Moscow:

Russia is expecting a “very important and full-fledged visit” by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Moscow for summit-level talks with President Vladimir Putin, with the Kremlin saying the West was watching the trip with “jealousy”.

Prime Minister Modi will be in Moscow from July 8 to 9 at the invitation of President Putin for the 22nd India-Russia Annual Summit. It will be PM Modi’s first visit to Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The two leaders will review the entire range of multifaceted relations between the two countries and exchange views on contemporary regional and global issues of mutual interest, the Ministry of External Affairs said in New Delhi on Thursday while announcing the high-level visit starting on Monday.

The programme of Prime Minister Modi in Moscow will be extensive and the two leaders will be able to have informal talks, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with Russia’s state-run VGTRK television channel on Saturday.

“Obviously, the agenda will be extensive, if not to say overbusy. It will be an official visit, and we hope that the heads will be able to talk in an informal way as well,” he said.

Mr Peskov said that Russian-Indian relations are at the level of strategic partnership. He said that there would be both one-on-one talks in the Kremlin and those involving delegations.

“We are expecting a very important and full-fledged visit, which is so crucial for Russian-Indian relations,” he was quoted as saying by the official Tass news agency.

Mr Peskov also emphasised that the West is closely and jealously watching Prime Minister Modi’s upcoming visit to Russia.

“They are jealous — that means they are closely monitoring it. Their close monitoring means they attach great importance to it. And they are not mistaken, there is something to attach great importance to,” Mr Peskov said in response to a question about the jealous attitude of Western politicians towards PM Modi’s visit to Russia, the Tass report said.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, PM Modi has held several telephonic conversations with Mr Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, stressing the importance of ending the war that has impacted the global economy.

In reflection of its strong friendship with Russia, India has not yet condemned Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and it has been maintaining that the conflict must be resolved through diplomacy and dialogue.

India’s import of discounted Russian crude oil has also gone up significantly notwithstanding the G7 price cap and increasing disquiet over the procurement in many Western capitals.

It will be PM Modi’s first visit to Russia in nearly five years. His last visit to Russia was in 2019 when he attended an economic conclave in the Far East city of Vladivostok.

The annual summit between the Prime Minister of India and the president of Russia is the highest institutional dialogue mechanism in the strategic partnership between the two countries.

So far, 21 annual summits have taken place alternately in India and Russia.

The last annual summit was held on December 6, 2021, in New Delhi when Mr Putin visited India. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Moscow:

Russia is expecting a “very important and full-fledged visit” by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Moscow, which is crucial for Russian-Indian relations, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Saturday.

Prime Minister Modi will be in Moscow from July 8 to 9 at the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin to hold the 22nd India-Russia Annual Summit.

The two leaders will review the entire range of multifaceted relations between the two countries and exchange views on contemporary regional and global issues of mutual interest, the Ministry of External Affairs said in New Delhi on Thursday while announcing the high-level visit.

The programme of Prime Minister Modi in Moscow will be extensive and the two leaders will be able to have informal talks, Mr Peskov said in an interview with Russia’s state-run VGTRK television channel.

“Obviously, the agenda will be extensive, if not to say overbusy. It will be an official visit, and we hope that the heads will be able to talk in an informal way as well,” he said.

Mr Peskov said that Russian-Indian relations are at the level of strategic partnership. He said that there would be both one-on-one talks in the Kremlin and those involving delegations.

“We are expecting a very important and full-fledged visit, which is so crucial for Russian-Indian relations,” he was quoted as saying by the official Tass news agency.

It will be PM Modi’s first visit to Russia in nearly five years. His last visit to Russia was in 2019 when he attended an economic conclave in the Far East city of Vladivostok.

The annual summit between the prime minister of India and the president of Russia is the highest institutional dialogue mechanism in the strategic partnership between the two countries.

So far, 21 annual summits have taken place alternately in India and Russia.

The last annual summit was held on December 6, 2021 in New Delhi. President Putin had visited India to attend the summit.

Moscow:

Almost a year since Yevgeny Prigozhin sent his Wagner mercenaries marching towards Moscow in a rebellion against Russia’s military leadership, residents in the capital spoke of respect and admiration for the late renegade.

