India 'appreciates' Trump-Putin meet; but has New Delhi gained anything from Alaska Summit?

The Ministry of External Affairs, on Saturday, put out a statement saying that India welcomes the meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The ministry said it was commendable that both leaders were in the pursuit of peace.

The statement comes a day after the the two leaders met in Anchorage, Alaska, to discuss a means to end the war in Ukraine. It was also Putin’s first visit to the US after a decade.

The statement also said that India appreciates the progress made in the summit and that the way forward was only through dialogue and diplomacy. “The world wants to see an early end to the conflict in Ukraine,” the statement read.

The meeting on Friday, which lasted for nearly three hours at the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, ended in an inconclusive manner. The two leaders had appeared before reporters after the meeting, but didn't take any questions.

Trump said, “We had an extremely productive meeting and many points were agreed to; there are just a very few that are left.” “We didn't get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there,” he added.

The US president had then said he would share the results of the meeting with European leaders and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had all demanded a ceasefire and rejected giving up territory to make peace.

In the press briefing after the meeting, Putin reiterated that NATO’s expansion needed to be stopped before a peace deal was made.

Trump, however, had taken to Truth Social to say, "It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up."

The inconclusive nature of the meeting has left India in a shaky position. The US recently imposed an additional 25 per cent sanctions on top of the existing 25 per cent on India for buying Russian oil, creating a tariff tension between the two countries.

The US still hasn't made clear what further actions it may take towards countries buying oil from Russia. Trump had said that he may not impose additional tariffs on countries that continue to buy Russian oil. 

Before he left for the summit, he told reporters, "Well, he (Russian President Vladimir Putin) lost an oil client, so to speak, which is India, which was doing about 40 per cent of the oil. China, as you know, is doing a lot...And if I did what's called a secondary sanction, or a secondary tariff, it would be very devastating from their standpoint. If I have to do it, I'll do it. Maybe I won't have to do it."

However, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had earlier said, "Sanctions can go up, they can be loosened. They can have a definitive life. They can go on indefinitely. You know, there's this Russian shadow fleet of ships around the world that I think we could crack down on."

India condemned the action, calling it “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable”. However, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he will not back down from buying Russian oil.

India had been hanging on to the hopes that the US-Russia summit would bring about peace and, as a result, ease the ongoing sanctions on India.

A peace deal would have given India the option to continue its neutral stance between the two warring countries.

India