(Bloomberg) -- India's foreign minister condemned the killing of unarmed civilians in Bucha and called for an immediate end to the violence while also underlining the importance of New Delhi's ties with Russia.
“India supports calls for an independent investigation,” External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told lawmakers in parliament. The events in Bucha were “deeply disturbing” and India “strongly condemned” the killings.
Jaishankar did not name Russia in his denouncement of the killings but it was India's strongest criticism of the crimes committed during Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. New Delhi's neutral stance has come under pressure from Washington and other Quad partners, including Japan and Australia.
President Joe Biden has said Russian President Vladimir Putin could face a war crimes trial related to the civilian deaths in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, and other Ukrainian towns vacated by Russian soldiers. Russia has denied its forces killed civilians, saying pictures of bodies strewn on the streets were a fabrication by Ukraine.
India continues to advocate an immediate end to war and resolution of the conflict through diplomacy, Jaishankar told the Indian parliament. New Delhi has abstained from voting in the United Nations on resolutions condemning Russia's war in Ukraine.
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Jaishankar described Moscow as an important partner and said India was trying to “stabilize economic transactions with Russia.” An alternate rupee-ruble payment mechanism to bypass the dollar-denominated trade system was being worked out in consultation with Russia, the minister added.
India's middle-ground position on the war has led to a raft of diplomacy in the past few weeks, with China's foreign minister visiting for the first time since 2019, followed by the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov seeking to shore up support.
At the same time, the U.S. and its allies also stepped up engagement to influence Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Jaishankar spoke on the phone Tuesday, discussing the “situation in Ukraine” among other things.
Last month, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited Delhi, and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison held a video summit with Modi.
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