The real reason why Indian perspective on Ukraine-Russia war changed

In the age when people of Europe and America get emotional over wars of other countries, forgetting the practical side they try to spout otherwise while belittling the culture and perspective of people of other countries, I still tried to dig more into the transitioning image of the Ukraine-Russia war with regards to India. Why?

I thought maybe as someone who don’t have the horse in the race of Neo imperialism that European countries tend to forget that their ‘governments’ have, I could maybe provide a non biassed take on why contrary to the neutral stance of Indian government, common citizens in India including the pseudo leftists who can’t stop drooling over west and demeaning India, started to side with Russia rather than Ukraine, contrary to what western citizens and especially netizens wanted to see.

The public sentiment in India was highly supportive of Ukraine when the war started. People were condemning Russia in all the media. It was considered an unprovoked aggression, which most people were against. It was also seen as a large country invading a small country, thus the David and Goliath sentiment of supporting the underdog was seen everywhere. As citizens of a country who have felt the tremors and the devastating aftermaths that the invasion brings, before independence from Brits and after that from neighboring countries, there was no way in which people could not stand with citizens of Ukraine. People even forgot how Ukrainian government has supported Pakistan over the years with weapons and UN appeals, despite the huge atrocities committed by them. The USA, UK and even France had a reason…the same reason that they feel threatened every time they see China rising up to them. But for Ukraine who, forget the foot, didn’t even have a toe in the game, what was the reason to support an epicenter of terrorism so much? Is it too much to see non-abrahmic nation grow much more than a pseudo secular European nation that was showing potential of growth despite the recurring rape of resources it faced by recurring raids and invasions over the decades? Ukraine over the years had nothing but disdain for India and a weird kind of fetish for Pakistan, maybe because people of both countries are ultimately…people who come under the umbrella of abrahamic religion.

There are three important reasons why the support for Ukraine wore off and the support for the invading side rose up:-

1. The treatment of Indian students in Ukraine before and amidst the war — Countless videos started popping up on social media of Indian medical students being systematically racially discriminated against in Ukraine when they were trying to escape the country. Everywhere preferences were given to people of specific skin color. There were also scenes of Indians not being allowed to cross the border as some sort of bargaining chip. And those of Ukrainian diplomats in the UN speaking in a language that can be considered undiplomatic when India asked for help to get her students out. The UN diplomats of Ukraine were talking in an uncaring manner in a way that can be misunderstood as purposefully keeping students as hostages to get Indian government support. At the same time, Russian diplomats were talking in a caring, attentive way, and even said they would do the rescue from their side, which I don’t know if it happened or not, but all these videos were watched by the public, and opinions formed from there.
2. The treatment of India and her citizens by the media and citizens of Europe/America — News began to pile up, of various western countries condemning India for abstaining and not voting against Russia in the UN. This is the same UN where 5 countries enjoy veto power to do whatever the heck they want. India does not have this veto power; thus, we had to always buy this power from someone. The only reliable country that has consistently helped her with Veto is Russia. If the Indian government votes against them, they simply do not give a veto the next time she needs it. And, if we assume one other country like France sells us their VETO usage rights, then without Russia, we will become dependent on a single entity, and as everyone knows, especially from capitalist hellholes like the USA, a monopoly increases cost and reliance. If they want to see India vote independently in the UN against a country that gives veto to India, then they need to either remove this veto system or give veto to India. Then there was social media outrage against India by many Europeans and Americans. And this is when the opinion really started to change in India from “full support to Ukraine” to “indifference” as it felt like western powers were forcing India, and no one likes to be lectured to, especially from barbarians in sophisticated dresses. On social media websites, under every post about India, there would be comments like “sanction India” and much worse things, and slowly these things started to make people think “maybe there is a different side of the story.”
3. The hypocrisy of the west that people from non western nations, especially Ukraine get to see again and again — When people on social media actively started doing their research, facts about Ukraine-India relations started popping up. Ukraine’s support to Pakistan in the Kargil war against India in 1999. Ukraine’s supply of weapons, including tanks to Pakistan etc. A few weeks ago, Ukraine’s Chair of Committee on Foreign Policy Oleksandr Merezhko suggested the imposition of sanctions on India during his visit to the US. These things change opinions, and people have gone from “Oh no, slava Ukraine” to “Yet another US-Russia proxy war”. How is this any different from the Iraq war, Vietnam war, or the ongoing Yemen war? The hypocrisy of the participating countries is what hurts the most. Azerbaijan is invading Armenia, and none of these countries are helping Armenia, where extreme cruelty to Armenian civilians and soldiers is happening against the Geneva Convention. Instead, they are supporting Azerbaijan and buying their oil and gas. The very same thing they are doing with Russia by buying their oil and gas, while threatening to cut the hands of other countries who imports way less than them in the first place. Not to mention, the shoddy thing that the western countries did during the Kargil war by trying to invade India using their navy, and it was the USSR that stopped them.

