Indian Prime Minister (MP) Narendra Modi will not hold his annual one-on-one summit with Putin after he threatened to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.
Bloomberg writes about this with reference to sources familiar with the matter.
Later, Kremlin spokesman Peskov confirmed that there will be no meeting between Putin and Modi. This is only the second time since 2000 that the leaders of India and Russia have not met face to face. The summit, usually held in December, has been canceled only once — in 2020 at the height of the pandemic.
Relations between India and Russia remain strong, but publicizing the friendship at this time could be counterproductive for Modi, a senior official told Bloomberg.
The newspaper writes that Indiaʼs decision was made clear at the regional summit held in September in Uzbekistan, when Modi called on Putin to seek peace in Ukraine. The Kremlin has publicly presented India as a key country that has not joined international criticism of the invasion of Ukraine and has pushed for a boost in trade as sanctions have cut off flows with the U.S. and Europe. Currently, the Modi government is trying to balance between Russia, a key supplier of weapons and cheap energy, and the United States and its allies, which have imposed sanctions and curbed the price of Russian oil.
- Russian politicians and propagandists often directly called for nuclear tactical strikes on decision-making centers, in particular in Ukraine.
- Volodymyr Zelenskyi said that Russia thus began to prepare its society for a nuclear strike. The Ukrainian authorities still do not believe in the use of these weapons by Russia. NATO declared that a Russian nuclear attack would cause a "physical response", and the EU promised a powerful response, up to the destruction of the Russian army.