Prime Minister Narendra Modi had to walk a fine line in Samarkand during the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s (SCO) first in-person summit in recent years. That was inevitable given the current global stand-off between the West and Russia. But Modi did manage to walk it successfully.
In the process, though, he seems to have more or less avoided dealing with India’s own problems relating to China and Pakistan.
Modi finessed the Ukraine issue by bluntly telling Russia's President Vladimir Putin that “the era of war is over” and that the only path to the resolution of the problem was through “diplomacy and dialogue.”
This stance, for the first time publicly expressing India’s unhappiness with the Russian actions in Ukraine, would have heartened India’s western allies who have been uncomfortable with New Delhi's studied neutrality on the issue.