The mercenary chief died in a mysterious aeroplane crash two months after ordering the short-lived mutiny on June 23-24, 2023.

But despite mounting the biggest-ever challenge to President Vladimir Putin’s near quarter of a century in power, Prigozhin and his Wagner Group continue to command respect.

“He did a lot for Russia at a difficult moment,” said 60-year-old caretaker Alexander Ulyanov, calling the late mercenary boss a “great man”.

Wagner spearheaded some of the Kremlin’s longest and bloodiest military campaigns in Ukraine, including the fight for the mostly destroyed city of Bakhmut in the east.

“The organisation he created has an iron discipline,” Ulyanov said.

Prigozhin is alive “in our hearts,” he added, comparing him to historical generals like Mikhail Kutuzov, who led Russian soldiers during the Napoleonic Wars.

“If people remember him, he’s alive,” Ulyanov said of Prigozhin.

A former hotdog seller and convicted criminal, Prigozhin became acquainted with Putin in the 1990s, later running catering businesses that served the Kremlin.

Nicknamed “Putin’s chef”, his influence quickly grew as he won government contracts, eventually founding the Wagner Group in 2014 to support Russian paramilitaries in east Ukraine.

After his death, for which the Kremlin categorically denied responsibility, Putin praised Prigozhin as a “talented businessman” who made “serious mistakes”.

 ‘It was so scary’ 

In their quest to unseat Moscow’s military top brass, Prigozhin’s fighters seized Russia’s army headquarters in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and shot down military aircraft.

They managed to march roughly halfway to the capital Moscow before Belarus mediated a deal to end the near 24-hour uprising.

“It was so scary,” said Svetlana, a 42-year-old English teacher who was in Rostov at the time. “I didn’t know where it would lead to.”

“He was probably right about something. But… the fact that during the special military operation, when hostilities were going on, he deployed and moved some troops to Rostov in particular — that was wrong,” she said.

But “Teddy Boy”, a 41-year-old American citizen from Los Angeles and member of the “Espanola” battalion fighting for Russia in Ukraine, praised the mercenary boss.

“I’m not 100 percent with him, but if I had met him, I would have shook his hand,” said Teddy Boy, who wore a military uniform and sported tattoos of pro-Russian army symbols.

“He spoke (about) a lot of things that people are thinking, that they’re too scared to say. That’s the problem. And I think that’s why a lot of people supported him.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Image for representational purposes only.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Russia resumed its aerial pounding of Ukraine’s power grid and Kyiv’s forces again targeted Russian oil facilities with cross-border drone strikes, seeking to curb each other’s ability to fight in a war that is now in its third year, officials said on June 20.

With no major changes reported along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, where a recent push by the Kremlin’s forces in eastern and northeastern Ukraine has made only incremental gains, both sides in the war have taken aim at distant infrastructure targets.

In its seventh major attack on Ukrainian power plants since Moscow intensified energy infrastructure attacks three months ago, Russia fired nine missiles and 27 Shahed drones at energy facilities and critical infrastructure in central and eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian Air Force said. Air defenses intercepted all the drones and five cruise missiles, it said.

The attack hit power structures in the Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv and Vinnytsia regions of Ukraine, causing “extensive damage,” according to national power company Ukrenergo. Seven workers were injured, it said.

Ukrenergo announced extended blackouts across the country despite electricity imports and help with emergency supplies from European countries.

Private energy company DTEK said one of its power plants was hit in the overnight attack but did not specify its location. Three company employees were injured and the plant’s equipment was severely damaged, DTEK said on social media.

Among the most damaging recent strikes on Ukraine’s energy supply were an April barrage that damaged Kyiv’s largest thermal power plant and a massive attack on May 8 that targeted power generation and transmission facilities in several regions.

Rolling blackouts have affected Ukrainian households and industry.

The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that the strikes aimed at Ukrainian energy facilities that are needed to produce weapons and military equipment. Ukraine, which is heavily dependent on Western military aid, is developing a small but fast-growing defense industry.

