As NATO heads of state gather in Washington for two days of talks and a 75th anniversary celebration of the trans-Atlantic alliance, another summit is occurring thousands of miles to the east that could be just as significant for the United States.

On Monday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi flew to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, marking his first trip to Russia since 2019. Modi’s foray couldn’t have come at a worse time in terms of optics — on the day of his trip, Russian bombs hit Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital in Kyiv, killing dozens of people and flattening the structure into a pile of rubble. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was beside himself that Modi, a seasoned statesman after a decade in India’s top job, went ahead with the trip anyway.