{"id":13279,"date":"2014-03-09T10:34:50","date_gmt":"2014-03-09T10:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=13279"},"modified":"2014-03-09T10:34:50","modified_gmt":"2014-03-09T10:34:50","slug":"india-backs-russia-in-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=13279","title":{"rendered":"India backs Russia in Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Shivshankar<\/a>
Shivshankar Menon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

India broke with the international community in acknowledging that Russia has legitimate interests in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

On Thursday a senior Indian official endorsed Russia\u2019s position in Ukraine in recent days, even as Delhi urged all parties involved to seek a peaceful resolution to the diplomatic crisis.<\/p>\n

When asked for India\u2019s official assessment of the events in Ukraine, National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon responded:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hope that whatever internal issues there are within Ukraine are settled peacefully, and the broader issues of reconciling various interests involved, and there are legitimate Russian and other interests involved\u2026. We hope those are discussed, negotiated and that there is a satisfactory resolution to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The statement was made on the same day that Crimea\u2019s parliament voted to hold a referendum for secession from Ukraine.<\/p>\n

India is the second major nation to publicly lean toward Russia after\u00a0China\u2019s public statements.<\/p>\n

Ukraine’s puppet government reacted to India\u2019s endorsement of Russia\u2019s legitimate interests with hostility.<\/p>\n

India and Russia have long-standing ties and Moscow is Delhi\u2019s top arms provider. Moreover, Russia and the former Soviet Union has been nearly alone in the international community in continue to back India during crucial moments such as following its 1974 and 1998 nuclear tests.<\/p>\n

Delhi believes Russia\u2019s intervention offers the best chance of stabilizing Ukraine. India\u2019s Foreign Ministry on Thursday also released a statement noting that there are \u201cmore than 5,000 Indian nationals, including about 4,000 students, in different parts of Ukraine.\u201d At the same time, India\u2019s overall interest in Ukraine is fairly negligible\u2014certainly less than China\u2019s, for instance\u2014and thus Delhi might assess that it has more to gain by publicly sticking by Moscow at a time when it desperately needs support.<\/p>\n

India also has plenty of interests in certain regions along its peripheral, and at certain times\u2014such as during the Sri Lanka Civil War\u2014has intervened to protect various societal groups with strong ties to India.<\/p>\n

Indian officials have told Telegraph India that, in the newspaper\u2019s words, Delhi is \u201cconvinced that the West\u2019s tacit support for a series of attempted coups against democratically elected governments \u2014 in Egypt, Thailand and now Ukraine \u2014 has only weakened democratic roots in these countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

This rationale would be consistent with India\u2019s long-standing, deep-seated abhorrence to anything that merely resembles Western imperialism. At the same time, India has not historically made supporting democracy abroad a central tenet of its foreign policy.<\/p>\n

Source: The Diplomat<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

India broke with the international community in acknowledging that Russia has legitimate interests in Ukraine. On Thursday a senior Indian official endorsed Russia\u2019s position in Ukraine in recent days, even as Delhi urged all parties involved to seek a peaceful resolution to the diplomatic crisis. When asked for India\u2019s official assessment of the events in … Continue reading “India backs Russia in Ukraine”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,123],"tags":[144,8560,226,1699,8559,66,8558,7484],"class_list":["post-13279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-world","tag-china","tag-delhi","tag-imperialism","tag-india","tag-national-security-adviser","tag-russia","tag-shivshankar-menon","tag-ukraine"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/menon.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13281,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13279\/revisions\/13281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}