In Russia, meanwhile, authorities in two regions reported fires at oil storage depots after drone attacks, two days after a Ukrainian strike started a huge blaze at another refinery.

Ukraine has in recent months stepped up aerial assaults on Russian soil, targeting refineries and oil terminals in an effort to disrupt the Kremlin’s war machine.

The overnight drone attacks were carried out by Ukraine’s Security Service, known by its acronym SBU, a Kyiv security official told The Associated Press.

The attacks triggered fires at the facilities, which processed and stored crude oil and its derivatives used to supply the Russian army, the official said.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

The head of Russia’s Adygea region, Murat Kumpilov, said a Ukrainian drone attack sparked a fire at an oil depot in the town of Enem that was later extinguished.

The governor of the Tambov region, Maxim Yegorov, said an oil reservoir went ablaze at an oil depot there.

Krasnodar region Gov. Veniamin Kondratyev said a drone hit a private house in the town of Slavyansk, killing a woman.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defenses downed 15 Ukrainian drones over three regions but didn’t mention any damage. The ministry said it has shot down more than 26,000 Ukrainian drones since the start of the war.

Moscow:

The Kremlin said Monday that a Kyiv-led international peace summit on Ukraine that it was not invited to produced “zero” results.

Officials from more than 90 countries gathered in Switzerland this weekend, backing Ukraine’s independence but leaving key questions of how to end the conflict unresolved.

“If we talk about the results of this meeting, then they come down to zero,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

A final document was backed by a vast majority of countries attending the summit, but several countries did not sign it, including Saudi Arabia, India and the United Arab Emirates.

“Many countries understood the lack of perspective of any serious discussion without the presence of our country,” Peskov said.

He said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “still open to dialogue and serious discussion.”

Putin last week said Moscow would only join peace talks if Ukraine gave up four of its regions, effectively demanding that it surrender.

The Kremlin launched its full-scale offensive against Ukraine on February 24th, 2022.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Russian President Vladimir Putin promised on June 14 to “immediately” order a cease-fire in Ukraine and begin negotiations if Kyiv started withdrawing troops from the four regions annexed by Moscow in 2022 and renounced plans to join NATO.

Such a deal appears a nonstarter for Kyiv, which wants to join the military alliance and has demanded that Russia withdraw its troops from all of its territory. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine on Mr. Putin’s proposal.

“We will do it immediately,” Mr. Putin said in a speech at the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow.

His remarks came as leaders of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations met in Italy and as Switzerland prepared to host scores of world leaders— but not from Moscow— this weekend to try to map out the first steps toward peace in Ukraine. The U.S. and Ukraine this week also signed a 10-year security agreement that they hailed as a milestone in relations.

Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. After Ukrainian forces thwarted a Russian drive to the capital, much of the fighting has focused in the south and east— and Russia illegally annexed regions in the east and the south, although it doesn’t fully control any of them.

Mr. Putin said his proposal is aimed at a “final resolution” of the conflict in Ukraine rather than “freezing it,” and stressed that the Kremlin is “ready to start negotiations without delay.”

Broader demands for peace that the Russian leader listed included Ukraine’s non-nuclear status, restrictions on its military force and protection of the interests of the Russian-speaking population in the country. All of these should become part of “fundamental international agreements,” and all Western sanctions against Russia should be lifted, Mr. Putin said.

“We’re urging to turn this tragic page of history and to begin restoring, step-by-step, restore the unity between Russia and Ukraine and in Europe in general,” he said.

Mr. Putin’s remarks represented a rare occasion in which he clearly laid out his conditions for ending the war in Ukraine, but it didn’t include any new demands. The Kremlin has said before that Kyiv should recognize its territorial gains and drop its bid to join NATO.

Russia doesn’t fully control any of the four regions it illegally annexed in 2022, but Mr. Putin insisted on June 14 that Kyiv should withdraw from them entirely and essentially cede them to Moscow within their administrative borders. In Zaporizhzhia in the southeast, Russia still doesn’t control the region’s namesake administrative capital with a pre-war population of about 700,000, and in the neighbouring Kherson region, Moscow withdrew from Kherson’s biggest city and capital of the same name in November 2022.

