New Delhi: India will always be on the side of peace, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a meeting on the sidelines of the G7 summit in France on Wednesday, while calling for bilateral trade ties to be restored to pre-war levels.
The two leaders spoke on phone several times since Modi’s first visit to Ukraine in August 2024 and a meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September the same year, and this was their first face-to-face meeting after a long gap.
Modi noted in a social media post after the meeting that India and Ukraine have cooperated extensively in recent times and said this is reflected in various areas of cooperation.
Modi said, “Our talks today were about reviewing various aspects of our cooperation. We both agree on the need to restore trade relations to what they were in the pre-war period. We also reiterated that India will always be on the side of peace, and puts the values of humanity above everything else.”
Zelensky said on social media that India and Ukraine have great potential for cooperation and that the two sides are implementing joint projects. “Today we discussed how to give them more substance and expand cooperation in various sectors,” he said. “It is important that the Prime Minister is interested in developing mutually beneficial relations with Ukraine and believes that this partnership can make our people stronger.”
He also said that there were good industrial projects and other projects that could be implemented jointly, and said that the two leaders agreed that their teams would work on the details.
External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal described the meeting as fruitful and said that the two leaders discussed strengthening India-Ukraine relations, including in the areas of trade and economic cooperation. Jaiswal said that Modi reiterated that “India always stands for peace, and calls for the path of dialogue and diplomacy for an early return to peace in the region.”
