As stringent sanctions imposed by the European Union and US are crippling business and trade, desperate Russian oil companies are offering huge discounts to India, provided a payment mechanism to bypass the SWIFT ban is quickly approved by the government. According to sources familiar with the development, Russian oil firms are offering 25-27 per cent discount to the dated Brent crude prices. State-run Rosneft is one the biggest oil companies that supply crude to India.
A Russian fund submitted its interest to the resolution professional on February 14 and also hired a consultancy firm to help them with the bidding process.
'Unsurprisingly, Trump shared Modi's podcast with Fridman on his Truth account.' 'The intentions of Trump, a transactional president, are never easy to tell.' 'We will know in the next fortnight if and when he unfolds reciprocal tariffs on Indian goods, whether Modi's flattering words made any significant difference to Trump's compass,' notes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
In its sheer audacity, the initiative with Russia has the potential to transform world politics in the same way as the 1972 Nixon visit to China and 'Shanghai Declaration' changed world dynamics, says Anil Athale.
Russian Grand Prix organisers said on Thursday they were open to hosting two back-to-back races in Sochi this season to help Formula One flesh out a calendar reduced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Sochi, with a circuit winding around the Olympic Park used for the 2014 Winter Games, is due to host the Russian Grand Prix on September 27 although that stage of the calendar remains uncertain.
'A ferry flight is scheduled to operate to GDX (Magadan) from Mumbai, at 1300 hours IST on June 7, subject to necessary regulatory clearances, which would take passengers and crew of AI173 onward to San Francisco,' the airline said in the statement on Wednesday.
Russia's state space corporation, Roskosmos, according to the Reuters report, said it had lost contact with the spacecraft shortly after a problem occurred as it was shunted into pre-landing orbit on Saturday.
In the summit as well as in the inaugural '2+2' defence and foreign ministerial talks, the two sides are also expected to focus on the situation in Afghanistan and the rising threat of terrorism including from groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.
'Trump will absolutely back New Delhi on its position that Pakistan must do more to crack down on terrorists that threaten India.'
Russia and China have a broad consensus today on almost all core issues related to global strategic stability, which is unprecedented in modern history, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Uzbekistan lives comfortably in several centuries but is also a forward-looking nation, Deepa Gahlot discovers on a visit to this Central Asian country.
OVL, which has a 20 per cent stake in the oil field in Russia's far east, currently gets around 38,000 barrels of oil per day of the total production of 190,000 barrels per day. OVL's share is expected to fall to 32,000 barrels even as the overall production from the field is likely to come down to 160,000 barrels from next year. OVL, a 100 per cent subsidiary of India's biggest oil producer, paid $1.7 billion for a 20 per cent stake in Sakhalin I.
The first Gaganyaan flight scheduled for 2022 will carry three astronauts, who will be picked from among the test pilots in the armed forces.
Rahul Rawail remembers his mentor Raj Kapoor.
EAM Jaishankar's mission is aimed at strengthening India's strategic autonomy in a complex international environment, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Ahead of his dive to the bottom of world's deepest lake, 'Action man' Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister, clipped a satellite transmitter to a beluga whale during a visit to the country's Far East region.
A year after a Hamas attack against Israel on October 7 and the ensuing Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, India's trade with most West Asian countries has largely escaped any major disruption, except with countries like Israel, Lebanon, and Jordan. However, repeated flare-ups of geopolitical tensions in the region continue to drive up shipping and logistics costs.
'Israel is counting on the United States to enter the fray on their behalf and perform destructive strikes against these targets that are beyond Israel's conventional capabilities.' 'They may well get their way if they start a war, because the United States is still committed to Israel's security, and it won't matter whether it is Trump or Harris in the White House.'
Abramovich, who is Jewish and has Israeli citizenship, was one of the most powerful businessmen who earned fabulous fortunes after the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union. Forbes has put his net worth at $13.3 billion.
The increase in India's military spending was "mainly a result of growing personnel and operations costs" which made up almost 80 percent of the total military budget in 2023, the SIPRI report claimed.
The Russian Direct Investment Fund will team up with an Indian partner to invest $1 billion in hydroelectric projects in Asia's third-largest economy, the head of the Russian state fund told Reuters on Wednesday.
