Modi paid a nearly nine-hour visit to Kyiv.

Modi paid a nearly nine-hour visit to Kyiv.

Modi paid a nearly nine-hour visit to Kyiv.

Kyiv: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to visit India during their talks. Modi paid a nearly nine-hour visit to Kyiv in the first-ever visit to Ukraine by an Indian prime minister since it became independent over three decades back.

At a media briefing following the talks between the two leaders, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar confirmed that Modi invited Zelensky to visit India. "It's significant that our prime minister has visited Ukraine for the first time since 1992. It is natural on such occasions that he extends an invitation, which he did in this case," he said. "So we expect that at some point, as per his convenience, President Zelensky will visit India," Jaishankar added.

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A joint statement also said that Modi invited Zelensky to visit India at a mutually convenient opportunity. At the media briefing, Jaishankar, replying to a question, said that India's energy trade with Russia also came up for discussions.

"Yes, it did. I wouldn't say at great length, but what we did was to explain to the Ukrainian side what was the energy market scenario, the fact that today many energy producers are sanctioned, making the market potentially very tight; and why actually today there is a compulsion, in fact not just a compulsion, I mean why it is in the interest of the international economy as a whole, that oil prices remain reasonable and stable," he said.