Ukraine seeks medical, war recovery assistance from India

Ukraine has asked India to supply medicines and medical equipment and help it rebuild war-damaged infrastructure, India’s External Affairs Ministry said on Wednesday.

The request was conveyed by Emine Dzhaparova, the deputy minister of foreign affairs and Ukraine’s most senior official to visit India since Russia's invasion began a year ago. During her visit this week, she highlighted Ukraine’s desire to build a stronger and closer relationship with India, the ministry said in a statement.

She also handed a letter by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Details of the letter were not immediately known.

Modi and Zelenskyy have spoken over the phone in the past year, but India has refrained from condemning Russia’s invasion and has abstained several times from voting on U.N. resolutions against Moscow. India has maintained high-level contacts with Russia and is one of Moscow's key trade partners in the defense and oil industries.

New Delhi has stressed the need for diplomacy and dialogue on ending the war and has expressed its willingness to contribute to peace efforts.

Apart from providing medicines and medical equipment, India would also supply school buses to Ukraine, the Indian statement said.

Dzhaparova proposed that rebuilding infrastructure in Ukraine could be an opportunity for Indian companies, the statement said.

India “can play a bigger and greater role” and Ukraine would “welcome any effort that is directed at resolving the war,” she said in a speech Tuesday at the Indian Council of World Affairs, a think tank in New Delhi.

The sides agreed to hold the next round of foreign ministry consultations in Kyiv on a mutually convenient date, the Indian foreign ministry said.