Jaishankar says India is now talking to Moscow and Kyiv on grain, energy and ships

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said on Sunday that India has moved past public advocacy and is holding conversations with both Moscow and Kyiv on the war. He listed Black Sea shipping safety, grain exports, energy exports and what he called non-attack possibilities. The remarks were made at the Munich Leaders Meeting and reported by Business Standard and ANI.

He called the conflict unfortunate and repeated that India wants it to end through dialogue. The new sentence was the one about being more involved in recent months. He said the contacts began with the safety of shipping in the Black Sea and had widened to immediate concerns both sides have. He described those talks as ongoing. He did not say a text had been tabled, or that either capital had accepted a proposal.

The timing sits next to two other statements. President Vladimir Putin said days earlier that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had good ideas for a mutually acceptable solution. Ukraine's foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said on Friday that Kyiv had received separate proposals from India and three other countries for a possible ceasefire. Jaishankar did not confirm that a formal paper had gone to Kyiv. He did confirm conversations on grain, energy and shipping. The gap between Sybiha's word, proposals, and Jaishankar's word, conversations, is the part neither side has closed in public.

Those three subjects are operational, not rhetorical. Black Sea shipping is how Ukrainian grain leaves and how some Russian exports move when land routes are politically closed. A non-attack understanding, if one were reached, would be a limit on strikes against ports, ships or energy sites, not a settlement of territory. Jaishankar placed it in a list of immediate concerns. He did not present it as a peace plan. Grain and energy are also the two commodities India buys and the one Ukraine sells. A conversation that covers them is a conversation about cargo, insurance and whether a port is struck this week.

On Russia more broadly, he said the relationship had been strong since the 1950s and that the history had not been forgotten. He also said it had widened beyond that legacy. He used a temperature metaphor for how close New Delhi wants the tie to be: not too hot, not too good, somewhere in between. The line is a description of hedging. It is also a way of saying that talks on the war are not a turn away from Moscow. Defence supply, oil, and the older political tie all sit on the Russian side of that sentence. The Kyiv conversations sit on the other.

The comments followed a meeting of the Consultative Committee of the Ministry of External Affairs on India-Russia relations. Members reviewed contacts with both capitals, and looked at transit projects, energy cooperation and connectivity. The committee is a parliamentary body attached to the ministry. It does not negotiate. It is where Jaishankar chose to locate the disclosure that the contacts exist. Putting the line in that room, and then at Munich, makes it a public position rather than a background briefing.

What he did not give is a channel, a date or a draft. Sybiha's Friday remark about proposals from India and three other states is the nearest thing to a document. Until one of those proposals is published, the Indian role is a set of subjects: ships, grain, energy, and the possibility that some sites are not struck. That is narrower than mediation, and more specific than a call for talks. The three other states Sybiha mentioned were not named in the Indian account.

The practical test is whether any of those subjects produces a recorded arrangement. A shipping corridor that holds for a week is a fact. A sentence about conversations is a disclosure. Jaishankar has now made the disclosure in public, after years in which New Delhi said it was urging dialogue and did not say it was carrying points between the two sides. The next verifiable step is a proposal either capital is willing to describe in its own words. Until that text exists, the new fact is the list: Black Sea ships, grain, energy, and non-attack options, all described as ongoing.