
‘No Corner Of The Country Is Safe': India's Proposed Agni-5 ICBM Test Puts Pakistan On Edge, Islamabad Think Tank Warns Army, Govt
The Agni-5 missile carries multiple warheads and can strike several targets independently. Equipped with Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) technology, it is considered a highly advanced weapon.
The SVI emphasised that Pakistan cannot ignore India's nuclear-capable Agni V or Agni VI missile tests, which form the backbone of India's longest-range missile arsenal.
The think tank highlighted that India's missile programme accelerated after joining the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) in 2016. Access to advanced technologies and equipment has increased. India has also acquired drones from the United States and Israel that were reportedly used during the May conflict with Pakistan.
The organisation warned that missiles with over 8,000 kilometres of range and nuclear capability signal India's ambition to assert global influence. Major cities worldwide, including Washington, Moscow, Beijing and all of Pakistan, could potentially fall within the reach of these weapons.
India Expands Naval Strike Power
The SVI also highlighted India's growing presence in the Indian Ocean with nuclear-powered submarines armed with submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). The ongoing tests of advanced Agni missile systems, according to the think tank, send a message to India's adversaries, showcasing its strategic ambitions.
The SVI cautioned Pakistan's government and military that the international community should pressure India to refrain from actions that could undermine regional stability. The institute urged India to curb aggressive moves against Pakistan and focus on resolving disputes through dialogue and diplomacy.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The Hindu
24 minutes ago
- The Hindu
Why Sri Lanka's Tamils are flagging militarisation
The story so far: On August 18, Sri Lanka's prominent Tamil party the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK), called a symbolic hartal across the Tamil-majority north and east, to protest militarisation of the former war zone, 16 years after the Sri Lankan armed forces crushed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Businesses and commercial establishments across the northern and eastern provinces remained shut for a few hours in the morning — while some remained open owing to political differences with the ITAK — joining the call to demilitarise their districts. What prompted the hartal call? The recent killing of 32-year-old Ethirmanasingham Kapilraj of Mullaitivu district, in Sri Lanka's northern province triggered it. The young Tamil man died in an alleged attack by military men from an army camp located in the district. In a letter to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake on August 10, the ITAK demanded an 'unhindered, thorough investigation' into Mr. Kapilraj's death, and also highlighted the 'oppressive conduct and excessive presence of the military' in the north and east after the war ended. The government has promised to hold a thorough investigation and bring the perpetrators to book. The police has arrested three soldiers in connection with the killing. What is the government's stand on the military? For many civic activists in Sri Lanka, the demand for de-militarising the north and east, is also lined to the larger call to downsize the country's bloated military service. In March this year President Dissanayake, who is also the Minister of Defence, announced plans to downsize the military by 2030. The latest Budget allocated LKR 442 billion, or roughly $1.5 billion, to the Ministry of Defence — significantly more than the amount set aside for education, local commentators observed. In its analysis of the 2024 Budget estimates, Colombo-based think tank Verité Research found that expenditure on just the uniforms and diets in the defence sector was projected to increase by a significant LKR 75 billion (or nearly $250 million), or 258% compared to 2022. 'As a percentage of GDP, Sri Lanka spends nearly 2% on military expenses, an extraordinarily high amount for a country that does not face an existential security threat,' retired army officer Major Gen. Dr. Boniface Perera observed in a newspaper column earlier this year. What is the extent of military presence in the north and east? While specific data of camps and troops currently stationed are not available in the public domain, the presence of uniformed men is visibly greater in the island nation's north and east provinces, compared to the rest of the country. The military is also seen running local businesses, including hotels and restaurants, farms and other facilities, competing with the locals who are trying to rebuild their lives and livelihoods that were destroyed in the protracted war. In Mullaitivu district in particular — the site of the final battle of the civil war in which armed forces are accused of killing tens of thousands of civilians — armed military personnel can be seen manning several traffic junctions and checkpoints, periodically inspecting vehicles passing by. In a 2017 report titled 'Normalising the Abnormal: The Militarisation of Mullaitivu District', published eight years after the civil war, non-governmental advocacy organisations Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research (ACPR) and People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) found that there were some 60,000 military personnel among just over 1,30,322 civilians in the district. The military has also been controlling huge amounts of people's land, including agricultural land and sites of worship, in the post war years, sparking several people's struggles in the north and east. Military spokesman Brigadier Franklin Joseph told The Hindu that 91% of military-held land have been returned to the people. Military presence has also 'significantly reduced' since the war's end, he said, while declining to share the exact numbers. President Dissanayake has assured that military-held land in the north and east will be returned to the rightful owners, and that his government was taking steps to expedite the same. Further, Tamil parliamentarians have in the past accused the military of creating a 'drug dependency' among Tamil youth. In a parliamentary address in 2022, Jaffna MP Gajen Ponnambalam spoke of the military's 'involvement' in the drug menace. 'They are the biggest peddlers of drugs in the north and east, particularly in Jaffna. By extension the police are also in it,' he said. What do rights advocates state? In its latest report on the situation of human rights in Sri Lanka, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights notes: 'Sixteen years after the end of the war, meaningful and comprehensive security sector reform is yet to take place. Consequently, the surveillance apparatus, especially in the north and east, has remained largely intact, with minimal oversight or direction from the central government.' It urged the Sri Lankan government to 'avoid involvement of military in law enforcement, commercial activities and civil affairs and significantly reduce military presence in the Northern and Eastern Provinces as part of security sector reform'.
