By Vladimir Soldatkin
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi instructed Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday that the dying of harmless youngsters was painful and terrifying, a day after a deadly strike on a youngsters’s hospital in Kyiv.
The pointed comment by the visiting Indian chief was an implicit rebuke to Putin, who moments earlier had welcomed him to the Kremlin with a heat assertion on the significance of the strategic ties between the 2 international locations.
Ukraine says it has recovered fragments of a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile on the youngsters’s hospital, which was hit on Monday throughout a wave of Russian assaults that killed not less than 41 Ukrainians throughout the nation.
Russia mentioned, with out offering proof, that it was a Ukrainian anti-missile system that struck the hospital.
“Whether it is war, conflict or a terrorist attack, any person who believes in humanity, is pained when there is loss of lives,” Modi mentioned.
“But even in that, when innocent children are killed, the heart bleeds and that pain is very terrifying.”
It was not the primary time that Modi has appeared to criticise Russia over its actions in Ukraine. In September 2022, he instructed Putin that “today’s era is not an era of war”, and Putin mentioned at the moment he understood Modi’s issues.
India, nonetheless, has not condemned Russia’s invasion and has taken the chance to purchase report quantities of discounted Russian oil as sanctions have decimated Moscow’s commerce with the West.
SPECIAL PARTNERSHIP
For Russia, India has change into an more and more necessary associate, each economically and diplomatically, as Moscow seeks to exhibit that Western makes an attempt to isolate it have failed.
Putin, talking earlier than Modi, mentioned their two international locations loved a “particularly privileged strategic partnership” and thanked him for his efforts to discover a peaceable resolution to the struggle.
“I thank you for the attention you are paying to the most acute problems including trying to find ways to resolve the Ukrainian crisis, above all by peaceful means, of course,” he mentioned.
Modi responded: “As a friend, I have always said that peace is necessary for our future generations. Solutions are not possible on the battleground. Amidst guns, bullets and bombs, peace talks cannot be successful. We have to find the path to peace only through talks.”
The timing of the Ukrainian hospital incident was embarrassing for Modi as he started his two-day go to on Monday.
As Modi shared his picture hugging Putin on social media platform X, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy mentioned that it was a “huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts to see the leader of the world’s largest democracy hug the world’s most bloody criminal in Moscow on such a day”.
The U.S. State Division mentioned on Monday it had raised issues with India about its relationship with Russia. Individually, President Joe Biden referred to as the most recent assaults on Ukraine “a horrific reminder of Russia’s brutality”.
Russia mentioned it struck army targets and the Kremlin repeated its insistence that Russia doesn’t goal civilians.
