Jaishankar in Ukraine: Between Moscow and Kyiv, India Walks Its Own Road

Diplomacy during a war is partly about the war itself, but it is also about ensuring that tomorrow’s relationships are not permanently imprisoned by today’s battlefield.

India has spent four years refusing to become a footnote in someone else’s war. In Ukraine's Kyiv, it tried to become part of the conversation about how that war ends.

When External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar arrived in the Ukrainian capital for his first standalone visit, the city was still living under the shadow of war. Reports of Shahed drone attacks emerged around the time of the visit, offering an almost brutal reminder that diplomacy in Ukraine does not happen in rooms insulated from the battlefield. It happens with the sound of war somewhere beyond the windows.

Jaishankar met President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha at a moment when the Russia-Ukraine conflict has entered its fifth year without either side achieving a decisive military victory or finding a durable political settlement. India therefore arrived with no grand peace blueprint and no pretence that it could end a war that has defeated much more powerful diplomatic efforts.

Its message was simpler, but perhaps more useful. Wars may be fought on battlefields, but they eventually have to end at negotiating tables.

Kyiv Wants India Closer

For Ukraine, the importance of Jaishankar’s visit lies partly in who was speaking. India has maintained a relationship with Moscow that has survived enormous geopolitical changes, while simultaneously expanding its engagement with Kyiv, Europe and the United States. That gives New Delhi access to diplomatic spaces that are often closed to countries seen as belonging firmly to one camp.

Narendra Modi’s August 2024 visit to Kyiv was historic for precisely this reason. India was engaging Ukraine at the highest political level while preserving its long-standing relationship with Russia. Jaishankar’s standalone visit two years later suggests that the earlier gesture was not a diplomatic photo opportunity. It was the beginning of a more sustained channel.

Zelenskyy’s willingness to engage Jaishankar and acknowledge India’s desire to contribute to an eventual settlement shows that Kyiv understands the value of keeping New Delhi involved. Ukraine may not agree with India on every aspect of the conflict, but it has an interest in countries capable of speaking beyond the immediate Western-Russian confrontation.

India, meanwhile, is not offering neutrality in the traditional sense. Neutrality can imply standing aside. New Delhi is doing something different by trying to remain relevant without surrendering its freedom of choice. This is autonomy in its more difficult form.

The Conversation on Russian Oil

The diplomatic elegance becomes considerably harder when the conversation turns to Russian oil. Jaishankar's reply was direct when asked why India continues purchasing Russian energy. The war, he argued, will not end simply because a country buys or stops buying oil, minerals, metals or fertilisers. Ultimately, the conflict has to be addressed through dialogue, diplomacy and negotiation.

For Kyiv and many Western capitals, this argument is difficult to accept because economic pressure on Moscow remains an important part of their strategy. For New Delhi, however, energy is not an abstract geopolitical instrument. It is an immediate national requirement.

In July 2026, Russian crude accounted for 50.83 percent of India’s total oil imports, equivalent to roughly 2.47 million barrels per day. The number explains why New Delhi does not view Russian oil merely as a diplomatic preference that can be switched off when political circumstances change.

India has 1.4 billion people to supply, an enormous economy to fuel and an energy strategy that cannot be rewritten according to the foreign-policy priorities of other powers. The contradiction is obvious, but so is the calculation.

India wants the war to end while retaining the economic choices it believes are necessary for itself. It wants Ukraine to understand its position without expecting India to seek permission for it. That is a very different proposition from neutrality.

Proximity to the Black Sea

For Indians, the Ukraine war may appear geographically distant, but the Black Sea has already carried its consequences towards Indian sailors, Indian consumers and the wider Global South.

Jaishankar’s discussions with Sybiha about attacks on merchant vessels therefore deserve more attention than they might initially receive, because Indian seafarers work aboard commercial ships under different flags, and when those shipping routes become exposed to military attacks, the consequences do not stop at European ports but travel through insurance markets, freight costs and eventually reach consumers thousands of kilometres away.

The same logic applies to food, fuel and fertiliser, areas in which the Ukraine conflict has repeatedly demonstrated how quickly a regional war can become an international economic problem. For countries across the Global South, many of which are already dealing with inflationary pressures and fragile supply chains, another major disruption to maritime trade would not be a distant geopolitical inconvenience but a direct economic vulnerability with consequences for households, businesses and national budgets.

