the conflict and sanctions ending ASAP regardless of the impact on Ukraine.

And given that that's basically what Zelenskyy is saying here, just kinda adds to the plausibility for me that the main risk is just India wanting the conflict to end and everything normalized ASAP, even if that means a major cost to parties involved, like Ukraine.