Away from the battlefield, the diplomatic wrangling in the Ukraine war hots up
Narendra Modi in Kyiv, Li Qiang in Moscow, and a Nato-Ukraine council emergency meeting demonstrate that there is still much to play for—on and off the battlefield.
In the shadow of Ukraine’s ongoing incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, which began on August 6, 2024, an intensifying drone campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure, and Russian advances in the battle for strategic logistics hub of Pokrovsk in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, the diplomatic wrangling in the more than 30-months long war has also increased.
But rather than pointing towards an imminent breakthrough on a ceasefire, let alone even the beginning of peace negotiations, diplomatic efforts to shore up international support indicate both sides’ continuing lack of willingness to compromise.
On the Russian side, a three-day visit by Chinese premier Li Qiang was the highest profile such engagement since the presidential summit between the Chinese and Russian leaders, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, in Beijing in May, 2024. Li then went on to Minsk for meetings with the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, and the country’s prime minister, Roman Golovchenko. While relatively thin on substance beyond declarations of intent about further strengthening ties and maintaining high levels of cooperation, these meetings sent a clear signal of continuing Chinese support to Russia and its ally Belarus. And this signal was further amplified a day after Li’s departure when a high-level Chinese military delegation, led by the commander of the ground forces of the Chinese army, Li Qiaoming, arrived in Moscow for talks with Russia’s deputy defence minister, Alexander Fomin. According to the Russian defence ministry’s readout of the meeting, the two sides “reached agreements during the meeting on further enhancing cooperation between the ground forces in various spheres.”
Following hot on the heels of Li’s visit to Moscow, the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, arrived in Kyiv on August 23, 2024, for the first such visit since Ukraine’s independence more than thirty years ago. This is particularly significant for Ukraine because of India’s complex relationships with Moscow, Beijing, and the west, and its traditional role as a key player in the global south.
Back in July, 2024, Modi made the first foreign trip of his third term as prime minister to Moscow, trying to shore up relations with India’s long-term ally Russia. Modi’s visit to Moscow was badly received in Ukraine and among India’s partners in the west, but his more recent trip to Kyiv indicates that not all is well in the China-led pro-Russian camp. Before his trip to Moscow, Modi had skipped the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) on July 3-4 in Astana, Kazakhstan, partly because of ongoing border tensions with China.
The ever-closer relationship between Moscow and Beijing likely deprives India of a traditional ally in its rivalry with China, and, equally worrying for New Delhi, Pakistan. India may now be Russia’s largest oil buyer, but India has pivoted away from Russia as it seeks to diversify its arms suppliers. This has gone hand-in-hand with strengthened ties between India, the US, Japan and Australia in the so-called QUAD, which is a critical component in US efforts to deal with China in the Indo-Pacific—and to pull India away from Chinese-led for a like the SCO and the BRICS.
Modi has so far refused to condemn Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and India has not yet endorsed Zelensky’s peace formula for an end to the war. And while India did not sign up to the final communique of the “Summit on Peace in Ukraine”, held in Switzerland in June, 2024, it did at least send a delegation, headed by the Deputy National Security Advisor, Pavan Kapoor. During his visit to Kyiv, Modi reiterated the need for dialogue to end the war and offered his personal help to initiate peace talks, while Zelensky expressed his support for the idea of India hosting a follow-up to the summit in Switzerland.
This does not put India firmly in the camp of Ukraine’s pro-western backers, but it sends an important signal that New Delhi is likely less committed to endorsing Russia’s and China’s views on the war. Given India’s traditionally influential role in the global south, this is potentially also critical in helping Ukraine gain more support among countries there who have been particularly badly affected by rising food, fertiliser and energy prices as a result of the war in Ukraine.
Ukraine, meanwhile, also scored several points in relations with its western allies. On August 23, 2024, US president Joe Biden announced a new military aid package worth $125 million, aimed, among others, to bolster Ukraine’s air defences and provide more ammunition for the ground war. On the same day, the US also imposed new sanctions against some 400 companies and individuals, including a large number of Chinese, but no Indian, entities accused of supporting the Russian war effort through the export of dual-use goods. Given the track record of sanctions so far, this is unlikely to deal a knock-out blow to the Russian economy or to persuade Beijing to back away from Moscow. It will, however, likely feature prominently on the agenda of White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s visit to China at the end of August.
Where Ukraine has yet to make more progress is in relation to the restrictions that its western partners are placing on the use of their weapons against and inside Russia. This has become an even more acute issue since the Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region. Yet, Zelensky’s plea for decisive action on the part of his western backers has so far fallen on deaf ears, with little agreement among allies on how to proceed. Renewed Russian sabre-rattling over imminent escalation and the looming prospect of World War Three clearly continue to have an effect on Ukraine’s western partners – at the ambassador-level meeting of the Nato-Ukraine council on August 28, the allies merely reaffirmed that “hey are stepping up their military aid to Ukraine…to provide Ukraine with the equipment and munitions it needs to defend itself against Russia’s invasion.” It is unclear, however, whether this will extend beyond commitments made at the summit in Washington in July or how a future Trump or Harris administration in the US will deal with the war.
Taken together, neither Kyiv nor Moscow have made any earth-shattering gains or losses on the diplomatic front over the past week. However, the flurry of diplomatic activity illustrated by the careful manoeuvring of India, the continued Chinese engagement with Russia and Belarus, and the emergency Nato-Ukraine council meeting – all within the space of ten days – also suggests that things are quite in flux as all sides and their supporters try to shore up support on the international stage. If nothing else, it does indicate that they both think that there is still much to play for—on and off the battlefield.
This is an updated and expanded version of an earlier article for The Conversation.
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