‘PM Modi Speaks with Moral Clarity’: US Says it Hopes to Work Closely With India to End Ukraine Conflict

US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that America has expressed hope that it can work with India to bring an end to the Ukraine conflict.

During a press briefing on Thursday, the US State Department spokesperson said India has the ability while Prime Minister Narendra Modi can speak with tremendous moral clarity, according to ANI.

“India has the ability we have seen from Prime Minister Modi to speak with tremendous moral clarity. When Prime Minister Modi said last year ‘This is not an era of war’, the world listened as they should because when Prime Minister Modi and his country said something to that effect, its meaningful to the United States, it’s meaningful to Russia, it is meaningful to countries near and far,” Ned Price said while responding to a question about the role India can play to bring an end to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

Price further said that the US will continue to work with Indian partners as America has strategic partnership with the county.

“We will continue to work with our Indian partners they obviously have a unique role to play in this as the G20 host. But, also as a country with whom we have global strategic partnership and a country that has a unique relationship with Russia that we don’t and just as India has consistently expressed that this is not and should not be an era of war,” Price added.

He further added that he hoped that the two countries can work closely to bring an end to the Russian aggression in Ukraine.

“We hope that we can work closely with India to bring about an end to this war, an end to this Russian aggression to an end that is at its core just endurable and very much in line with the principles in the UN charte,” Price said.

Price said that India has longstanding and historical ties with Russia and is connected to Russia in many ways that the US is not.

He also stressed that India has tremendous leverage in various sectors, including economic, political and moral leverage.

“There are countries around the world that have a relationship with Russia that is distinct from the one we have, India certainly falls within that category. India has longstanding, historical ties to Russia. It is connected to Russia in ways that United States is not and for that matter has not been,” he said.

The statement comes a day when the top diplomats of Russia and the United States spoke to each other face-to-face for the first time since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in New Delhi.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to end the war and urged Moscow to reverse its suspension of the New START nuclear treaty, a senior US official said.

The Russian foreign ministry said Lavrov and Blinken spoke “on the move” for less than 10 minutes at the end of the closed-door session, and did not engage in any negotiations, Russian news agencies reported.

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