&w=3840&q=100)

First Post
24 minutes ago
- First Post
'Retract the plan': 21 countries to sign joint statement condemning Israel's West Bank settlement project
Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden are among the countries that signed the statement, as did the European Commission's foreign affairs chief Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich holds a map that shows the E1 settlement project during a press conference near the settlement of Maale Adumim, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Thursday, Aug. 14, 2025. AP Britain and France were among 21 countries to sign a joint statement Thursday calling Israel's approval of a major settlement project in the West Bank 'unacceptable and a violation of international law'. Israel approved the plans for the roughly 12-square-kilometre (five-square-mile) parcel of land known as E1 just east of Jerusalem on Wednesday. 'We condemn this decision and call for its immediate reversal in the strongest terms,' said the statement of foreign ministers, whose signatories also included Australia, Canada and Italy. Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden also signed the statement, as did the European Commission's foreign affairs chief. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The statement noted that Israel's far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the plan 'will make a two-state solution impossible by dividing any Palestinian state and restricting Palestinian access to Jerusalem'. 'This brings no benefits to the Israeli people,' the foreign ministers said. 'Instead, it risks undermining security and fuels further violence and instability, taking us further away from peace. 'The government of Israel still has an opportunity to stop the E1 plan going any further. We encourage them to urgently retract this plan,' they added. The plan seeks to build around 3,400 homes on the ultra-sensitive tract of land, which lies between Jerusalem and the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim. All of Israel's settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have Israeli planning permission. The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) has slammed the latest move, which has also been criticised by UN chief Antonio Guterres and the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini. The project would 'completely cut off the northern and central West Bank from the southern West Bank – meaning that there would no longer be any territorial contiguity', said Lazzarini. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD He said Israel was taking decisions that would make the creation of two states 'increasingly impossible'. Britain on Thursday summoned Israeli ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely to the foreign ministry to protest the decision. 'If implemented, these settlement plans would be a flagrant breach of international law and would divide a future Palestinian state in two, critically undermining a two-state solution,' the foreign office said in a statement.