India will soon meet Iraq and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to seek a definitive rate of discount on crude oil similar to what Russia has provided so far, sources said. Multiple officials and industry executives said Iraq, which is India's biggest oil supplier, wants to discuss the level of discounts expected by Indian refiners. India's focus on snapping up ever-increasing volumes of Russian crude oil has led to a corresponding decline in imports from the Middle East. Flows from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have suffered as a result.
Plans to build a pipeline from the Chayanda gas field in East Siberia to the proposed Vladivostok LNG facility
India remained the world's top arms importer, but its imports declined by 11 per cent between 2013-17 and 2018-22, according to a report released on Monday by Stockholm-based defence think-tank SIPRI.
Thousands of lives have been lost, large areas in Ukraine have been destroyed, but Vladimir Putin refuses to end a cruel and senseless war.
After a series of setbacks in recent years, Russia on Thursday successfully tested its next-generation submarine launched intercontinental ballistic missile with multiple nuclear warheads.
A Russian civilian Airbus plane carrying 224 people, mostly tourists, crashed in Egypt's Sinai peninsula on Saturday with most of those on board feared dead as the jet's wreckage was found in a mountainous area.
As much as 8 billion rubles (about Rs 1,000 crore) of dividend income belonging to Indian oil firms is stuck in Russia after the Putin administration clamped down on dollar repatriation, officials said on Friday. Indian state oil firms have invested $5.46 billion in buying stakes in four different assets in Russia. These include a 49.9 per cent stake in Vankorneft oil and gas field and another 29.9 per cent in TAAS-Yuryakh Neftegazodobycha fields.
The war games codenamed INDRA-2007 are aimed at practising cooperative engagement in the fight against terrorism, Russian Pacific Fleet said in its press release. It is the third such joint exercise since 2003.
The war between Russia and Ukraine appears to be entering a new phase after Kyiv dealt a big blow to Moscow's grip on parts of the east with a fast-moving offensive that saw Ukrainian troops enter the strategic city of Izium after six months of occupation.
The successful launch came after three previous unsuccessful tests.
Equity and oil markets can breathe easy for now, as the developments in Russia are unlikely to trigger a runaway rally in crude oil prices, said analysts. India, which imports nearly 80 per cent of its crude oil requirement, has been dependent on cheap Russian oil over the past few months to keep inflation - a sore point for the equity markets - in check. For the Indian markets that are expected to remain volatile amid these developments, analysts believe, the progress of monsoon, fund flows - both foreign institutional investor (FII) and domestic - and the upcoming corporate earnings season back home remain key.
Joe Biden, seeking a second term in the White House, stumbled in his first televised presidential debate with his predecessor Donald Trump, setting off alarm bells among top Democrats about whether the incumbent President can stay atop in the gruelling months ahead of the elections.
Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), the nation's largest oil firm, has renewed a deal to buy up to 2 million tonnes of crude oil in 2022 from Russia's Rosneft, the Russian oil producer said. IOC had in February 2020 signed a deal with Rosneft Oil Company to import up to 2 million tonnes of oil via the port of Novorossiysk. In 2021, the deal envisaged supply of up to 1.7 million tonnes of crude oil but IOC bought just on parcel or shipload as the cost of transporting the oil made it uneconomical, when compared to alternatives. For 2022, the deal is for the supply of up to 2 million tonnes of oil from the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
'The chances of The Shameless passing through the censorship board in India are slim to none.'
India will make a strong plea for firms getting a stake in future Sakhalin projects in Far East Russia when Russian President Vladimir Putin visits New Delhi later this month.
Russia has promised India four to five million tonnes of crude oil annually from its Far East Siberian oil fields if it fails to accommodate ONGC Videsh Ltd in Yuganskneftegaz, the core asset of Yukos that has been acquired by Russian state-owned Ros
Kissinger's approach of balance of power, secret diplomacy and moderating ideology are the need of the hour. That is the greatest tribute to an intellectual who had a major impact on the world in his lifetime, notes Colonel Anil A Athale.
On Friday, Putin formally announced the annexation of four regions -- Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia -- and claimed that "this is the will of millions of people".
