
Russian Embassy unveils special plaque honouring Biju Patnaik
Honoured to attend the memorial plaque inauguration ceremony at Russian Embassy in New Delhi to commemorate the contribution of legendary #BijuPatnaik in Stalingrad Operation during WWII. The Battle of Stalingrad led to success for Russia in the war against Nazi Germany which… pic.twitter.com/kbY6PRv0Kq

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Hindustan Times
27 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Russia attacks Ukraine's Kharkiv with deadly nighttime barrage of drones
A concentrated, nine-minute-long Russian drone attack on Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv on Wednesday killed six people and injured 64, including nine children, Ukrainian officials said. The attack followed Russia's two biggest air assaults of the war on Ukraine this week, part of intensified bombardments that Moscow says are retaliatory measures for Kyiv's recent attacks in Russia. A new wave of drone attacks on four city districts was reported early on Thursday by Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov, including a drone that landed in a school courtyard and smashed windows. There were no other reports of casualties or damage. Elsewhere, two southern Ukrainian regions, Mykolaiv and Kherson, were left without electricity on Wednesday after Russian forces attacked an energy facility, the governors said. Kharkiv, in Ukraine's northeast, withstood Russia's full-scale advance in the early days of the war but has since been a regular target of drone, missile and guided aerial bomb assaults. Prosecutors in Kharkiv region said on the Telegram messaging app that the death toll in Tuesday night's incidents had risen to six as rescue teams pulled bodies from under the rubble. They said three people were still believed to be trapped. The strikes by 17 drones on Kharkiv sparked fires in 15 units of a five-storey apartment block and caused other damage in the city close to the Russian border, Mayor Terekhov said. "There are direct hits on multi-storey buildings, private homes, playgrounds, enterprises and public transport," Terekhov said on the Telegram messaging app. "Every new day now brings new despicable blows from Russia, and almost every blow is telling. Russia deserves increased pressure; with literally every blow it strikes against ordinary life, it proves that the pressure is not enough," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram. A Reuters witness saw emergency rescuers helping to carry people out of damaged buildings and administering care, while firefighters battled blazes in the dark. Nine of the injured, including a 2-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy, have been hospitalised, Oleh Sinehubov, the governor of the broader Kharkiv region, said on Telegram. In total, the Ukrainian military said Russia had launched 85 drones overnight, 40 of which were shot down. In the southern Kherson region, workers were trying to restore electricity supplies after Russian forces attacked what its governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said was "an important energy facility". "It is currently impossible to predict the duration of the work. Residents of the region, I ask you to show understanding and prepare for a prolonged power outage," he said on the Telegram messenger. The governor of the neighbouring Mykolaiv region, Vitaliy Kim, said his region was also experiencing emergency shutdowns but that power would soon be restored. Kherson region directly borders a war zone and is under daily drone, missile and artillery attack. The Mykolaiv region faces mainly missile and drone attacks. There was no immediate comment from Russia on the latest overnight attacks. Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war that Russia launched on its smaller neighbour in February 2022. But thousands of civilians have died in the conflict, the vast majority of them Ukrainian.


Mint
41 minutes ago
- Mint
‘My dearest Comrade Putin,' North Korea's Kim Jong Un vows to support Russia, praises ‘genuine' bilateral ties
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin, assured that his country will always support Moscow, state media KCNA reported on Thursday. Calling Putin his 'dearest comrade', Kim praised North Korea-Russia bilateral relations in a message for Russia Day. "It is an unshakable will of the government of the DPRK and of my own steadfastly to carry on the DPRK-Russia relations," Kim was quoted as saying. 'Today the traditional DPRK-Russia friendship has been further cemented thanks to the militant comradeship the service personnel of the two countries have forged at the cost of their blood in the just sacred war to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia; it has developed into an excellent model of indestructible, genuine relationship between comrades-in-arms and alliance,' he added. After months of silence, Pyongyang confirmed for the first time that it had sent troops to fight for Russia in the war in Ukraine under orders from leader Kim Jong Un earlier this year. The North Korean leader has consistently supported Russia. Earlier that Kim Jong Un promised to unconditionally support Putin. During a meeting in Pyongyang with Sergei Shoigu, a leading security aide to Putin, Kim stated that North Korea will 'unconditionally support' Russia and 'its foreign policies on all significant international political matters," KCNA reported. Both countries agreed to enhance their ties 'into the powerful and comprehensive relations of strategic partnership," it noted. In 2024, North Korea 'transferred to Russia at least 100 ballistic missiles, which were subsequently launched into Ukraine to destroy civilian infrastructure and terrorise populated areas such as Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia," reported Bloomberg News citing a report by a report by 11 countries, including the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan. The report also informed that Pyongyang 'deployed over 11,000 troops into eastern Russia in late 2024, which were moved to the far-western Kursk Oblast where they began engaging in combat operations alongside Russian forces in support of Russia's war against Ukraine.'


The Hindu
an hour ago
- The Hindu
Russian court sentences Navalny ally to 18 years in absentia as dissident crackdown continues
Courts in Russia have convicted one Opposition figure in absentia and placed another under house arrest as Moscow continues its crackdown on dissent. Leonid Volkov, a close associate of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was sentenced in absentia to 18 years in prison Wednesday after being found guilty on criminal charges. Also Read | Crackdown on dissent becomes the hallmark of Putin's 24 years in power Moscow's Second Western District Military convicted Volkov under 40 counts including justifying terrorism, organizing and financing an extremist group, rehabilitating Nazism, and creating a non-governmental organization that violated citizens' rights, Russian news agencies reported. As well as the prison sentence, Volkov was also fined 2 million rubles (approx. $25,000) and banned from using the internet for 10 years. Also Read | No room for dissent in Putin's Russia 'Oh no! They banned me from the internet for 10 years as prosecutors requested, but I've already been using it," Volkov wrote in a tongue-in-cheek social media post after the sentence was released. 'Damn. Whatever am I going to do?" Volkov, who was in charge of Navalny's regional offices and election campaigns, left Russia several years ago under pressure from the authorities. He led Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation between 2021 and 2023, during which time he was placed on the Russian government's list of terrorists and extremists. The case against him is widely seen in Russia as political motivated. Separately, Lev Shlosberg, a senior member of the Yabloko Opposition party, was placed under house arrest Wednesday after being detained on charges of discrediting the Russian army. A court in the city of Pskov, close to Russia's western border, ordered Shlosberg to be detained at home for two months pending investigation and trial, the court's press service said. His case has also been widely viewed as politically motivated. Russian authorities have accused Shlosberg of discrediting the nation's military by calling for a ceasefire in Russia's war with Ukraine. Shlosberg has said that he did not share the social media video or administer the page on which it was posted. If found guilty, he faces up to five years imprisonment. The politician, who has repeatedly criticized Moscow's war, was previously named as a 'foreign agent' by Russian authorities, a loaded term that carries connotations of Soviet-era treachery. Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin has clamped down on all forms of dissent, targeting rights groups, independent media and other members of civil-society organizations, LGBTQ+ activists and certain religious affiliations.