Jaishankar says Delhi is now talking to Moscow and Kyiv on Black Sea shipping

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said on Sunday that India is in talks with both Russia and Ukraine on Black Sea shipping safety, grain exports, energy exports and what he called non-attack possibilities. He was speaking at the Munich Leaders' Meeting in New Delhi. He described the talks as a step past India's older public line, which had been to urge negotiations without joining the bargaining.

"Our position on that conflict has been very clear, which is that we would like to see an end to this conflict," he said. "And we believe that this will require dialogue and diplomacy. There has to be negotiations in this regard. We have been advocating it for many years." He then marked the change. "And in recent months, we have got a little bit more involved beyond advocacy. We have conversations with both Russia and Ukraine in this regard. We are trying to be helpful, starting with the Black Sea safety of shipping issue, but going beyond that to cover some immediate concerns which both of them have on grain exports, on energy exports, on non-attack possibilities." He added that those conversations are going on now.

The list is concrete, and it is also limited. Black Sea shipping safety means routes, inspection, and who may strike a hull. Grain exports mean the corridor that feeds Egypt, Bangladesh and India's own vegetable-oil and wheat calculations when Ukrainian supply drops. Energy exports, in a week when Russian strikes have hit Ukrainian port infrastructure and when India still buys Russian crude, means which terminals are treated as off limits. Non-attack possibilities are local ceasefire ideas, not a draft treaty. Jaishankar did not say either capital had accepted a text. He said India is in the conversations.

The timing sits against two facts from the same weekend. Chancellor Friedrich Merz was in Kyiv pledging about 1 billion euros in military aid and money for energy repairs, with air-raid sirens during the visit. Russia's defence ministry said it had struck cargo ships at Chornomorsk. A shipping-safety talk that starts while hulls are being hit is a talk about the next voyage, not a description of the current one. India is a large buyer of sunflower oil and a large shipper of its own goods through the same waters when insurers allow it. A closed or struck Black Sea raises freight and insurance for cargoes that do not fly an Indian flag.

Delhi's earlier posture was public and repetitive. At the United Nations, at the G20 and in bilateral calls, Indian ministers said the war should end by diplomacy and declined to join sanctions on Russian oil. The new sentence is "beyond advocacy" and "both". That second word is the one Ukrainian officials have pressed for, because a channel that runs only through Moscow is not a mediation. Jaishankar did not name the officials on either side, the dates of the contacts, or a venue. A reader cannot yet tell a phone call from a paper. The Munich meeting was the disclosure, not the negotiation.

What India can offer, and what it cannot, follows from what it buys. It is one of the largest remaining buyers of Russian seaborne crude. It is also a state Ukraine has courted for support at the G20 and for reconstruction contracts. A non-attack idea on energy infrastructure would protect Russian export terminals that supply Indian refiners and Ukrainian ports that supply grain India and its neighbours import. That symmetry is why both capitals might take the call. It is also why neither will treat Delhi as a principal. The principals remain Moscow, Kyiv and the capitals arming Kyiv.

The sentence to test over the next month is whether a Black Sea shipping arrangement is announced with an Indian role written into it, or whether Jaishankar's remark stays a description of quiet contacts. He has put the subjects on the record: hulls, grain, energy, and strikes not carried out. He has not put a draft, a date or a co-signatory next to them.