"Will Be Talking About It": Boris Johnson On Prodding PM Modi On Russia

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday said he would be raising Russia's invasion of Ukraine in his talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he arrived in India touting job-creating investment but facing long odds to get his reluctant counterpart to back Western action against Moscow.

"Well, they (India) have already raised Ukraine. As you can imagine, with Prime Minister Modi. And actually, if you look at what the Indians have said, they were very strong in their condemnation of the atrocities in Bucha," Mr Johnson said during a visit to a factory in Gujarat.

"As I think everybody understands, India and Russia have historically very different a relationship, perhaps, than Russia and the UK have had over the last couple of decades. We have to reflect that reality, but clearly, I'll be talking about it to Narendra Modi," he added.

Mr Johnson arrived in Gujarat - PM Modi's home state and the ancestral home to half of the United Kingdom's British Indians - where he met business leaders and took a cultural tour of the historic Ahmedabad city.

The British leader, who will leave for New Delhi to meet PM Modi on Friday, began his visit with a trip to Sabarmati ashram, once the home of Mahatma Gandhi, where he was invited to sit cross-legged and work a wooden spinning wheel known as the charkha.

Downing Street said the visit would yield new partnerships on defence, artificial intelligence and green energy, along with investment deals in areas including robotics, electric vehicles and satellite launches.

But London acknowledges that it is some way off clinching a post-Brexit trade deal with PM Modi's government, which wants more visas for Indians to work or study in the UK.

India meanwhile has refused openly to condemn the Kremlin for its invasion of Ukraine, reliant as it is on Russian imports of energy, agricultural goods and military hardware.

UK's Foreign Secretary Liz Truss came away from New Delhi empty-handed last month when she pressed the Indians to do more against Russia, and PM Modi has also given short shrift to appeals from US President Joe Biden.

Mr Johnson will tout the benefits of India moving more quickly towards renewables -- a pertinent strategic issue as countries attempt to pivot away from Russian energy.

"Both our countries are excessively reliant on foreign hydrocarbons. And we need to move away from that together," Mr Johnson said.

"One of the things that we're talking about is what we can do to build partnerships on hydrogen, on electric vehicles, on offshore wind, on all the ways that you can reduce the cost of energy for people with green technology."

Downing Street has denied that, given the Ukraine war's impact on energy supplies, it is soft-pedalling its commitment to net-zero carbon emissions -– after India joined with China to torpedo a stronger accord at the COP26 climate summit held in Scotland last year.

The UK also has a sizeable Sikh community, and its leaders have been demanding that Johnson raise the case of Scotsman Jagtar Singh Johal, who has been detained without trial in India for more than four years.