Zelensky insulted Indian Prime Minister Modi during his trip to Moscow last week by tweeting that “It is disheartening to see the leader of the world’s largest democracy embrace the world’s most notorious criminal in Moscow”, thus prompting India to summon the Ukrainian Ambassador on Monday.
It’s unclear what he was told, but his hosts predictably made it clear that such rhetoric isn’t welcome, especially after Modi lamented the loss of life in all conflicts during his meeting with Putin.
While some might imagine that Zelensky simply tweeted whatever his Western patrons told him to, the reality is that he probably did so on his own prerogative, though therein lies the problem. In his mind, the latest phase of the Ukrainian Conflict sparked by Russia’s special operation is an epic battle between democracies and dictatorships, not anything having to do with security dilemmas and national interests. This false perception was impressed upon him by the West over two years ago.
While his embrace of it might have been opportunistic to begin with, namely to rally the Collective West around the cause of Ukraine reconquering its lost territories per Kiev’s envisaged maximalist goal, he’s since become a sincere believer in this paradigm as evidenced by what he tweeted about Modi. The reason why this is troubling isn’t just because it’s an inaccurate way of assessing everything, but also because it led to Ukraine stirring trouble with the Voice of the Global South, India.
The past nearly two and a half years have seen Ukraine belatedly realized that it must obtain some support from this diverse collection of non-Western countries if it’s to have any hope of pressuring Russia to compromise on its own envisaged maximalist goals in this conflict. This explains the recent outreaches to that part of the world during last month’s Swiss talks, which were over-hyped ahead of time and thus became a disappointment after they failed to meet the public’s lofty expectations.
