Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India arrived in Kyiv on Friday, furthering a long diplomatic effort by Ukraine to engage non-Western nations in potential settlement talks in the war with Russia.
While many leaders of countries backing Ukraine, including President Biden, have visited Kyiv, Mr. Modi’s trip is the highest-profile wartime visit of a leader of a nation with a neutral stance on the conflict.
Ukrainian officials have said that they do not see a mediating role for India, but they portrayed Mr. Modi’s visit as a welcome show of support for their country during the war. The visit is a first by an Indian leader since Ukraine gained independence in 1991.
In comments to reporters in Poland before traveling into Ukraine, Mr. Modi said he intended to discuss the war.
But the Indian leader has carefully calibrated his country’s relations with the two warring nations. He visited Moscow last month, and India has remained an important trading partner with Russia.
India sent a representative to a Ukrainian-organized peace summit in June intended by Kyiv to win backing for its negotiating positions in potential talks. But India did not join the nations that signed a communiqué after the summit supporting three points of the Ukrainian plan.
Russia was not invited to those talks. Indian officials have said that they will support negotiations engaging both parties, though none are scheduled.
Mr. Modi’s visit to Kyiv coincided with a Ukrainian military incursion into Russia that Ukrainian officials say is intended to give them leverage in possible talks. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has rebuffed that idea, saying he won’t negotiate while Ukrainian troops are on Russian soil.
Ukraine has courted support from developing nations by pointing at the war’s risks to grain exports over the Black Sea; earlier in the conflict, a Russian blockade of grain shipments caused a spike in global food prices. Ukraine has also argued that any settlement shifting borders would form a precedent endangering stability in Asia, Africa and South America.
For Mr. Modi, the Kyiv visit is “about positioning India as a voice of the global south” on the war in Ukraine, Harsh V. Pant, a professor of international relations at King’s College London, said in an interview, adding that the trip created a chance “to talk about, in some ways, the impact this conflict has had” on poorer nations.
India is also seen as interested in a settlement to avoid further isolation of Russia that could push Moscow into a tighter embrace with China, India’s rival in Asia. India relies on Russian weaponry for its military and, during the war in Ukraine, has purchased discounted oil from Russian companies that have been placed under sanctions by the United States and Europe.
Mr. Modi announced his arrival in Ukraine by posting photographs of members of the Indian community living in Ukraine greeting him in Kyiv. “Reached Kyiv earlier this morning,” he wrote on social media. “The Indian community accorded a very warm welcome.”
Suhasini Raj contributed reporting from New Delhi.
