Archives for 2022

New Delhi: The current crisis in Ukraine will have consequences for the whole world, including for Russia-India relations, and the extent of its impact cannot be envisaged now, Russian Ambassador Denis Alipov said on Saturday.

At the same time, he said India can take advantage of the situation to bolster economic ties with Russia as Moscow’s Western partners have refused to cooperate with it.

The Russian envoy said the current situation has presented a “window of opportunity” for Indian businesses to expand their presence in Russia and that it would make sense for India to take a closer look at economic cooperation with Russia.

The remarks of the ambassador featured in a video posted by the Russian embassy on its Twitter handle.

“This crisis will have consequences for the whole world, including for the Russia-India relations. To what extent, it will be reflected, probably no one can say now,” Alipov said.

“We perceive from the fact that our relations are developing in the interests of the two countries and they are of strategic nature. There may be an impact in terms of transactions,” he said.

Referring to the possible impact of the Western sanctions on India-Russia ties, he said there is a bilateral mechanism for mutual settlements of transactions in national currencies.

“There is a working bilateral mechanism for mutual settlements in national currencies which is already being used. The only question is how to use it on a wider scale,” he said.

The ambassador suggested that the use of the mechanism widely will help in offsetting the impact of the sanctions.

“It makes sense for the Indians to take advantage of the situation when many Western partners refused to cooperate with us, and more actively penetrate the Russian market,” he said.

“This is a window of opportunity for Indian businesses. It also makes sense for India to take a closer look at cooperation with Russia,” Alipov said.

The ambassador also complimented India for its “independent” foreign policy.

“We have repeatedly stated that we welcome the independent foreign policy of India and strengthening of its role and influence in the international arena,” he said.

India has abstained from resolutions at the United Nations which were brought up to criticise Russia for its military aggression on Ukraine. “We never put any pressure on her (India) and do not set any conditions as you know. The Indians are now under severe pressure in the US,” Alipov said.

On the evacuation of stranded Indians from conflict zones in Ukraine, the Russian ambassador said his government has been trying its best to take them out from eastern Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv, Sumy and Pisochyn.

Alipov claimed that around 3,000 Indians are stuck in Kharkiv, nearly 900 in Pisochyn and 670 in Sumy.

However, at a media briefing on Saturday, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said the safe exit of Indians from Kharkiv and Pisochyn is almost complete.

“Pisochyn has been evacuated of all Indian citizens. The mission will continue to remain in touch with them through their journey,” the Indian embassy in Ukraine tweeted in the evening.

Bagchi said India is now focusing on evacuating around 700 Indian students from Sumy, a city in eastern Ukraine that is around 60 km from the Russian border.

“The Indians turned to us for help and we responded. We created special groups that are ready to take the Indians to Russian territory and then transport them to India.

“But the catch is that the fighting in these areas continues and where the Indians are, our forces are not. There is no way to pick them up. We have to meet in some places that are not under fire from Ukraine,” Alipov said.

He said the Russian side doesn’t have access to these areas and that fighting has been going on with the Ukrainian troops.

The envoy said Russia has kept ready hundreds of buses along its borders for transporting the stranded Indians.

“Our buses are waiting and will wait as long as it takes,” he said.

New Delhi: Former Supreme Court judge Justice Madan B Lokur noted on Saturday that the media is under attack “in many ways” in the country but the freedom of press is a fundamental right guaranteed under the Constitution and journalists must stand up to protect it.

Addressing a programme organised to present the IPI-India awards for excellence in journalism, he said a series of events, including lodging of FIRs against scribes and putting them under arrest for doing their job, has had “a chilling effect” on mediapersons, forcing them to become “far more cautious than they ought to be”.

“It is a matter of common knowledge that the press is under attack in many ways. Many journalists have been arrested and kept in prison for a considerable period of time for doing their work. Many others have FIRs against them for the same reason. There are also instances of some journalists being politely asked to toe the line…,” Justice Lokur said.

There were instances where the release of advertisements to media organisations was stopped or payments against the advertisements were withheld by the establishment, “thereby crippling small newspapers”, he pointed out.

“There is now a recent incident. A television channel’s licence has not been renewed on grounds of national security, without disclosing the material,” Justice Lokur noted, in an apparent reference to the case of Malayalam news channel MediaOne, which has filed an appeal against the Kerala High Court judgment that upheld the Centre’s decision.

“In other words, we are seeing the same side of the coin but from two different perspectives — one that upsets the establishment without any apparent justification and which results in a blow from the heavy hand of the law or the heavy hand of the establishment and the other that may have some undisclosed justification, which has the same result,” Justice Lokur said.

It is for this reason that the expression, “chilling effect”, has become quite common these days and consequently, journalists have become far more cautious than they ought to be or had been in the past, he added.

