Days after PM meet with Putin, Doval discusses Quad issues with Sullivan

It said that the NSAs “agreed to work closely to further advance India-US relations, which are built on shared values and common strategic and security interests”.

“They reiterated the need to work collectively to address global challenges to peace and security and further expand the Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership,” the MEA statement said. Their conversation comes less than a month after Sullivan’s visit to Delhi for the bilateral talks with Doval last month, when he also met PM Modi and External Affairs minister S Jaishankar.

On July 10, in the wake of PM Modi’s just-concluded visit to Russia, the US State Department, for the second day in a row, had expressed “concerns about India’s relationship with Russia”. Saying that it “continues” to express these concerns to India, the US also confirmed that it had held “conversations” with India in the “past 24 hours” too.

“We have been quite clear about our concerns about India’s relationship with Russia. We have expressed those privately directly to the Indian government, and continue to do so. And that has not changed,” US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller had said.

He had said the US continues to “urge India to support efforts to realise an enduring and just peace in Ukraine, based on the principles of the UN charter, based on upholding Ukraine’s territorial integrity and its sovereignty. And that will continue to be what we will engage with India about”.

A day earlier, Miller had said: “India is a strategic partner with whom we engage in a full and frank dialogue. And that includes our concerns about their relationship with Russia.”

Acknowledging that his two-day visit to Moscow was being watched by the “entire world”, Modi had walked the hard diplomatic tightrope in his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. So, a day after a suspected Russian missile struck a children’s hospital in Kyiv, Modi had told Putin that the death of innocent children causes “pain and the heart simply explodes”, “peace talks do not succeed amid bombs, guns and bullets”, and “solution (to any conflict) cannot be found on the battlefield”. At the same time, Modi underlined that both had a “frank” exchange on Ukraine and he had sensed a “new way” of thinking.

The Prime Minister’s visit to Russia had taken place at a time when Washington was hosting the NATO leaders’ summit on the occasion of their 75th anniversary.

Modi’s new and sharp formulation went beyond what he had told Putin at their last in-person bilateral meeting about two years ago. In Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on the sidelines of the SCO Summit in September 2022, Modi had told Putin that “this is not the era of war” — a line that was later used in the G20’s Bali declaration that November, and by Western leaders and interlocutors to press Russia to end the war.

The Ukraine war has put India in a delicate diplomatic position with its Western allies. New Delhi has walked the tightrope, not explicitly condemning the Russian invasion but calling for an international probe into the Bucha massacre in the early weeks of the war, and expressing concern over threats of nuclear war issued by Russian leaders.

India abstained from voting against Russia in several resolutions at the United Nations Security Council.Washington has been quite understanding of the Indian position on Russia, due to its dependence on defence interests.

Delhi has consistently maintained that it is on the side of “peace, respect for international law and support for the UN Charter”, and “strongly advocates a return to dialogue and diplomacy”. India has reiterated that respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states is an essential element of the international order, a euphemism for questioning Russia’s conduct.

However, Doval’s conversation with Sullivan, just after Modi’s visit signals that Delhi is trying to keep its channels of communication open with the West, after the Moscow trip.