NEW DELHI, 10 March 2022, (TON): India will wind up Operation Ganga the evacuation programme for Indian nationals from war-torn Ukraine and by tomorrow evening, the last flight will take off, bringing home the government teams sent specially for the evacuation.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, the government has evacuated around 18,000 Indian nationals, most of them students.

The last batch of students, nearly 700 stranded in Sumy near the Russian border are on way to western Ukraine on train, from where they will take home-bound flights. 

Union aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia today tweeted that the last special flight from Romania was taking off.

Nearly 8000 Indians evacuated through Romania.

NEW DELHI, 10 March 2022, (TON): India's Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said “Bangladesh and India are exploring a cross-border pipeline for liquified natural gas (LNG) and an LNG terminal.”

Pointing out that an India-Bangladesh Friendship Pipeline is under construction, he said “India's energy grids are increasingly being integrated with those of its neighbours.”

Addressing an event to inaugurate the first session of a training module on India's "Neighbourhood First" policy for India's future administrative services officers in Mussoorie, Shringla said cross-border cooperation in the power sector has been an area of striking success.

He said “the Indian power grid is connected to Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh via high-capacity connections. India supplies about 1160 MW of power to Bangladesh, about 700 MW to Nepal, and imports 1.8 GW from Bhutan.”

Shringla added “India has also taken the lead in creating power capacity in the region and has created 2,100 MW of hydropower capacity in Bhutan and more are being created. Besides, India is constructing the 1,320 MW Maitree super thermal power project in Bangladesh.”

DHAKA, 10 March 2022, (TON): Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has thanked her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi for India rescuing nine Bangladeshi nationals from war-torn Ukraine.

Citizens of Nepal and Tunisia were also evacuated under India' rescue operation, reports our New Delhi correspondent.

Modi had recently offered help to pull citizens of India's South Asian neighbours.

DHAKA, 10 March 2022, (TON): Bangladesh and United Arab Emirates have agreed to further strengthen the existing bilateral relations between the two countries for mutual benefits.

The decision was taken at a bilateral meeting between Bangladesh PM Hasina and UAE Vice President and Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

Both leaders led their respective teams at the meeting in Dubai Exhibition Centre.

Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen briefed the media after the meeting.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who is also the ruler of Dubai, stressed the need for increasing operation of Emirates flights between the two countries.

In reply, Sheikh Hasina said her government is now constructing the 3rd terminal of Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.

She added "we're trying to increase our capacity to this end.”

She said “the UAE has plenty of trade and investment scopes in Bangladesh.”

WASHINGTON, 09 March 2022, (TON): Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby has said that Secretary Austin ordered the deployment from the United States of an additional approximately 500 U.S.  military personnel to locations in Europe to augment U.S. forces that are already in theater.

These additional personnel are being positioned to respond obviously to the current security environment caused by Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. 

And certainly, to help reinforce and bolster deterrence and defense capabilities of the NATO alliance.

These as all the other ones we’ve talked about in recent weeks are not permanent moves.  They are temporary moves.  And we’re going to adjust our posture continuously as conditions require. 

And as President Biden has noted before, we are not and will not send forces into Ukraine.

So, these additional personnel will be going to NATO’s Eastern Flank.  Specifically, we’ll be sending a number of KC-135 refueling aircraft out of Fairfield Air Force Base in Spokane.  They will deploy with approximately 150 personnel. 

They’re scheduled right now.  They’re planned right now to deploy to Souda Bay, Greece to provide additional area or fueling support to the commander of U.S.  European Command.

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PARIS, 09 March 2022, (TON): France warned that further delays could stymie a revived nuclear agreement between world powers and Iran, with the West at loggerheads with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, while Washington said “it would cede nothing to Moscow.”

Moscow is a direct party along with Britain, China, France and Germany to the ongoing talks in Vienna aimed at reviving the 2015 nuclear deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Washington is participating indirectly, as former president Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018.

“We are very close to a deal,” but Paris is “very worried about risks that further delays could weigh on the chances,” a foreign ministry spokeswoman told reporters in an apparent reference to Russia’s demands for extra guarantees.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has demanded written assurances from Washington that massive Western sanctions imposed on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine will not affect its economic and military cooperation with Tehran.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said such demands are “irrelevant.”

TEHRAN, 09 March 2022, (TON): State media reported that Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard launched a second reconnaissance satellite into space, just as world powers awaited Tehran’s decision in negotiations over the country’s tattered nuclear deal.

State television identified the launch as taking place in its northeastern Shahroud Desert, without specifying when.

However, it came as Iran’s top diplomat at the monthslong talks suddenly flew home late Monday for consultations, a sign of the growing pressure on Tehran as the negotiations appear to be nearing their end.

The Guard said “the Noor-2 satellite reached a low orbit of 500 kilometers (310 miles) above the Earth’s surface on the Qased satellite carrier, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. It described the Qased, or Messenger in Farsi, as a three-phase, mixed fuel satellite carrier.”

According to media “it is a great achievement that we can put our eyes in the sky again and look at the Earth from space.”

Footage aired on state television showed the rocket taking off from a truck-based launcher on a concrete pad in the desert. Features of the site shown in the footage, analyzed by The Associated Press and compared to regional satellite photos, correspond to a launch site nearly 40 kilometers (25 miles) southeast of the city of Shahroud in Iran’s rural Semnan province.

WARSAW, 09 March 2022, (TON): The Pentagon rejected Poland’s offer to give the United States its MiG-29 fighter jets for use by Ukraine, in a rare public display of disharmony by NATO allies seeking to boost Ukrainian fighters while avoiding getting caught up in a wider war with Russia.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Poland’s proposal earlier to deliver the jets to the US Ramstein Air Base in Germany raised the concerning prospect of jets departing from a US and NATO base to fly into airspace contested with Russia in the Ukraine war.

Kirby said in a statement “we will continue to consult with Poland and our other NATO allies about this issue and the difficult logistical challenges it presents, but we do not believe Poland’s proposal is a tenable one.”

He said “it is simply not clear to us that there is a substantive rationale for it.”

Any decision to provide the MiGs would be a morale booster for Ukraine as Russian attacks on its cities deepen the humanitarian catastrophe. But it also would raise the risks of a wider war.

One senior US diplomat said Poland’s announcement came as a surprise.

BRUSSELS, 09 March 2022, (TON): European Union officials defended the 27-nation bloc’s decision to ban Russian state-controlled media outlets from broadcasting in the region as decisive steps to check a Kremlin-led information war.

Speaking at the European Parliament during a debate on foreign interference and disinformation, the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell brushed off critics who say the EU is threatening freedom of information with the ban on Sputnik and Russia.

Borrell told lawmakers “they are not independent media, they are assets, they are weapons, in the Kremlin’s manipulation ecosystem.”

“We are not trying to decide what is true and what is false. We don’t have ministers of the Truth. But we have to focus on foreign actors who intentionally, in a coordinated manner, try to manipulate our information environment.”

Borrell said “Moscow-controlled outlets are part of a well-oiled propaganda machine providing biased news about Vladimir Putin’s true intentions.”

LONDON , 09 March 2022, (TON): The Prime Minister spoke to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán this afternoon to discuss the deteriorating situation in Ukraine.

The leaders condemned Russia’s abhorrent actions in Ukraine and said Putin must stop his barbaric campaign.

Setting out the UK’s plans to go harder and faster on sanctions, the Prime Minister said he believed it is key the UK and Hungary work together on how they could reduce dependency on Russian gas and oil.