“Journalists need to stand up to protect their constitutional and fundamental rights, so that accusations of ‘godi media’ or somewhat compromised media do not become descriptive,” Justice Lokur said.

He highlighted the importance of investigative journalism and exhorted journalists to come up with investigative reports on issues of human interests and concerns, issues related to governance and various other challenges that the country is facing.

“Investigative journalism, I believe, is on the wane, with some exceptions,” he said and asked, “Is it not possible to pick up one of the many issues and challenges facing our country and investigate the causes and effects of some of these events?”

Justice Lokur noted that soon after the lockdown announced in 2020 to curb the spread of COVID-19, the country saw “millions of people” leaving for their homes “on foot, on cycles or on overloaded tempos and trucks”.

However, the Supreme Court was informed by the Centre that no one was on the road at that time, he said.

“Did we have the facts or did we not? Did we have the truth or did we not?” Justice Lokur asked.

He said social and larger issues need to be highlighted through investigative journalism as this kind of reporting can lead to “better governance and policy changes” and help improve the lives of those belonging to marginalised sections.

“Journalists must contribute stories that go viral,” he said.

At the event, veteran British journalist Sir Mark Tully presented the International Press Institute (IPI) India Award for Excellence in Journalism-2021 to Sreenivasan Jain and Mariyam Alavi of NDTV for their report on “untruthfulness of the cases of forcible conversion registered against young men belonging to the Muslim community who had married Hindu women in Uttar Pradesh, in the name of love jihad”.

Lakshmi Subramanian and Prakash Chandra of The Week magazine received the award for their report on tracing Indians, especially women, who were trapped in refugee camps in the civil war-torn regions of Syria and Iraq.

Ritika Chopra of The Indian Express received the IPI-India Award for Excellence in Journalism-2020 for her exclusive reports on the internal fissures in the Election Commission (EC) on complaints of Model Code of Conduct violations against VVIPs.

Lviv (Ukraine) (AP): Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Ukrainian statehood is in jeopardy and likened the West’s sanctions on Russia to declaring war, while a promised cease-fire in the besieged port city of Mariupol collapsed amid scenes of terror.

With the Kremlin’s rhetoric growing fiercer and a reprieve from fighting dissolving, Russian troops continued to shell encircled cities and the number of Ukrainians forced from their country grew to 1.4 million.

By Saturday night Russian forces had intensified their shelling of Mariupol, while dropping powerful bombs on residential areas of Chernihiv, a city north of Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said.

Bereft mothers mourned slain children, wounded soldiers were fitted with tourniquets and doctors worked by the light of their cellphones as bleakness and desperation pervaded. Putin continued to pin the blame for all of it squarely on the Ukrainian leadership and slammed their resistance to the invasion.

If they continue to do what they are doing, they are calling into question the future of Ukrainian statehood, he said. And if this happens, it will be entirely on their conscience.

He also hit out at Western sanctions that have crippled Russia’s economy and sent the value of its currency tumbling.

These sanctions that are being imposed, they are akin to declaring war, he said during a televised meeting with flight attendants from Russian airline Aeroflot. But thank God, we haven’t got there yet.

Russia’s financial system suffered yet another blow as Mastercard and Visa announced they were suspending operations in the country.

Ten days after Russian forces invaded, the struggle to enforce the temporary cease-fires in Mariupol and the eastern city of Volnovakha showed the fragility of efforts to stop the fighting across Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials said Russian artillery fire and airstrikes had prevented residents from leaving before the agreed-to evacuations got underway. Putin accused Ukraine of sabotaging the effort.

A third round of talks between Russia and Ukraine will take place Monday, according to Davyd Arakhamia, a member of the Ukrainian delegation. He gave no additional details, including where they would take place.

Previous meetings were held in Belarus and led to the failed cease-fire agreement to create humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of children, women, and older people from besieged cities, where pharmacies have run bare, hundreds of thousands face food and water shortages, and the injured have been succumbing to their wounds.

Russia has made significant advances in the south, seeking to cut off Ukraine’s access to the sea. Capturing Mariupol could allow Russia to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.

The West has broadly backed Ukraine, offering aid and weapons and slapping Russia with vast sanctions. But the fight itself has been left to Ukrainians, who have expressed a mixture of courageous resolve and despondency.

Ukraine is bleeding, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a video released Saturday, but Ukraine has not fallen.

Russian troops advanced on a third nuclear power plant, having already taken control of one of the four operating in the country and the closed plant in Chernobyl, Zelenskyy told U.S. lawmakers.

Zelenskyy pleaded with the lawmakers for additional help, specifically fighter planes to help secure the skies over Ukraine, even as he insisted Russia was being defeated.

