Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit, as the Ukrainian president uses his visit to Japan to speak with leaders of countries who have taken a more neutral stance over Russia’s invasion.
Zelenskyy made the nearly 5,600 mile journey to Hiroshima Saturday on a French military jet from Saudi Arabia. While he’s joining the G-7 summit, he’s more eager to see other invited leaders who hail from what is often called the Global South.
The Ukrainian leader’s meeting with Modi was their first in-person conversation since the war broke out in February 2022. That’s as India steps up purchases of Russian energy and continues to seek weapons from Moscow.
Zelenskyy is also keen to talk with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, according to G-7 and Ukrainian officials. Lula has yet to respond to the request, Brazilian officials cautioned.
Brazil has no problem sitting down with any leader but it shouldn’t be imposed, one official said, describing Zelenskyy’s impromptu attendance as a potential “trap” for non-G-7 attendees.
Zelenskyy thanked Modi for humanitarian aid India has sent to Ukraine, according to a statement released after their meeting. He again laid out his proposed path to peace — including the full withdrawal of Russia’s troops and restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, plus security guarantees from other countries — and asked Modi to support his proposals.
In footage posted by news agency ANI, Modi told Zelenskyy the war is a matter for the entire world. “I don’t consider it to be a political or economic issue,” Modi said. “For me, it is an issue of humanity, issue of human values.”
Zelenskyy also met in Japan with leaders from Europe, some of whom he saw only a week ago when he traveled through the region. He chatted with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and French President Emmanuel Macron.
The war in Ukraine has accelerated the shift to a multipolar world in which China, Russia and the U.S. are all fiercely competing for influence. And while the G-7 nations and European Union have slapped an array of sanctions on Vladimir Putin’s government and sent military aid to Ukraine, some nations in the Global South have continued to trade with Moscow and expressed support for a Chinese cease-fire proposal that would freeze Russian gains in place — something Zelenskyy rejects.
President Xi Jinping’s blueprint to stop the fighting effectively puts both aggressor and victim on the same level, suggesting Ukraine should cede territory in order to negotiate. Lula, who recently visited Beijing to express support for Xi’s efforts, has previously said that Ukraine and the U.S. share part of the blame for the war — even though he more recently partly backtracked on those remarks.
Still, engaging the Global South is a central priority for both Zelenskyy and the G-7 advanced economies.
Besides Lula and Modi, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has invited the leaders of South Korea, Australia, Vietnam and Indonesia, as well as Comoros, who chairs the African Union, and the Cook Islands as the current head of the Pacific Islands Forum.
A German official said the Japan trip was a potential “double-win” for Zelenskyy to meet both G-7 and Global South leaders, though the official voiced skepticism that Brazil or India would fundamentally change their position on the war.
The two emerging economies are influential players in their respective regions and globally as members along with Russia of the BRICS grouping of nations and the Group of 20.
Zelenskyy is expected to join two Sunday sessions at the G-7, and also meet with U.S. President Joe Biden. The U.S. has been a vocal supporter of Ukraine and a key supplier of military and financial support. Biden has now dropped his reluctance to Ukraine getting F-16s after months of pressure from Kyiv and allied governments, announcing Friday that the U.S. would support efforts to train Ukrainian pilots to use the fighter jet.
The meeting comes at a delicate time for the conflict on the ground, as Ukraine gears up for a counteroffensive in a war that is entering its 16th month.
And the setting of Hiroshima — hit by a nuclear bomb by the U.S. in 1945 — is symbolic as Moscow periodically threatens to use nuclear weapons against its neighbor and intense fighting continues in dangerous proximity to power plants occupied by Russian troops.
While G-7 countries are already staunch supporters of Ukraine, the country has no better spokesperson than Zelenskyy himself, according to a French diplomat. The Ukrainian president again traveled through Europe last week, and U.S. and Ukrainian officials are in constant contact.
The countries of the Global South are a more recent focus. Ukraine’s government traditionally has engaged more with the West and former Soviet states. It still doesn’t have embassies in some countries in Africa, for example, although Zelenskyy has said previously that Ukraine will open 10 new embassies there.
Ukraine’s efforts should be aimed at “countries in which our influence is still less than we need from the point of view of the national security of Ukraine and the interests of our people,” Zelenskyy said in a December meeting of his diplomatic corps. “This is a huge economic potential, and it is also a significant diplomatic opportunity.”
A Canadian official said countries like Brazil, India and Indonesia needed to be part of the solution on Russian sanctions evasion, and the message to them at the G-7 was that the international rules-based order benefited everyone. Zelenskyy was also well placed to stress that security was indivisible — and that whenever a big power sought to subjugate a smaller one, the world ended up worse off.
As Ukraine prepares to launch its counteroffensive, Zelenskyy is also looking to make progress on weapons requests to the G-7 and NATO states for more longer range capabilities and modern fighter jets.
The U.K. previously said it was working with other countries to train Ukrainians and provide them with F-16s. It has also donated an unspecified amount of long-range precision missiles. The question of actually delivering jets is not imminent, another person said, as the training would take months.
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(With assistance from Alex Wickham, Brian Platt, Sudhi Ranjan Sen, Volodymyr Verbyany, Devidutta Tripathy, Arne Delfs and Jenny Leonard.)