This gives India a practical reason to want the conflict contained and also explains why New Delhi's diplomacy cannot be reduced to an argument about Russia and Ukraine alone. India is looking at the war through the lens of its own citizens, its energy requirements, its shipping interests and the vulnerabilities of developing economies.

Humanitarian Diplomacy And Geopolitics

There is another dimension to India’s Ukraine policy that deserves more attention because it complicates the simplistic image of strategic autonomy as cold calculation.

Since the conflict began, India has sent 19 consignments of humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, amounting to around 160 tonnes. The supplies have included medicines, medical equipment and generator sets. None of this changes the military balance, but that was never the purpose.

The assistance allows New Delhi to acknowledge Ukrainian suffering without turning humanitarian concern into an anti-Russia alignment. There is something similarly significant in India’s relationship with Ukrainian society itself. Before the war, Ukraine was an important destination for Indian medical students. When fighting erupted, thousands of Indian students suddenly found themselves caught inside a conflict they had no role in creating.

Ukraine’s assistance to Indian students during that crisis remains part of the bilateral memory. That human connection matters because foreign policy is ultimately not conducted only between governments. It survives through citizens who study abroad, sailors who cross dangerous waters, businesses that continue looking for markets and families whose lives can be disrupted by decisions taken thousands of kilometres away.

New Delhi is Bracing for Tomorrow

One of the more revealing aspects of Jaishankar’s Kyiv visit was that India did not allow the war to consume the entire bilateral relationship. This is strategically sensible because wars end, while national relationships have to continue.

India and Ukraine had established economic links long before Russia’s full-scale invasion, with cooperation involving pharmaceuticals, agriculture, fertilisers, machinery and chemicals. The war has damaged trade routes and disrupted commercial activity, but it has not erased the economic logic connecting the two economies.

The next phase could be even more interesting. Ukraine possesses significant technological and scientific capabilities, while India has built considerable strength in digital systems, startups and emerging technologies. Healthcare, agriculture and education offer practical areas for renewed cooperation, while reconstruction could eventually create an entirely different economic landscape.

India has an interest in preserving a relationship that can expand once the guns fall silent. Diplomacy during a war is partly about the war itself, but it is also about ensuring that tomorrow’s relationships are not permanently imprisoned by today’s battlefield.

The Numbers Which Are Not Just Numbers

The scale of the conflict makes simplistic foreign policy especially tempting, but the numbers push in the opposite direction. The United Nations has verified more than 15,000 civilian deaths and 41,000 civilian injuries in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion began, while acknowledging that the actual toll is likely higher. In 2025 alone, Ukraine recorded 2,514 civilian deaths and 12,142 injuries, making it the deadliest year for civilians since the invasion began.

At the same time, India-Russia trade reached a record USD 70 billion in 2024, driven overwhelmingly by India’s increased imports of Russian oil.

These figures reveal the uncomfortable terrain in which Indian diplomacy operates. New Delhi cannot ignore the scale of Ukrainian suffering. It also cannot pretend that its economic relationship with Russia has become insignificant.

The challenge is therefore not to eliminate the contradiction. It is to operate within it without allowing the contradiction to dictate the entirety of Indian foreign policy. It is harder than taking a side, but it may also be more useful.

Keeping Diplomacy Alive

Jaishankar’s Kyiv visit was never expected to produce a peace agreement. Its real significance lies in keeping India relevant for a moment when military exhaustion, political necessity or shifting international calculations may finally push Moscow and Kyiv towards serious negotiations.

India understands the limits of mediation, but it also recognises the value of keeping channels open. New Delhi is not presenting itself as the saviour of the peace process or claiming to have a formula for ending the war, but as a country willing to preserve diplomatic space while protecting its own geopolitical interests.

As drones moved through the skies above Kyiv, India continued to argue that dialogue, diplomacy and negotiation must remain possible. That captures the essence of New Delhi’s position. It wants the war to end, but without surrendering the tactical independence that gives its voice credibility when the moment for serious diplomacy finally arrives.