The ambassador, though, admitted that the Communist Party of India received financial assistance from its Soviet counterpart.
Rup Narayan Das reveals the towering Odisha leader's role in improving national security after the 1962 War with China.
Garbine Muguruza has to be the one taking charge in the Australian Open final against "fighter" Sofia Kenin if she is to win her third Grand Slam title, the Spaniard's coach Conchita Martinez said.
Describing the second world war as the 'greatest tragedy' of the 20th century, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Sunday slammed attempts to equate United Soviet Socialist Republic and Nazi Germany as its initiators.
A Moscow court has rejected a libel suit filed against a newspaper, by the grandson of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, to protect his grandfather's name.In his plea, Stalin's grandson Evgeny Jugashvili had demanded that the liberal Novaya Gazeta, co-owned by last Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, should retract parts of an article that said Stalin personally signed death warrants.Novaya Gazeta spokesperson said the article was based on recently declassified documents.
'I am not minimising either the seriousness or the complex nature of the current situation.' 'Naturally, we have to do what it takes to secure our borders.' 'We are talking to the Chinese, both through military channels and diplomatic ones.'
'In fact, they work in tandem.' 'When it comes to finding a solution, this must be predicated on honouring all agreements and understandings.' 'And not attempting to alter the status quo unilaterally.'
The Cuban government has announced nine days of mourning and has set Castro's funeral for December 4.
In the mid-1980s, India and the US struggled to arrive at sufficient confidence for Washington to even sell a supercomputer to India for monsoon prospecting. Now, the most sensitive military technologies, data, and intelligence resources are being shared. This would not have happened without that one, big deal that changed the fundamentals of India-US relations, notes Shekhar Gupta.
;The world paid a heavy price for the megalomania of the Third Reich's fuehrer.' 'Will it pay a similar price for the ambitions of China's leader-for-life?' asks Amulya Ganguli.
'There is a compulsion to look hard, decisive, and risk-taking; start something; and then conclude it in a way you can claim victory.' 'That is not such an easy option against China,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
Playing down President Asif Ali's remarks that Pakistan 'created and nurtured' militants to achieve short-term objectives, the government on Thursday said the statement should be seen in the context of the situation that prevailed after Soviet forces pulled out of Afghanistan. Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said the President was referring to the period when the "West left Pakistan high and dry after the withdrawal of Soviet troops" from Afghanistan.
Singh, who arrived in Moscow on a three-day visit on Tuesday at the invitation of the Russian Ministry of Defence to attend the 75th Anniversary of Victory Day Parade, said his visit to Moscow is the first foreign visit from India of an official delegation after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Why omit the Tiananmen massacre from the history of China's Communist party, asks Claude Arpi.
KPS Menon (Jr) had a quiet humility and playfulness, and was not motivated by money or power, recalls Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Thirty-four years after he traveled to space, Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma tells Rediff.com's Archana Masih that he looks forward to Gaganyan, India's first manned space mission in 2022.
Indians at large harbour a notion that their country is cherrypicking out of the American basket of goodies, but the policymakers in Delhi and the political leadership are well aware that it can only be a pipe dream since a military alliance with a superpower is a profound irrevocable commitment, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'Steve was the foremost strategic analyst on South Asia,' remembers Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
In this pandemic, why can't we have multiple locations for various disciplines, all of it then merged into a virtual convergence called the Olympics instead of one massive event in one city, asks Shyam G Menon.
"You can never win the war in Afghanistan," said 'Colonel Imam', who ran a training programme for the Afghan resistance to the Soviet Union's occupation from 1979 to 1989, and then helped to form the Taliban. "I have worked with these people since the 1970s and I tell you they will never be defeated. Anyone who has come here has got stuck. The more you kill, the more they will expand," Imam told The Sunday Times.
China is engaged in hotly contested territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas. Beijing has also made substantial progress in militarising its man-made islands in the past few years, which it says it has the right to defend.
Brazilian Jadson struck an extra-time winner to secure Shakhtar Donetsk a 2-1 victory over Werder Bremen in the last UEFA Cup final Wednesday.
'But India, increasingly, is not that far behind, which is a story I never expected to tell.'
'Manmohan Singh's fond hope of avoiding conflict over territory by 'making borders irrelevant' is increasingly difficult to realise in a world where institutional restraints on aggression are weakening and the new game in town is unalloyed power play,' notes T N Ninan.
Russia has described the killing of Andrey Karlov at an art exhibition in Ankara as a terror attack.
The perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai attack, who shot dead 166 people, had confessed to details that should have been enough to hang him, but Pakistan enjoyed his anti-India rhetoric and let him spread his tentacles. A revealing excerpt from Khaled Ahmed's Pakistan's Terror Conundrum.
The road ahead will be long and winding and much resistance can be expected from the high-flying 'hawks' in our skies. But that should not deter the policymakers from planning a road map with the 'big picture' in mind, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'Castro told us: "Give me a thousand Gurkhas and I shall keep my neighbour under control!"' 'We pretended that we did not know which neighbour he meant.'
'From now on, every time Modi takes a foreign dignitary in his arms, the Indians will remember how he was taken aback when an Indian indulged in hugplomacy,' says Amulya Ganguli.
Moscow erupted in street celebrations on Sunday as the World Cup hosts booked a place in the quarter-finals, defeating Spain on penalties at Russia's flagship stadium.
Ukraine fears weighed on sentiment, with Russia rejecting a peace proposal amidst civil war-like situation in the former Soviet union republic.
The navy finds itself fighting for relevance, with navy planners lamenting that its share of the budget has dropped dramatically.
Unlike United States President George W Bush, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Wednesday hailed the growth of food consumption in India and China as he sought expansion of the United Nations Security Council to include some 'most important states' to address the global food crisis. "we need to rejoice that millions of people are coming out of poverty and can afford a normal diet. Our planet is capable of feeding them," he said.
Growth of food consumption in rapidly developing India and China is named as the primary reason for the crisis, which some have dubbed as 'silent tsunami,' the former Soviet President wrote in the official Rossiskaya Gazeta daily. "This is an objective reason: we need to rejoice that millions of people are coming out of poverty and can afford normal diet. Our planet is capable of feeding them," he said.
Fans tuning in to the 2016 World Chess Championship from home may well have the best seats in the house, with the tournament set to be broadcast live in 360-degree Virtual Reality (VR) -- a first in any sport, organisers say.
Modi stunned buttoned-down members of the commission last year by turning up at a meeting with a video that accused them of high-handedness and hobbling states with one-size-fits-all policies.
Washington might occasionally make some noises about alleged human rights violations and related issues but commonality of interests will only see the Indo-US ties grow stronger, observes Virendra Kapoor.
In politics, if your objective is only winning elections, just Chanakya neeti might do. For governance you need both, Chanakya neeti and Ram Rajya. You can neither beat up the farmers into submission, nor dismiss them as 'Khalistanis', asserts Shekhar Gupta.
The two leaders had some firm convictions in defence matters and are idolised by their respective people because they salved the scarred collective psyches of their societies.
PK Banerjee was captain of the Indian team that last played the Olympics in Rome 1960. He retired as a player in 1967 after being laid low by recurring injuries. But then went on accumulate a staggering 54 trophies as a coach.
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