This month it will be six months of the Russia-Ukraine conflict—six months of non-stop war and sanctions that have endangered food security all around the globe and led to increasing oil prices and skyrocketing inflation. The majority of the economies around the world are predicted to be sliding into recession. Amid this, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has assured India that “there is no question of India getting into recession or a stagflation or a technical recession like the US”, that the country’s economic fundamentals are strong, GST collection has gone up, manufacturing is picking up, the country’s debt to GDP ratio is lower than many developed countries, etc. All very commendable when disruption has become the norm in the world in the last two and a half years—from the Covid-19 pandemic, which is still not over, to the Russia-Ukraine war. Whatever the Opposition might be saying, that India is going the Sri Lanka way, the fact is that major economic missteps have to be taken for that to happen, like the way it happened in Sri Lanka—the overnight switch to organic fertilisers that impacted tea and rice production, thus hitting the country’s main revenue earner and destroying its food security. Of course, as the government has been saying, some states have to show some fiscal responsibility as they can derail the India story. It is a different matter that the “top” fiscally irresponsible states are Opposition ruled. But that is a story for another day. The bottom line is, if India had not shown the sagacity to buy discounted Russian oil and thus keep the disruption at a minimum, it might have gone the way many western countries are headed. Take a look at Germany, for instance, the European country with the maximum dependence on Russian gas, supply of which it has promised to phase out. It is just as if to show Germany what phasing out would mean Vladimir Putin has weaponized gas by shutting down the Nord Stream pipeline under the pretext of maintenance. As a result of which, Germany’s supply has been hit to the extent that heating may become a problem in winter and rationing of gas for domestic use may have to start. The energy crisis is so severe that the German government is scouring for fuel, while also reactivating its coal plants, thus adding to major air pollution. And to think of the pressure that India has had to face—and is still facing—when it refused to cut down, and instead ramped up its purchase of Russian oil. It is but natural for India to keep its national interest ahead of “principles” on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The charge often hurled at India of funding Russia’s war, is hokum, because even after increasing its purchase of Russian fossil fuel, after the first hundred days of the war, India was the eighth largest buyer in the world, with the top seven places reserved for China and nations such as Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Turkey, Poland and France. The need of the hour is an immediate cessation of violence, which India has been insisting on. Instead what we are witnessing is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy trying to make the West believe that he can win the war and it is the West’s duty to fund this war between “good and evil”. He has found an enthusiastic cheerleader in US President Joe Biden, who has made this war into a matter of personal prestige and is fighting a proxy war with Vladimir Putin by arming Zelenskyy with the most sophisticated weapons for free—weapons that somehow do not seem to be winning the war for Ukraine, and are bound to find their way into the black market sooner than later. This is not to justify Putin’s invasion of Ukraine; but if the West has such a huge problem with him, it should try to remove him, instead of taking the sanctions-forRussia and weapons-for-Ukraine route, for, till date, the Russians are not showing any signs of rising up against Putin. But the cascading effect of the war and the sanctions has affected the whole world. It doesn’t seem that Putin is losing the war, notwithstanding western assertions to the contrary. He seems to be effectively blockading Ukraine, and punishing the West. In fact, the immediate casualties of the war are the Western leaders: Boris Johnson has lost his chair, Emmanuel Macron his majority and Joe Biden is about to lose his midterm elections. Hence, isn’t it time for the West to insist on a cessation of violence, to ask Zelenskyy to negotiate with Putin and settle for a truncated Ukraine and peace? When it comes to giving up some territory to Putin—territory which anyway was highly contested—and reduce the suffering of the rest of the world, the latter is definitely a better option. The West needs to ask Zelenskyy to be a true leader, instead of a Vogue poster boy. Listen to India for once and stop this war. Enough is enough.