Daily Archives: March 15, 2022

As the world's largest country in total area, Russia showcases a wide diversity of landforms. In general terms, it is divided into some very specific geographical zones.

The broad European Plain, or Volga River Plain extends from the Ural Mountains to its western borders with Europe.

The central and southern areas of Russia include large fertile areas, marsh, steppes (plains without trees) and massive coniferous forests.

Siberia is a combination of frozen tundra, with rolling hills rising to plateaus, punctuated by scattered mountain ranges.

Mountains Mountain ranges are found across Russia, with many of the major ones stretching along its southwestern, southeastern and eastern borders

In the far southwest the Caucasus Mountains slice across the land. The country's highest point, Mt. Elbrus at 18,481 ft. (5,633 m), is located there. It has been marked on the map above by a yellow upright triangle.

Making up the natural border between European Russia and Asia, the Ural Mountains extend from the Arctic Ocean to Kazakhstan's northern border.

The Kolyma Mountains in far northeastern Russia extend about 1,126 km (700 mi) north and south to the east of the Kolyma River and roughly parallel to the coast of Siberia. Some rise to over 6000 feet (1830 meters).

Rivers Russia has more than 100,000 rivers with a length of 7 miles, or greater. Some of the world's longest rivers flow through the vast lowland plains that dominate the Russian landscape.

Significant rivers include the Volga, Dnieper and Dvina (west), the Lena, Ob, and Yenisey (central) and the Amur in the far east.

At 1,642 m (5,387 ft), Lake Baikal (marked on the map) is the deepest and among the clearest of all lakes in the world. Baikal is home to more than 1,700 species of plants and animals, two thirds of which can be found nowhere else in the world.

Steppe Long characterized as the typical Russian landscape, the steppe region displays a broad range of treeless, grassy plains punctuated by mountain ranges, and provides the best conditions for human settlement.

Taiga Accounting for over 60% of Russia, this forested region extends from its western borders then east towards the Pacific Ocean. Russia contains the world's largest reserve of coniferous wood, however, due to extensive logging the supply is steadily on the decrease; as well, to make way for agriculture, much of the forested zone has been cleared.

Tundra Stretching 4,349 miles (7,000 km) from west to east, the Russian Arctic is a vast treeless and marshy plain, and is well-known for its white nights (dusk after midnight, and dawn fairly soon after) through summer and days of near total darkness through winter.

Russia has 46 provinces (oblasti, singular - oblast), 21 republics (respubliki, singular - respublika), 4 autonomous okrugs (avtonomnyye okrugi, singular - avtonomnyy okrug), 9 krays (kraya, singular - kray), 2 federal cities (goroda, singular - gorod), and 1 autonomous oblast (avtonomnaya oblast')

The oblasts are:Amur (Blagoveshchensk), Arkhangel'sk, Astrakhan', Belgorod, Bryansk, Chelyabinsk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Kaliningrad, Kaluga, Kemerovo, Kirov, Kostroma, Kurgan, Kursk, Leningrad, Lipetsk, Magadan, Moscow, Murmansk, Nizhniy Novgorod, Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Orenburg, Orel, Penza, Pskov, Rostov, Ryazan', Sakhalin (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk), Samara, Saratov, Smolensk, Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg), Tambov, Tomsk, Tula, Tver', Tyumen', Ul'yanovsk, Vladimir, Volgograd, Vologda, Voronezh, Yaroslavl';

The 21 republics are: Adygeya (Maykop), Altay (Gorno-Altaysk), Bashkortostan (Ufa), Buryatiya (Ulan-Ude), Chechnya (Groznyy), Chuvashiya (Cheboksary), Dagestan (Makhachkala), Ingushetiya (Magas), Kabardino-Balkariya (Nal'chik), Kalmykiya (Elista), Karachayevo-Cherkesiya (Cherkessk), Kareliya (Petrozavodsk), Khakasiya (Abakan), Komi (Syktyvkar), Mariy-El (Yoshkar-Ola), Mordoviya (Saransk), North Ossetia (Vladikavkaz), Sakha [Yakutiya] (Yakutsk), Tatarstan (Kazan'), Tyva (Kyzyl), Udmurtiya (Izhevsk);

Autonomous okrugs: Chukotka (Anadyr'), Khanty-Mansi-Yugra (Khanty-Mansiysk), Nenets (Nar'yan-Mar), Yamalo-Nenets (Salekhard);

Krays: Altay (Barnaul), Kamchatka (Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy), Khabarovsk, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, Perm', Primorskiy [Maritime] (Vladivostok), Stavropol', Zabaykal'sk [Transbaikal] (Chita);

