India welcomes Putin-Trump summit on Ukraine conflict

New Delhi: The world wants to see an early end to the conflict in Ukraine, India said on Saturday, welcoming the summit talks between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Alaska that ended without a ceasefire deal.

After an almost-three-hour meeting with the Russian president, Trump said “some great progress” has been made, but did not provide any details.

It was the first US-Russia summit since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“There’s no deal until there’s a deal,” Trump said after the summit.

As leading world capitals analysed the Putin-Trump summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, thanking Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for his Independence-Day greetings to India, wished “our friends in Ukraine a future marked by peace, progress and prosperity”.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) welcomed the summit in Alaska and commended Putin and Trump for the initiative to bring peace to Ukraine. “India welcomes the Summit meeting in Alaska between US President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin of Russia,” the MEA said in a statement.

“Their leadership in the pursuit of peace is highly commendable,” it added.

The MEA said India appreciates the progress made in the summit. “The way forward can only be through dialogue and diplomacy. The world wants to see an early end to the conflict in Ukraine,” it said.

In a related development, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar spoke to his British counterpart, David Lammy, and discussed various aspects of the Ukraine conflict.

After the summit, Trump held a phone conversation with Zelenskyy. The Ukrainian president later said he will meet Trump in Washington DC on Monday. In his message to Zelenskyy, Modi said: “I deeply value the joint commitment to forging even closer ties between India and Ukraine. We earnestly wish our friends in Ukraine a future marked by peace, progress and prosperity.”

India has been consistently calling for ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict through dialogue and diplomacy.

In July last year, Modi travelled to Moscow and told Putin that a solution to the Ukraine conflict is not possible on the battlefield and peace efforts do not succeed in the midst of bombs and bullets.