As India joins China in dancing From Russia, Putin warns of escalation

Written Anton Troianovski, Mujib Mashal and Julian E. Barnes
Underlining Russia’s widening isolation on the world stage, Prime Miner Narendra Modi of India told President Vladimir Putin on Friday that it is no time for war — even as the Russian president threatened to escalate the brutality of his campaign in Ukraine.
The televised admonishment Modi at a regional summit in Uzbekan came a day after Putin acknowledged that Xi Jinping, China’s leader, had “questions and concerns” about the war.
Taken together, the dancing from Putin the heads of the world’s two most populous countries — both of which have been pivotal to sustaining Russia’s economy in the face of Western sanctions — punctured the Kremlin’s message that Russia was far from a global pariah.
“I know that today’s era is not of war,” Modi told Putin at the beginning of their meeting, describing global challenges like the food and energy crises that were hitting developing countries especially hard. “Today we will get a chance to discuss how we can move forward on the path of peace.”
The implicit criticism of Putin underscored that he now faces perhaps his most challenging moment of recent months, suffering not just these diplomatic setbacks but also retreats on the battlefield and intensifying questions back home over how he has conducted the war.
But Putin’s own next steps remain a mystery, and Western officials believe that he could still drastically escalate the intensity of Russia’s assault if he is confronted with further defeats.
In a news conference Friday after the summit of Asian leaders, Putin described recent Russian cruise missile attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure as “warning strikes” that could portend an even more vicious campaign.
At the same time — apparently mindful of the unease among key partners like China and India — Putin insed that he was ready for talks without naming any preconditions and that his war aims did not necessarily extend to all of Ukraine. He made no mention Friday of the broader goals of “demilitarizing” and “denazifying” Ukraine that he announced when he started the war in February — terms that were widely seen as Putin declaring his intention to achieve political control over the entire country.
He said that the “main goal” of his invasion was limited to capturing the Donbas — the eastern Ukrainian region where Russia has recognized as independent two Kremlin-backed statelets but where Ukraine still controls several key cities and towns.
But Putin claimed that Ukraine was attempting to carry out “terror acts” inside Russia and that Moscow was poised to retaliate.
“We are, indeed, responding rather restrainedly, but that’s for the time being,” Putin said. “If the situation continues to develop in this way, the answer will be more serious.”
Ukraine has acknowledged attacks on military targets on the peninsula of Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014 in violation of international law, but the government in Kyiv says it does not attack civilians.
Inside Ukraine, the consequences of Russia’s war have already been devastating. A cruise missile salvo Wednesday damaged a dam in the southern Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih and raised fears of flooding. In the northeastern city of Izium, which Ukrainian forces liberated in recent days, authorities said they had found a burial site holding a mass grave and 445 fresh individual graves.
An adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, Mykhailo Podolyak, said Friday that Russian forces had brought “rampant terror, violence, torture and mass murders” to the territory they occupied in Ukraine, and he rejected the possibility of negotiating a compromise to end the war.
“We have no right to leave people alone with the Evil,” Podolyak said on Twitter. “‘Conflict resolution’ is extremely simple. Immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from the entire territory of Ukraine.”
Yet Putin has repeatedly warned that Russia’s assault could still intensify — a threat now weighing on U.S. officials, who believe Putin could increase the size of Russia’s forces deployed to Ukraine or could mount attacks against the NATO countries providing Ukraine with arms. The officials also say Russia could mount a new push in Ukraine’s east or south, or step up a campaign to target the Ukrainian leadership.
Expanding his capacity to fight the war, however, would require Putin to build up his military. So far Putin has been unwilling to announce a widespread full military mobilization, and many U.S. officials believe that is off the table because of the political repercussions domestically. But former U.S. officials said Putin could take a smaller, less politically destabilizing step: calling up more reservs and returning military veterans to service.
“We are not fighting with our full army,” Putin said Friday, while asserting that his military’s plan for the invasion needed no “adjustment.”
“The main goal is the liberation of the entire territory of Donbas,” Putin said. “This work continues despite these counteroffensive attempts the Ukrainian army. The general staff considers some things important, some things secondary, but the main task remains unchanged, and it is being implemented.”
But when he sat down with Modi, the Indian prime miner, Putin was markedly more demure. Along with China, India has emerged as a pivotal financier for Moscow during the war, including purchasing Russian energy at a discount. Both countries have also provided Putin relief at the United Nations, abstaining from votes critical of Russia’s aggression.
India has ignored U.S. and European entreaties not to buy Russian oil, framing its purchases of discounted Russian crude as a necessity at a time of rising food and fuel prices — even as Ukraine’s top diplomat said “the discount has to be paid Ukrainian blood.”
India’s steady relationship with Moscow long predates its recent expansion of ties with the United States; Russia has remained the main source of cheaper arms for India’s military.
So when Modi told Putin on camera Friday that “today’s era is not of war,” it was a signal that a country that the Kremlin has billed as friendly was now trying to dance itself. Putin claimed to the Indian leader that it was Ukraine’s fault that the war continued because Kyiv was not suing for peace, but he acknowledged Modi’s displeasure.
“I know your position on the conflict in Ukraine, your concerns that you constantly express. We will do our best to stop this as soon as possible,” Putin said. “Only, unfortunately, the opposing side, the leadership of Ukraine, announced its abandonment of the negotiation process.”
In his news conference, Putin offered another oblique acknowledgment that China’s government, too, is unhappy over the war in Ukraine — in part, analysts say, because the resulting turmoil in global food and energy markets has threatened China’s economic growth.
“There were also issues related to crises,” Putin told reporters, describing his meeting with Xi the previous day. “These issues were also discussed in a well-meaning, but principled manner.”
Russia’s state media generally papered over the differences that emerged at the Uzbekan summit, presenting Putin’s meetings with a number of Asian leaders as evidence that Western attempts to isolate Russia have failed.
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Putin on Friday also sat down with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and said that Turkey would soon be paying in Russian rubles for one-quarter of the natural gas it buys from Russia — a step that would help Russia to continue to reduce its reliance on the U.S. dollar and its exposure to American sanctions.
But some recognition that the summit may not have gone as well as hoped for Putin came on a Russian talk show Friday on the state-run Rossiya channel, when a newspaper column noted that Beijing was “not particularly helping us” in getting around Western sanctions and seemed to be pushing back against Russian influence in Central Asia. It was more evidence that some criticism of Russian policy was appearing more frequently on Russian television.
“There is some kind of rather complex game going on here,” the column, Maksim Yusin, said, referring to the extent of China’s potential support for Russia. “I don’t think we should get our hopes up much so that we don’t end up sorely disappointed.”