May not be part of your culture...: Jaishankar's retort to question on PM Modi's hug with Putin

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar during a media briefing after PM Narendra Modi met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was asked about the ‘embrace’ in a question meant to seek comments on apparent linkages with Modi’s meetings with Putin earlier and Zelenskyy now. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday, he first shook hands and immediately gave him a warm hug.

Jaishankar replied to the question. “In our part of the world, when people meet people, they are given to embracing each other, it may not be part of your culture but I can assure you it is part of our’s. In fact, today, I think, I saw, Prime Minister (Modi) also embrace President Zelenskyy,” Jaishankar replied to a specific question by a Western journalist which mentioned in as many words about Modi’s embrace of Putin a few weeks ago. “And I have seen him do it with a number of other leaders in a number of other places. So, I think, we have a slight … cultural gap here in terms of what these courtesies mean.”

The hug to the top leader of the war-torn country came barely six weeks after Modi had similarly hugged the leader of Ukraine’s arch enemy Russia, President Vladimir Putin.

India maintained that Ukraine and Russia need to engage with each other to find a solution to the ongoing conflict between them as Modi held wide-ranging talks with Zelenskyy under the shadow of the raging war.