And yes, there’s a 4th reason as well but it’s something that, because of blind emotional rage and unregulated empathy, almost everyone forgets to notice. The part that Ukraine, especially its government played in all of this, by (probably) pushing the Kremlin to invade in the first place as other options were either lost or the bridges of diplomacy were burnt by Ukrainians themselves.

International relations have always been about big powerful countries bullying smaller countries for thousands of years. Those with power rule, and others obey. When they don’t obey or change allegiance, there is a war. This is not at all fair, but it is reality. When Cuba wanted to keep some missiles, it was the Cuban Missile Crisis and deserved to be invaded. But when Ukraine, which is literally bordering Russia on flat plains, wants to keep the entire NATO force within striking range of Moscow, is it not a crisis?

The reality is that Ukraine’s politicians are dumb or have been bought out by foreign powers to act dumb. They have never acted in the best interest of their country. All they needed to do was to play the politics of small to medium countries and play the neutral double game trying to win favors from both Russia and the West. This is what all countries of that power range do.

In this particular case, the Russian demand was that they do not join NATO. They could have agreed to it. And then Russia would have looked dumb and would not have invaded. Now, wait 7–10 years until either Putin dies or new power comes, then at an opportune time when Russia is weak, join NATO. This is what any sensible small to medium country would do. Was it worth going into direct war for this simple statement? Or playing politics for 10 years and doing it at the right time? There were a lot of chances to prevent this war, but no one seemed interested. And no one really cares about the people of Ukraine including their idiot president himself. It has always been about the political powers fighting each other for other reasons.

Now, I have compiled all the reasons for the support, let me just go on a rant for a bit more. I just want to take some more time to highlight the real winners and losers of this war.

Winners — The second biggest winners are the Oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia who are facing fund crunch due to their massive construction projects. Now they can sell oil for a premium price. Do you know how they do that? They simply REDUCE oil production, and since they ask all producers to increase prices. This is a real cartel that the entire world accepts because of our next winner. The biggest winner of this war — UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. During Covid, America printed trillions of dollars and handed them out to people and businesses as support. Now, if any country printed money like that, it would cause high inflation. But America is an exception since their currency is used around the world. So their inflation gets exported to everyone around the world. But even better, do you know what rich investors do when there is a global crisis? They panic and convert their wealth to gold and dollars as they are considered safe. Out of this, Dollar is their main choice as it is more liquid. Thus, it is possible to not only export inflation to other countries but also profit from it. And just like that during the Ukraine war, wealthy people and companies around the world converted their money to USD. Thus, instead of the US experiencing inflation, their currency bloomed while all other currencies went down. This is the primary reason why your currency fell, no matter which country you live in.

I would like to conclude my analysis with a few words for people especially Europeans as I don’t have iota of faith in America anymore. The country will die from inside someday as it happened again and again with nations and empires who had decided to take on the world — Romans, mongols, ottoman empire, etc. This war made Europeans once again fully dependent on America, instead of a Europe that had slowly started to become a competitor of America. This decreased the wealth of Europe while increasing that of America. The game played by America is so good here that it won in every way possible without firing a single bullet. And their real opponents are cheering for them and not even realizing they have been conned! What a genius play! And historically, America became what it is today because of the two world wars that destroyed the entire world but made America rich as it propped up a lot of industries to make weapons and sell them to Europe. And ultimately this allowed them to set the dollar as the international currency. This war is a mere duplication of that American success for the third time. The European politicians know this, and this is why powerful countries like Germany and France were hesitant at first in joining the Ukraine-Russia conflict. But democracy is such that it can be manipulated to great extent using the media and thus politicians can’t do anything, and here no manipulation is even necessary, because common people know war is bad, invaders are bad, Hitler is bad, Putin is Hitler. Look at even the first address of the US about the Ukraine war, and you will see the American president repeatedly say “Putin’s war” instead of “Russia-Ukraine war”. And you will see this word gets repeated everywhere. This is just one of the examples of how world powers continue to dominate the world.

If the majority of people could learn and analyses situations to this depth, Europeans will be deeply upset at the US for playing this sneaky game against them indirectly. This is the actual game, and it didn’t sour relations, did it? The only politicians in Europe who had the capability to see and play this game were authoritarian ones who did play disregarding public opinion for their own benefits, like Turkey trying to gain some benefit out of this, but they too were not powerful enough to go against this kind of master-play by the US.

There is only one lesson to learn from all of this — America doesn’t want allies but vassal states. Being its friend or enemy is both a frightening stance and India decided to choose to stay neutral for the benefit of its people that Europeans have disdain against or white man’s problem approach to look at things…no in-between.