Against the backdrop of reports of India’s role in starting talks between Russia and Ukraine, Ronen Sen said “access” to the top leadership is essential for secret talks.
Against the backdrop of reports of India’s role in starting talks between Russia and Ukraine, Ronen Sen said “access” to the top leadership is essential for secret talks.
Long before he became president of Russia, Vladimir Putin served as the first deputy mayor of Leningrad (later Saint Petersburg) and was known as a man of few words, recalled a veteran Indian diplomat who had served in the Soviet Union. He spent almost thirteen years of his professional career in the U.S. and later in Russia. Ronen Sen who served as joint secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office to Indian prime ministers Rajiv Gandhi, VP Singh, Chandrasekhar and PV Narasimha Rao and often served as “special envoy”, remarked that if the other side was assured If given, a secret negotiation may be successful. That the deployed envoys have full access to India’s top political leadership.
“In the Soviet system, the mayors of Moscow and Leningrad were important and were usually members of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This tradition continued when the USSR dissolved and the mayors of St. Petersburg and Moscow remained important As the first deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Putin was always measured in his remarks,” said Mr. Sen, who visited Moscow during Narasimha Rao’s prime ministership in the early 1990s and was six years old by the Vajpayee era. Was the Indian ambassador for a year.
He said Mr Putin was known for his work in Soviet intelligence and it was known that he had served a good part of his KGB years in East Germany during the Cold War.
President Putin turns seventy this year, which saw Moscow launch its biggest military operation in Europe campaign against ukraine which continues. In the early 1990s Mr Putin began his tentative move to the top political post in Russia, which would eventually make him the successor to President Boris Yeltsin in 2001. The main characters of the current presidential party emerged in Moscow in the 1990s. venue. As Indian Ambassador, Mr. Sen also witnessed the rise of current Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who has become the voice of Russia in the rest of the world due to his proficiency in English.
“In those days Mr. Lavrov was in charge of international organization in the Russian Foreign Ministry and shortly after I arrived in Moscow, he left for the United Nations Headquarters in New York,” recalled Mr. Sen, who was the first Indian ambassador to the Russian Federation. After the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mr. Lavrov earned a name for himself at the United Nations and has been one of the longest-serving Russian officials—besides Zamir Kabulov—in peacebuilding in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban regime under US offensive in 2000. are engaged. ,
As the first Indian ambassador to Russia, the task was important for Ambassador Sen as he had to ensure continuity of military supplies to India despite the chaotic situation in Moscow in the early years of the Yeltsin government. “In addition to being the main defense supplier to India, the Soviet Union was also India’s second largest export destination after the United States,” Mr. Sen said, recalling the economic impact of the dissolution of the Soviet Union on India. It was part of his task to ensure that India would not be heavily affected by the disintegration of the Soviet structure.
During his years of working in the Indian Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), Mr. Sen often served as the Prime Minister’s special envoy to engage foreign leaders. These were highly strategic communications that Indian prime ministers made during the end of the Cold War and the early years after the Cold War when India had to negotiate several regional conflicts such as Afghanistan as well as the global power game. He often traveled in special aircraft and at short notice without an Indian passport. Mr Sen says that involving a foreign leader for talks can be successful only if the interlocutor has ‘access’ to the top political leadership and complete secrecy is ensured. “Access to the top leadership is the key to judicious dialogue on important issues,” Mr. Sen indicated, indicating that covert diplomacy on the contentious issue has a greater chance of success if the other side is assured that envoys have access to leadership and trust. enjoys.
Mr. Sen was first posted to Russia in 1968 as DP Dhar’s ambassador and served in Moscow until the signing of the 1971 Indo-Soviet Friendship Treaty, which was decisive for India’s victory in the war against Pakistan that year. He was posted to California as India’s commercial consul when he met the state’s governor, Ronald Reagan. He returned to Moscow at the end of that decade and would later go on to an ambassadorial posting in Moscow during Yeltsin’s years.
Recalling his early acquaintance with Governor Reagan, Mr. Sen said his tenure in California came in handy when Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi sought access to American high-tech and a decades-long Soviet-caused crisis in Afghanistan. To involve President Reagan in diplomacy. The country’s occupation of Afghanistan (1979-’89). Ambassador Sen was Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s special envoy in secret talks with US Ambassador John Gunther Dean on a joint effort to form a national unity government in Kabul after the end of the Soviet occupation.