The two armies had mutually decided not to resort to use firearms during face-offs in sync with provisions of two agreements on border management.
'We spent Rs 59,000 crore on acquiring 36 Rafales and we do not know if we will ever use them. The chances are that we never will,' argues Aakar Patel.
'The regime -- and particularly the home ministry under Amit Shah -- have sought to suppress and destroy these struggles through intimidation, bullying, threats, through false cases, arrests, custodial torture, the use of draconian laws like the UAPA.'
The ambassador, though, admitted that the Communist Party of India received financial assistance from its Soviet counterpart.
Pakistan is close to finalise a deal with Russia to buy Mi-35 (Hind E) attack helicopters, a sign of increasing defence ties between the Cold War-era adversaries.
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.
B D Pande was Punjab's governor during Operation Bluestar. In this excerpt from his memoir, In the Service of Free India: Memoir of a Civil Servant, Pande reveals what really went on behind the scenes during those dark days in India's history.
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.
The 66-year-old former Russian double agent and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a shopping centre bench in the Salisbury town on March 4. They were hospitalised in critical condition after he was found poisoned and spent weeks in critical condition.
The Germans will play their group matches in Munich
For two decades the US paid in blood and blood money for dependence on Pakistan to carry out one president's boast. Now, having been defeated by its proxies, another president will go into Rawalpindi's embrace to satisfy his constituents, predicts Shekhar Gupta.
But why should India be talking to the Taliban in the first place? There is no love lost there. India will never forget or forgive the humiliation to which the Taliban subjected it in the IC-814 hijack, 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.
Eight images that prove we live in a truly bizarre world.
ISI chief Faiz Hameed coerced the Taliban to announce an interim government guaranteed to preserve Pakistan's control over the levers of power in Kabul, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The Taliban have the ISIS in its crosshairs. The Taliban has shown the skill to assimilate extremist elements if they are reconcilable as well as the ruthlessness to eliminate troublemakers, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar
The Cuban government has announced nine days of mourning and has set Castro's funeral for December 4.
An alert government in Delhi should have begun government-to-government discussions with Moscow the moment it came to know that Russians were developing a vaccine. That is to say, almost an year's time has been lost, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'The fatal mistake for the USSR was the invasion of Afghanistan.' 'Quite possibly the fatal mistake for the Chinese empire is the assault on Ladakh,' observes Rajeev Srinivasan.
'Project Big Picture' called for the biggest six clubs in the Premier League, along with three other long-term members, to be given 'special voting rights' that would effectively put them in command of the world's most commercially successful league -- and leave the rest as second-class passengers.
"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.
The league has proved an unlikely draw for fans overseas who are starved of matches in their own countries. In choosing to stay open, it took its cue from President Alexander Lukashenko, who has resisted imposing strict lockdown measures.
It is the first visit abroad by a senior Union minister in four months as foreign travels were restricted in view of the coronavirus pandemic.
India has already mobilised fighter jets and sent thousands of additional army troops to forward locations along the border with China after 20 Indian Army personnel were killed in a brutal attack by Chinese troops in eastern Ladakh's Galwan Valley on June 15.
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.
'The goal is achievable. What is stopping us from getting there?' asks Aakar Patel.
With professional soccer at a virtual standstill around the globe, fans in need of their weekly fix are turning to the Belarusian Premier League to fill the void as it carries on with matches despite the coronavirus outbreak.
The president also said one of his daughters has been given a shot of the COVID-19 vaccination. "One of my daughters got vaccinated. In fact, she took part in an experiment. After the first vaccination, she had a [body] temperature of 38 degrees [Celcius, 100 degrees Fahrenheit], the next day slightly higher than 37 [degrees], that's all," he said.
The summit probably fulfilled the expectations on both sides, but the bar of expectations was intentionally kept low, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Her comments came amid the ongoing war of words between India and Pakistan ever since India withdrew Jammu and Kashmir's special status and bifurcated it into two union territories on August 5.
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.
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.
Russia has described the killing of Andrey Karlov at an art exhibition in Ankara as a terror attack.
Their leaders in the provinces, which have been under the control of Taliban commanders for several months now, speak the language of the bigot. Women are known to have been abducted and enslaved. Several young girls have simply disappeared.
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.
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.
Ukraine fears weighed on sentiment, with Russia rejecting a peace proposal amidst civil war-like situation in the former Soviet union republic.
KPS Menon (Jr) had a quiet humility and playfulness, and was not motivated by money or power, recalls Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
India needs to shed its policy of lethargy and inhibitions to engage the Taliban with an intent to maintain its influence in Afghanistan. This would not just put a spanner in Pakistani designs, but also incentivise the Taliban not to be the puppets of GHQ, Rawalpindi, asserts Colonel Nikhil Apte (retd), who served on the Af-Pak desk at the Military Operations Directorate.
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