Federal cities: Moscow [Moskva], Saint Petersburg [Sankt-Peterburg];

Autonomous oblast: Yevreyskaya [Jewish] (Birobidzhan)

Russia, the world's largest country by area, stretches from Northern Asia to Eastern Europe. The Arctic Ocean borders Russia to the north and the Pacific to the east. The country also has a short coastline on the Baltic Sea in the northwest. The exclave of Russia, Kaliningrad also borders the Baltic Sea as well as Lithuania and Poland. The southern borders of Russia are with Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, North Korea, and Mongolia. The western and southwestern borders of Russia are with Finland, Norway, Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Latvia.

Russia Bordering Countries: Georgia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Estonia, Finland, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Azerbaijan, North Korea, China.

Regional Maps: Map of Asia

The above map represents the largest country in the world, Russia. The map can be downloaded, printed, and used for coloring or map-pointing activities.

The above map represents Russia, the world's largest country.

This page was last updated on February 24, 2021

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Russia Maps & Facts - World Atlas

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) Russia and Ukraine kept a fragile diplomatic path open with a new round of talks Monday even as Moscows forces pounded away at Kyiv and other cities across the country in a punishing bombardment the Red Cross said has created nothing short of a nightmare for civilians.

Shortly before dawn on Tuesday, large explosions thundered across Kyiv as Russia pressed its advance on multiple fronts.

Elsewhere, a convoy of 160 civilian cars left the encircled port city of Mariupol along a designated humanitarian route, the city council reported, in a rare glimmer of hope a week and a half into the lethal siege that has pulverized homes and other buildings and left people desperate for food, water, heat and medicine.

The latest negotiations, held via video conference, were the fourth round involving higher-level officials from the two countries and the first in a week. The talks ended without a breakthrough after several hours, with an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying the negotiators took a technical pause and planned to meet again Tuesday.

The two sides had expressed some optimism in the past few days. Mykhailo Podolyak, the aide to Zelenskyy, tweeted that the negotiators would discuss peace, cease-fire, immediate withdrawal of troops & security guarantees.

Previous discussions, held in person in Belarus, produced no lasting humanitarian routes or agreements to end the fighting.

In Washington, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that while the Biden administration supports Ukraines participation in the talks with Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin would have to show signs of de-escalating in order to demonstrate good faith.

And what were really looking for is evidence of that, and were not seeing any evidence at this point that President Putin is doing anything to stop the onslaught or de-escalate, she said.

Overall, nearly all of the Russian military offensives remained stalled after making little progress over the weekend, according to a senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the Pentagons assessment. Russian troops were still about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the center of Kyiv, the official said.

The official said that Russian forces have launched more than 900 missiles but that Ukraines airspace is still contested, with Russia not achieving total air superiority.

Overnight, air raid alerts sounded in cities and towns around the country, from near the Russian border in the east to the Carpathian Mountains in the west, and fighting continued on the outskirts of Kyiv. Ukrainian officials said Russian forces shelled several suburbs of the capital.

Ukrainian authorities said two people were killed when the Russians struck an airplane factory in Kyiv, sparking a large fire. The Antonov factory is Ukraines largest aircraft plant and produces many of the worlds biggest cargo planes.

Russian artillery fire also hit a nine-story apartment building in the northern Obolonskyi district of the city, killing two more people, authorities said.

And a Russian airstrike near a Ukrainian checkpoint caused extensive damage to a downtown Kyiv neighborhood, killing one person, Ukraines emergency agency said.

Kateryna Lot said she was in her apartment as her child did homework when they heard a loud explosion and ran to take shelter.

The child became hysterical. Our windows and the balcony were shattered. Part of the floor fell down, she said. It was very, very scary.

In an area outside Kyiv, Fox News reporter Benjamin Hall was injured while reporting and was hospitalized, the network said.

In Russia, the live main evening news program on state television was briefly interrupted by a woman who walked into the studio holding a poster against the war. The OVD-Info website that monitors political arrests said she was a Channel 1 employee who taken into police custody.

A town councilor for Brovary, east of Kyiv, was killed in fighting there, officials said. Shells also fell on the Kyiv suburbs of Irpin, Bucha and Hostomel, which have seen some of the worst fighting in Russias stalled attempt to take the capital, local authorities said.

Airstrikes were reported across the country, including the southern city of Mykolaiv, and the northern city of Chernihiv, where heat was knocked out to most of the town. Explosions also reverberated overnight around the Russian-occupied Black Sea port of Kherson.

