Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that India can be a possible venue for a peace summit, according to Indian Express.
New Delhi is mulling the offer to bring together the warring parties of Russia and Ukraine.
Earlier, Zelenskyy had called on India to lend its support to Ukraine in its war with Russia and urged it to refrain from taking a neutral or balancing stance in the crisis. Speaking to reporters after holding wide-ranging talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Kyiv, Zelenskyy also expressed his desire to visit India soon and reach out to Indians. “As for the peace summit, I truly believe that the second peace summit has to take place. It would be good if it could be held in one of the Global South countries,” he said. “We are very open to it. There are countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Türkiye and Switzerland. We are currently talking to those countries about hosting the peace summit.” He also called India a “great democracy — the largest one”.
The inaugural peace summit was held at a resort near Lucerne in Switzerland in June. It was attended by more than 90 countries and global institutions with a sole focus on bringing peace to Ukraine.
PM Modi during his visit to Kyiv last week told Zelenskyy that both Ukraine and Russia should sit together to end the ongoing war and that India was ready to play an “active role” to restore peace in the region. “India (is a) big influential country, not only in the world (but) also through the circle of very skeptical countries. If we will change India’s attitude to this war and to Russia, we will stop the war, because Putin will want to stop it,” Zelenskyy said.
Zelenskyy told ANI that India will play its role in the war which was started by one man, Vladimir Putin.
"India will play its role. I think that India has begun to recognise that this is not just conflict, this is a real war of one man and his name is Putin against the whole country whose name is Ukraine. You are a big country. You have a big influence, and you can stop Putin and halt his economy, and put him really in his place," he said.
According to Zelenskyy, PM Modi wants peace more than Putin. “The problem is Putin doesn’t want (peace). I don’t know what they spoke during their meeting.” The Ukrainian President also said that Russia will have “significant challenges” if the world, including India, stops buying subsidised oil from it. “Putin is afraid of losing the economy, he has nothing except for oil, his main currency is oil. They do have a kind of energy-based economy, and they’re export-oriented,” he said. “So, the countries importing energy resources from the Russian Federation, they will be helping the whole world,’ as quoted by IE.
Speaking about India not supporting a UN resolution (against Russia some months ago), Zelenskyy said “before new resolutions, we have to speak, we have to make more strong relations between our country (and India) before new decisions”, according to IE.
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