Not every picture worth a 1000 words
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: August 26, 2024 -

IT was not for nothing that a picture is said to worth a thousand words.

When the images of a sombre-looking Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi greeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with a quick handshake before giving a warm hug or keeping his hand on Zelensky's shoulder as the two leaders visited a memorial for children killed in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war in Kyiv on Friday (August 23) flashed up on the television screen, the message was clear.

In India, this is a gesture that a big brother would normally show to a younger sibling, who is in trouble. It is a reassurance to the younger brother that he does not have to worry anymore as his elder brother has come to help.

As usual, Indian media did its job of not only showing these images repeatedly but also harping on the significance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'historic visit', which was the first trip by an Indian prime minister to Ukraine since Kyiv gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 or establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries in 1992.

However, western media and news agencies have an altogether different take on the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Ukraine and his meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Rather than focussing on the images over which Indian media are going ga-ga, western media and news agencies look at this visit to Kyiv which came six weeks after Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a trip to Moscow and gave a similar hug to Russian President Vladimir Putin as more of a balancing act of Indian diplomacy between its deep-rooted ties with Russia and its evolving relationship with Ukraine.

The fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Kyiv only for a few hours while he had spent two days in Moscow had also been not lost.

While news agency Reuters has pointed out that the political optics closely resembled Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Moscow, where he also called for peace and embraced Russian President Vladimir Putin, thus, angering Ukraine because a Russian missile strike had hit a children's hospital on the same day, BBC reported that "it was surely no coincidence that the first place Mr Modi was taken on Friday was Ukraine's history museum where he was invited to watch an exhibition remembering all of the 570 Ukrainian children reported to have been killed since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022".

This indicates that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is not someone to be taken lightly and he can see through India's "balancing act".

He may have kept quiet like a younger brother while an elder brother was talking, but certain comments that Zelensky made after Narendra Modi returned from Kyiv have caused uneasiness in New Delhi.

As some of these comments, particularly those related to India purchasing oil from Russia, Putin allegedly spending billions of dollars earned from these oil exports to India to fund his military aggression against Ukraine, and Russian Army recruiting citizens of India as members of its support staff and sending them to the battlegrounds in Ukraine, etc.; are not in sync with the spirit of the just concluded so-called "historic visit" to Kyiv; New Delhi as well as Indian media, which could see or talk of nothing beyond the picture-perfect camaraderie between Modi and Zelensky, may have been taken by surprise.

As these comments are also against the joint documents signed for promoting strategic partnership and bilateral trade between the two countries, India may, in all likelihood, convey its displeasure to Ukraine through diplomatic channel in the next couple of days.

But this episode has made it clear that not every picture is worth a thousand words.