Nine people were killed in a rocket attack on a TV tower in the western village of Antopol, according to the regions governor.

In the eastern city of Kharkiv, firefighters doused the smoldering remains of a four-story residential building. It was unclear whether there were casualties.

In the southern city of Mariupol, where the war has produced some of the greatest suffering, the city council didnt say how many people were in the convoy of cars headed westward for the city of Zaporizhzhia. But it said a cease-fire along the route appeared to be holding.

Previous attempts to evacuate civilians and deliver humanitarian aid to the city of 430,000 were thwarted by fighting.

Ukraines military said it repelled an attempt Monday to take control of Mariupol by Russian forces, who were forced to retreat. Satellite images from Maxar Technologies showed fires burning across the city, with many high-rise apartment buildings heavily damaged or destroyed.

The Kremlin-backed leader of the Russian region of Chechnya said on a messaging app that Chechen fighters were spearheading the offensive on Mariupol.

Robert Mardini, director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the war has become nothing short of a nightmare for those living in besieged cities, and he pleaded for safe corridors for civilians to leave and humanitarian aid to be brought in.

The situation cannot, cannot continue like this, he said. History is watching what is happening in Mariupol and other cities.

A pregnant woman who became a symbol of Ukraines suffering when she was photographed being carried from a bombed maternity hospital in Mariupol last week has died along with her baby, The Associated Press has learned.

Mariupol residents including Natalia Koldash rushed to shelter inside a building Sunday as an unidentified plane passed overhead.

We have no information at all, Koldash said. We know nothing. It looks like we are living in a deep forest.

Associated Press video showed debris from a damaged residential building and another building that a young man named Dima described as an elementary school.

There was no military at this school, he said. Its unclear why it was hit.

The Russian military said 20 civilians in the separatist-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine were killed by a ballistic missile launched by Ukrainian forces. The claim could not be independently verified.

The U.N. has recorded at least 596 civilian deaths since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, though it believes the true toll is much higher. Millions more have fled their homes, with more than 2.8 million crossing into Poland and other neighboring countries in what the U.N. has called Europes biggest refugee crisis since World War II.

All day crying from the pain of having to part with loved ones, with my husband, my parents, 33-year-old refugee Alexandra Beltuygova said in the Polish border town of Przemysl after fleeing the industrial Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

I understand that we may not see them. I wish this war would end, she said.

Russias military is bigger and better equipped than Ukraines, but its troops have faced stiffer-than-expected resistance, bolstered by arms supplied by the West.

During a meeting in Rome with a senior Chinese diplomat, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned China against helping Russia.

Two administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information, said China had signaled to Moscow that it would be willing to provide both military support in Ukraine and financial backing to help stave off effects of Western sanctions, which include a fourth set of EU sanctions announced late Monday.

The Kremlin has denied asking China for military equipment to use in Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia has its own potential to continue the operation and that it was unfolding in accordance with the plan and will be completed on time and in full.

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Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor in Washington and AP journalists from around the world contributed to this report.

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Follow the APs coverage of the Ukraine crisis at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Original post:

Russia keeps up attacks in Ukraine as two sides hold talks - The Associated Press - en Espaol

China has already decided to provide Russia with economic and financial support during its war on Ukraine and is contemplating sending military supplies such as armed drones, US officials fear. The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, laid out the US case against Russias invasion in an intense seven-hour meeting in Rome with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, pointing out that Moscow had feigned interest in diplomacy while preparing for invasion, and also that the Russian military was clearly showing signs of frailty. Earlier, it was reported that the US had told allies that China responded positively to a Russian request for military equipment, a claim Beijing has denied.

An employee of Russias state Channel One television interrupted a Russian state TV broadcast by shouting No to war and holding a sign that read Dont believe the propaganda. Theyre lying to you here. The poster held up by Marina Ovsyannikova on Monday evening also said, in English, Russians against the war. The protest was welcomed by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who said: Im thankful to those Russians who dont stop trying to deliver the truth.

Russia-Ukraine talks will continue on Tuesday, Zelenskiy said. In an address on Monday night he also called on Russian soldiers to surrender. Addressing them directly he said: What are you dying for? If you surrender to our forces we will treat you as humans have to be treated, with dignity.

The UKs Ministry of Defence said Russia could be planning to use chemical or biological weapons in a faked attack in Ukraine or a staged discovery of biological agents.