Mr. Putin said that if “Kyiv and Western capitals” reject his offer, “it is their business, their political and moral responsibility for continuing the bloodshed.”

Librarian Alexandra Karaseva, 67, stands in the library named after English novelis George Orwell in Ivanovo, a city located some 250 km northeast of Moscow, on October 20, 2023. From the shelves of the library, the old lady grabs books whose place she naturally knows. Orwell, Sorokin, Dostoevsky.
| Photo Credit: AFP

The librarian scans the shelves and quickly picks out a few works— Orwell, Sorokin, Dostoevsky— the authors she thinks can best help cast some light in a dark time for Russia.

The scene is in Ivanovo, an industrial city five hours’ drive from Moscow, where the “George Orwell Library” was set up last year in an effort to counter growing propaganda and censorship.

The simple library housed on the ground floor of a run-down building has a computer, a few hundred books and a lingering smell of the perfume used by the librarian, Alexandra Karaseva.

“Books help to see what is human, even in an enemy, and reject any form of dehumanisation,” the 67-year-old said as she handles the tomes.

The library was opened by Dmitry Silin, a local businessman and opponent of the conflict in Ukraine who has since fled Russia fearing he could be imprisoned for his outspoken views.

Ms. Karaseva showed off the collection of books about dystopias, the Soviet prison system, the works of contemporary writers critical of the Kremlin as well as some lighter novels to “lift spirits”.

“The more you read about dystopias, the more freedom you have. They show the dangers, as well as ways of avoiding them and of resisting,” Ms. Karaseva said.

The books are not banned and can therefore be loaned to readers just like a normal library.

Among them are works by authors now classified as “foreign agents” under Russian law which in bookshops have to be sold with their covers hidden.

The librarian, with her turtleneck and thick glasses, is a wellspring of knowledge. Only her pronunciation is uneven because of her damaged teeth.

With a blond fringe falling over her eyes, she talks about Orwell’s masterpiece “1984” which describes an ultimately futile attempt at resistence in a highly effective dictatorship.

She talks about the revolutionary self-destruction in Dostoevsky’s “Demons” and the explosive dystopias in Vladimir Sorokin’s works, as well as the maverick works of Harper Lee and Erich Maria Remarque.

Ms. Karaseva is a retired historian of ancient Rome, specialising in “the transition from the Republic to the dictatorship”.

She does not only deal in high-brow and even shares her thinking on the blockbuster film “Barbie” which she said was “deeper than it seems”.

The film was recently shown in the library meeting room.

Dmitry Shestopalov, 18, an activist for the opposition party Yabloko, attended the screening and regularly visits the library to watch films and meet other young people.

“You can develop yourself here despite everything that is happening in our country. You can forget fear, feel free, feel comfort, feel that you are not alone in the enormous system that is devouring us,” he said.

Lawyer Anastasya Rudenko, 41, a co-founder of the library, said she sees in modern Russia “signs” of the same totalitarianism described in “1984”.

Above all, she feels a sense of “fear that shackles”.

She is also struck by the contemporary relevance of the slogan from the book “Ignorance Is Strength”.

In Russia “people who try not to understand what is going on live very well,” she said.

In Ivanovo’s central square, near a plaque for those killed by Tsarist Russia during an anti-war demonstration in 1915, Rudenko reflects on her own “personal tragedy” as an icy wind lashes her face.

Her brother and her husband are both Russian army officers serving in the “special military operation” — the euphemism used by the Kremlin to classify Russia’s offensive against Ukraine.

She cannot speak openly about the topic.

The slightest sensitive comment could mean a sanction or even a prison sentence. Being a lawyer or the wife of an officer would not protect her.

In June 2023, Ms. Rudenko was sentenced to pay a fine for “discrediting” the Russian army for some Telegram posts where she said she had watched a documentary by opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Her husband came to the court hearing to support her.

A normally smiling, energetic woman with a Ukrainian father, she breaks down when she talks about the “great pain” of being powerless confronted by the conflict.

But she said she loves her husband “without a doubt even more” since he left to fight.

To anyone who might question the contradiction and ask why they are still together, she replies: “And you? What would you have done?”