(Reuters) – Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has urged India to stand by Kyiv, saying the nation’s close ties with Russia are based on a Soviet legacy that is evaporating, the Financial Times reported on Friday.
Kuleba arrived in New Delhi on Thursday to advance Kyiv’s vision of the path to peace in Ukraine and to strengthen ties with India.
India has traditionally had close economic and defence ties with Moscow and refrained from criticising Russia over its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, instead increasing purchases of Russian oil to record levels.
Kuleba said India has much to gain from expanding trade and technology ties with Ukraine and offered Indian companies a role in postwar reconstruction.
Ukraine was now looking to “restore trade” with India, he told the newspaper, resuming exports of agricultural products such as sunflower oil and buying more Indian goods itself.
“We are interested in importing some of the heavy machinery items that India is producing,” he said.
Ukraine hopes to hold a summit of world leaders without Russian participation in the coming months to advance its blueprint for peace, which calls among other things for the withdrawal of Russian troops from its territory.
Russia has dismissed the Ukrainian diplomatic initiative as a non-starter.
(Reporting by Nilutpal Timsina in Bengaluru; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
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