New Delhi, India’s Ministry of External Affairs has privately described as “unacceptable and unusual” a joint opinion piece published on Monday by the British, French and German ambassadors to New Delhi that held Vladimir Putin personally responsible for prolonging the war in Ukraine and accused the Russian president of showing “total disregard for human life”.
The article, entitled “The world wants the Ukraine war to end, but Russia doesn’t seem serious about peace”, appeared in The Times of India two days before Mr Putin is due to arrive in the Indian capital for the annual India-Russia summit — his first bilateral visit anywhere since a brief trip to Mongolia in September.
Written by Lindy Cameron, the UK high commissioner, Thierry Mathou, the French ambassador, and Philipp Ackermann, Germany’s ambassador, the piece accused Moscow of waging a “war of aggression with absolute ruthlessness” and claimed that Russia’s leadership displayed an “appetite for territorial expansion and global destabilisation” that extends well beyond Ukraine.
Senior Indian officials told that it was highly irregular for resident diplomats to jointly issue what amounted to public advice on New Delhi’s relations with a third country. “This is not an acceptable diplomatic practice,” one official said. “We have taken note of it.”
The episode underscores the delicate balancing act India continues to perform as it deepens defence and energy ties with Moscow while maintaining close partnerships with western capitals that have imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia.
Kanwal Sibal, a former foreign secretary, went further, calling the article “vicious” and accusing the three envoys of “public grandstanding with an overt propagandist intent”. In comments to Indian media, Mr Sibal suggested the piece was designed to stoke anti-Russian sentiment among India’s pro-European élite and questioned the morality of New Delhi’s historic friendship with Moscow.
Separately, Indian and Russian officials said the two sides are close to finalising a labour mobility agreement that would allow large numbers of Indian skilled and semi-skilled workers to take up jobs in Russia, where severe manpower shortages have emerged since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine prompted an exodus of central Asian migrant labour.
One official indicated that New Delhi would place no cap on the number of workers Russia wishes to recruit, leaving hiring decisions to private companies.
External affairs minister S Jaishankar is scheduled to discuss the mobility pact on Wednesday at a foreign policy conclave co-hosted by his ministry. Mr Ackermann, one of the authors of the controversial article, is also listed as a speaker at the same event alongside Australia’s high commissioner.
Western diplomats in New Delhi privately acknowledged the timing of the op-ed had been “unhelpful” but insisted the piece had been intended as a factual restatement of their governments’ long-held positions rather than a deliberate provocation.
India has refrained from condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the United Nations and has significantly increased purchases of discounted Russian crude oil since 2022. At the same time, New Delhi has expanded security co-operation with the US, Japan and Australia through the Quad grouping and signed major defence deals with France and the US.