We’re inflicting losses on the occupants they could not see in their worst nightmare, Zelenskyy said.

Russian troops took control of the southern port city of Kherson this week. Although they have encircled Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv and Sumy, Ukrainian forces have managed to keep control of key cities in central and southeastern Ukraine, Zelenskyy said.

Diplomatic efforts continued as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Poland to meet with the prime minister and foreign minister, a day after attending a NATO meeting in Brussels in which the alliance pledged to step up support for eastern flank members.

In Moscow, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met with Putin at the Kremlin. Israel maintains good relations with both Russia and Ukraine, and Bennett has offered to act as an intermediary in the conflict, but no details of the meeting emerged immediately.

However, Bennett’s office said he spoke twice with Zelenskyy afterward. Bennett also had a conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron.

In the wake of Western sanctions, Aeroflot, Russia’s flagship state-owned airline, announced that it plans to halt all international flights except to Belarus, starting Tuesday.

The death toll of the conflict was difficult to measure. The UN human rights office said at least 351 civilians have been confirmed killed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, but the true number is probably much higher. The Russian military, which doesn’t offer regular updates on casualties, said Wednesday that 498 of its troops had been killed.

Ukraine’s military is vastly outmatched by Russia’s, but its professional and volunteer forces have fought back with fierce tenacity. Even in cities that have fallen, there were signs of resistance. (AP)

New Delhi: Three IAF aircraft carrying 629 Indians from Ukraine’s neighbouring countries landed at the Hindon air base here on Saturday morning, the air force said.

India has been evacuating its citizens from war-torn Ukraine’s neighbouring countries such as Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland as the Ukrainian airspace has been shut since February 24 due to the Russian military offensive.

“Till date, the Indian Air Force (IAF) has flown 10 sorties to bring back 2,056 passengers, while taking 26 tonnes of relief load to these countries, as part of Operation Ganga,” the IAF statement said.

Three C-17 heavy lift transport aircraft of the IAF which had taken off on Friday from the Hindon air base returned on Saturday morning, it mentioned.

“These flights evacuated 629 Indian nationals from Romania, Slovakia and Poland.

NEW DELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party on Sunday alleged that BJP “goons” attacked the convoy of its senior leader and Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain here.

The party said residents of the Chawla area in Delhi’s South-West district had protested against the new liquor policy of the Arvind Kejriwal government.

In a series of tweets, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) alleged that the Delhi unit of the BJP deployed its “hooligans” to attack Jain’s convoy as it realised that it is going to lose the upcoming civic body polls.

On the microblogging site, the party also posted a video footage of the alleged attack.

“This is BJP. It’s a party of hooligans and ruffians. When they are losing, they show their position. People will tell them their position,” Delhi Chief Minister and AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal said in a tweet.

Party sources said the incident took place at Goyla Dairy-Najafgarh drain culvert around 12 noon.

“There was no goondaism against Minister Satyendra Jain, only local residents of the Chawla area protested against the new liquor policy of the Kejriwal government,” Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor said in a statement.

“It is really sad that the Aam Aadmi Party, which was born out of a agitational movement today cannot tolerate a people’s protest,” he added.

A senior police officer said when the minister was passing through Najafgarh, some people climbed onto the bonnet of his vehicle and protested against him.

“His vehicle had to be halted due to protest by some locals over alleged issues of governance etc,” the officer said.

A team of police reached the spot “immediately” as soon as information was received, the officer said.

“Within 10-15 minutes, the way was cleared and he went peacefully without any further disturbance on his way ahead,” the officer added.

Police said no complaint has been received so far.

“If any complaint is received, legal action will be taken accordingly,” it said.

MUMBAI: Mumbai Police’s cyber cell has arrested two persons working for a news portal for allegedly spreading fake news against journalist Rana Ayyub through a video, an official said on Sunday.

A case was registered at the West Region Cyber Police Station under sections 354(a) (Sexual harassment), 506(2) (Punishment for criminal intimidation), 509 (Word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman), and 500 (Punishment for defamation) of the Indian Penal Code and under the Information Technology Act, he said.

While investigating the case, the Cyber police had arrested one Siddharth Jay Prakash Shrivastav (24), a resident of Bhopal, he said.

“Mumbai cyber crime today arrested the two journalists from Scoopbeats who made a video at the behest of their employers, spreading the most vicious fake news against me. This is a big step in the direction of justice. Thank you @CPMumbaiPolice, Joint CP and the other officers,” Ayyub had tweeted on Friday.

“The two young journalists had accused me of being aided by Pakistan, announced that I had been banned by Saudi Arabia, and attributed morphed anti-India tweets to me have said their employers @thescoopbeats had asked them to do this hit job on me to target my reputation”, she had stated.