Hindustan Times
24 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Vladimir Putin Putin wants Ukraine to give up Donbas, NATO ambitions as part of ‘peace deal'
Vladimir Putin is demanding that Ukraine give up all of the eastern Donbas region, renounce ambitions to join NATO, remain neutral and keep Western troops out of the country, three sources familiar with top-level Kremlin thinking told Reuters. Russian President Vladimir Putin.(AP) The Russian president met Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday for the first Russia-U.S. summit in more than four years and spent almost all of their three-hour closed meeting discussing what a compromise on Ukraine might look like, according to the sources who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Speaking afterwards beside Trump, Putin said the meeting would hopefully open up the road to peace in Ukraine - but neither leader gave specifics about what they discussed. In the most detailed Russian-based reporting to date on Putin's offer at the summit, Reuters was able to outline the contours of what the Kremlin would like to see in a possible peace deal to end a war that has killed and injured hundreds of thousands of people. In essence, the Russian sources said, Putin has compromised on territorial demands he laid out in June 2024, which required Kyiv to cede the entirety of the four provinces Moscow claims as part of Russia: Dontesk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine - which make up the Donbas - plus Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south. Kyiv rejected those terms as tantamount to surrender. In his new proposal, the Russian president has stuck to his demand that Ukraine completely withdraw from the parts of the Donbas it still controls, according to the three sources. In return, though, Moscow would halt the current front lines in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, they added. Russia controls about 88% of the Donbas and 73% of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, according to U.S. estimates and open-source data. Moscow is also willing to hand over the small parts of the Kharkiv, Sumy, and Dnipropetrovsk regions of Ukraine it controls as part of a possible deal, the sources said. Putin is sticking, too, to his previous demands that Ukraine give up its NATO ambitions and for a legally binding pledge from the U.S.-led military alliance that it will not expand further eastwards, as well as for limits on the Ukrainian army and an agreement that no Western troops will be deployed on the ground in Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping force, the sources said. Yet the two sides remain far apart, more than three years after Putin ordered thousands of Russian troops into Ukraine in a full-scale invasion that followed the annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and prolonged fighting in the country's east between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops. Ukraine's foreign ministry had no immediate comment on the proposals. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has repeatedly dismissed the idea of withdrawing from internationally recognised Ukrainian land as part of a deal, and has said the industrial Donbas region serves as a fortress holding back Russian advances deeper into Ukraine. "If we're talking about simply withdrawing from the east, we cannot do that," he told reporters in comments released by Kyiv on Thursday. "It is a matter of our country's survival, involving the strongest defensive lines." Joining NATO, meanwhile, is a strategic objective enshrined in the country's constitution and one which Kyiv sees as its most reliable security guarantee. Zelenskiy said it was not up to Russia to decide on the alliance's membership. The White House and NATO didn't immediately respond to requests for comment on the Russian proposals. Political scientist Samuel Charap, chair in Russia and Eurasia Policy at RAND, a U.S.-based global policy think-tank, said any requirement for Ukraine to withdraw from the Donbas remained a non-starter for Kyiv, both politically and strategically. "Openness to 'peace' on terms categorically unacceptable to the other side could be more of a performance for Trump than a sign of a true willingness to compromise," he added. "The only way to test that proposition is to begin a serious process at the working level to hash out those details." Trump: Putin wants to see it ended Russian forces currently control a fifth of Ukraine, an area about the size of the American state of Ohio, according to U.S. estimates and open-source maps. The three sources close to the Kremlin said the summit in the Alaskan city of Anchorage had ushered in the best chance for peace since the war began because there had been specific discussions about Russia's terms and Putin had shown a willingness to give ground. "Putin is ready for peace - for compromise. That is the message that was conveyed to Trump," one of the people said. The sources cautioned that it was unclear to Moscow whether Ukraine would be prepared to cede the remains of the Donbas, and that if it did not then the war would continue. Also unclear was whether or not the United States would give any recognition to Russian-held Ukrainian territory, they added. A fourth source said that though economic issues were secondary for Putin, he understood the economic vulnerability of Russia and the scale of the effort needed to go far further into Ukraine. Trump has said he wants to end the "bloodbath" of the war and be remembered as a "peacemaker president". He said on Monday he had begun arranging a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders, to be followed by a trilateral summit with the U.S. president. "I believe Vladimir Putin wants to see it ended," Trump said beside Zelenskiy in the Oval office. "I feel confident we are going to get it solved." Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday that Putin was prepared to meet Zelenskiy but that all issues had to be worked through first and there was a question about Zelenskiy's authority to sign a peace deal. Putin has repeatedly raised doubts about Zelenskiy's legitimacy as his term in office was due to expire in May 2024 but the war means no new presidential election has yet been held. Kyiv says Zelenskiy remains the legitimate president. The leaders of Britain, France and Germany have said they are sceptical that Putin wants to end the war. Security Guarantees For Ukraine Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff was instrumental in paving the way for the summit, and the latest drive for peace, according to two of the Russian sources. Witkoff met Putin in the Kremlin on August 6 with Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov. At the meeting, Putin conveyed clearly to Witkoff that he was ready to compromise and set out the contours of what he could accept for peace, according to two Russian sources. If Russia and Ukraine could reach an agreement, then there are various options for a formal deal - including a possible three-way Russia-Ukraine-U.S. deal that is recognised by the U.N. Security Council, one of the sources said. Another option is to go back to the failed 2022 Istanbul agreements, where Russia and Ukraine discussed Ukraine's permanent neutrality in return for security guarantees from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, the sources added. "There are two choices: war or peace, and if there is no peace, then there is more war," one of the people said.