Chancellor of Germany Olaf Soltz declared that he wanted to deepen his country’s relations with India before meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi.

“India and Germany have very good relations and want to deepen them. This will be the topic of our discussions and, more importantly, world peace,” Soltz tweeted.

Scholz, who is meeting with Modi for the fourth time, arrived in India a day after the first anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine, signaling the growing importance of New Delhi to Western powers seeking support to counter the Russian invasion.

Scholz is also expected to press for a $5.2 billion deal to sell six conventional submarines to New Delhi, although this new Western power attempt to reduce India’s dependence on Russia for military hardware is not expected to yield immediate results.

It’s hard to try to get through

Germany’s drive to turn to India is running into difficulties, given that close economic ties with China, Germany’s main equipment buyer, and Russia, its main energy supplier, have played a role in Germany’s prosperity over the past 15 years.

While one of the stated goals of the trip is to improve economic ties, officials are aware of the need to put pressure on the soon-to-be most populous country in the world to oppose Russian aggression, even though severing economic ties with India with Moscow is not included. into plans. table.

“Each region has its own point of view,” the German official said. “Each region has its own way of practicing diplomacy. In our own negotiations, we agreed on who is the aggressor and who is the victim.”

The Modi government did not openly criticize Moscow for the invasion, but instead called for dialogue and diplomacy to end the war. India has also significantly increased its purchases of oil from Russia, its largest defense supplier, despite falling prices.

“They pay less, the Indians are happy with that. Russia gets less, and that suits us,” said a German government spokesman, adding that other countries cannot be expected to impose sanctions, as the European Union and the United States do.

^{Source: APE-MEB, Reuters}