Prime minister India will appear in Poland on August 21, the Indian portal Mint (a website associated with an economic newspaper of the same title) reported. Narendra Modi is to arrive on a one-day visit, en route to Ukraine.
Unofficially: Indian Prime Minister will come to Poland
According to government sources from another Indian portal, The Print, Modi will meet President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Donald Tusk. He will hold bilateral talks with both. In addition, he is also to visit places of remembrance – among others, the monuments of the Maharajas of Jam Saheb (known in Poland as the Good Maharaja) and Kolhapur, who gave shelter to refugees from our country during World War II.
If this information is confirmed, it will be the first visit of an Indian prime minister to Poland in over 40 years. The last one to visit us was Morarji Desai – in 1979. After the communist period, relations between our countries loosened up a bit. “Both countries had different priorities and followed them. You could say that ties remained dormant. However, we hope that Prime Minister Modi's move will give them the required impetus and take bilateral relations to a higher level,” the source told The Print. The service's sources also mention our country's “huge production base” as well as the modernization of the Polish army and support for Ukraine in the war with Russia.
The road to Ukraine
Because it is hard not to look for the context of the war in Ukraine here. Narendra Modi is to visit our country on the occasion of his visit to Ukraine. The Indian news agency The Press Trust of India wrote earlier (at the end of July) that it could happen. Modi is to visit Volodymyr Zelensky on August 23-24 – the latter day is Independence Day – and talk about “outlining a path to ending Russia's war with Ukraine”. This will be his first visit to Kiev since Russia started a full-scale war.
India does not take a clear position in this conflict, but at the same time maintains undiminished relations with Russia, including economic ones, without interrupting trade. The picture of these relations is a bit more complicated, because there is another player in it: Chinawhich support Putin in principle, but are a rival to India. Narendra Modi visited Vladimir Putin In Moscow in early July, when several dozen people died in a Russian attack on a hospital in Kiev. Zelensky openly expressed his dissatisfaction and disappointment.
In the broader context, India, a country that has reportedly overtaken China in population to become the world's most populous country, have ambitions to become the voice of the Global South and become one of the world's major economic players. We wrote more about this in the text below: