New Delhi: The prime minister, Narendra Modi, held a telephone conversation with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Monday. He conveyed India’s readiness to contribute to all efforts aimed at a peaceful resolution of the conflict, according to a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).
Zelenskyy briefed Modi on recent developments in the war. The PMO said Modi reaffirmed India’s human-centric approach and its consistent position that the conflict must be resolved through dialogue and diplomacy.
The two leaders also discussed ways to strengthen India-Ukraine bilateral cooperation in various sectors for the mutual benefit of their people.
In a post on X, Zelenskyy pointed to the European Commission’s annual EU Enlargement Package, published this week, which he said gave a positive assessment of Ukraine’s progress. The PMO readout did not mention this.
Background
India has called for talks to end the war since it began in February 2022. It has stopped short of naming Russia as the aggressor in its public statements, and it has kept up its ties with Moscow, including energy purchases.
The “human-centric” wording has been part of New Delhi’s language on Ukraine for some time. A PMO statement after a March 2024 call used “people-centric” for the same approach, and said India would continue to support a peaceful solution. Modi made the first visit to Ukraine by an Indian prime minister in August 2024, travelling to Kyiv for talks with Zelenskyy.
Contact between the two leaders has been fairly frequent. They spoke on August 11 and again on August 30, 2025, the second call coming before Modi’s meeting with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in China. Modi had also spoken to Putin on August 8 that year, and repeated India’s position on a peaceful resolution.
