India, Brazil, South Africa, Pakistan and other major emerging economies have rebuffed the Biden administration’s attempts to make them team up with the US against Russia amid the conflict in Ukraine, the Washington Post has reported, citing leaked Pentagon files.
According to classified US intelligence documents, which investigators believe were released online by US Air National Guard serviceman Jack Teixeira, India has no intention of taking sides in the standoff over Ukraine, the paper reported on Saturday.
One of the documents seen by the Post suggests that during a meeting in February, Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Kumar Doval told the Secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolay Patrushev, that New Delhi was resisting pressure to support a Western-backed UN resolution on Ukraine. India “would not deviate from the principled position it had taken in the past,” Doval reportedly assured the Russian official.
Another leaked file suggested that Brazil was more interested in playing a mediation role in the conflict than supporting Washington and its allies. Russia favours the idea of a “world peace bloc” to resolve the crisis over Ukraine, put forward by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva during his visit to China earlier this month. Moscow believes it would counteract the West’s “aggressor-victim” narrative about Kiev, according to the document.