Almost all of the Russian advances in Ukraine remain stalled, a senior US defence official said during a background briefing, CNN reports. Russian forces moving on Kyiv have not appreciably progressed over the weekend. A close ally of Putin, national guard chief Viktor Zolotov, blamed the slower than expected progress on what he claimed were far-right Ukrainian forces hiding behind civilians.

US president Joe Biden is considering travelling to Europe for in-person meetings with Nato allies, Reuters reports. Biden could meet other leaders in Brussels on 23 March and then travel to Poland, the report said.

A convoy of more than 160 cars departed from Mariupol today, local officials said, in what appeared to be the first successful attempt to evacuate civilians from the encircled Ukrainian city. After several days of failed attempts to deliver supplies to Mariupol and provide safe passage out for trapped civilians, the city council said a local ceasefire was holding and the convoy had left for the city of Zaporizhzhia.

The mayor of Ukraines frontline city of Kharkiv said the city had been under constant attack by Russian forces, Reuters reports. Speaking on national television, Ihor Terekhov said Russian troops had fired at central districts causing an unspecified number of casualties.

A Russian airstrike hit a residential building in Kyiv as Moscows forces stepped up their brutal campaign to capture Ukraines capital and other major cities. One person was found dead in the nine-storey apartment building, officials said, with three more people hospitalised as air raid sirens sounded in the capital and other cities hours before Ukrainian and Russian negotiators were set to resume talks.

The Antonov aircraft plant in Kyiv was shelled by Russian forces, the Kyiv city administration said in an update on its official Telegram account on Monday morning. At least two people were killed and seven injured, it said.

Ukrainian authorities have denied accusations by Russia after a Ukrainian missile allegedly exploded in the separatist-controlled city of Donetsk killing 20 civilians. Ukrainian military spokesperson Leonid Matyukhin said the missile, that carried warhead shrapnel, was in fact a Russian rocket. The Russian and Ukrainian claims cannot be independently verified.

There are reports that Russian forces blew up explosives at Ukraines Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Ukraines parliament earlier said Russian troops planned to begin disposal of ammunition in front of the Zaporizhzhia plant, Europes largest nuclear power station.

At least nine people were reportedly killed and nine more wounded in an airstrike on a television tower in Ukraines northern Rivne region today. There are still people under the rubble, governor Vitaliy Koval said in an online post, Reuters reports.

Ninety children have been killed and more than 100 wounded in Ukraine since Russia invaded on 24 February, the Ukrainian general prosecutors office said. The highest number of victims are in the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kherson, Mykolayiv and Zhytomyr regions, it said in a statement.

Ukraines prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said Russian forces were behaving like terrorists and Putin had started a full-scale war in the centre of Europe that could become a third world war. Addressing the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, he said Europe chose the road of pacifying the aggressor for years instead of defending the values of democracy, the rule of law and human rights.

Read more here:

Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 20 of the Russian invasion - The Guardian

Since the beginning of Russias all-out invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the Indian government, and large segments of the Indian public, have firmly been on Putins side. Hashtags like #IStandWithPutin and #istandwithrussia trended on Indian social media, and the Indian government demonstrated perhaps most notably by refusing to support UN resolutions condemning the invasion that it is not willing to jeopardise its strong ties with Russia over Putins actions in Ukraine.

Indias approach to the situation in Ukraine is hardly surprising or atypical. Since the establishment of diplomatic ties following Indias independence in 1947, relations between Moscow and New Delhi have been shaped by a high degree of political and strategic trust. Across the years, Russia and India routinely took similar stances and supported each other on contentious international issues.

From the very beginning, Moscow saw its alliance with India as essential for offsetting American and Chinese dominance in Asia. And India always enjoyed the leverage that support from a major power like Russia provided in international politics.

In 1961, after India used its military to end Portuguese colonial sovereignty over Goa, Daman and Diu, for example, the US, the UK, France, and Turkey put forth a resolution condemning India and calling upon its government to withdraw its troops immediately. But the Soviet Union opposed the proposal.

In 1971, India and the Soviet Union signed the Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Co-operation. The treaty formalised Indias alliance with what was then a superpower and arguably ensured its preeminencein South Asia.

The Soviet Union and later Russias support for India on the issue of Kashmir has also been unrelenting and politically significant. In 1955, declaring support for Indian sovereignty over Kashmir, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev said, We are so near that if ever you call us from the mountain tops we will appear at your side. Since then, Moscow has been a bulwark against international intervention in Kashmir.

The Soviet Union vetoed UN Security Council resolutions in 1957, 1962 and 1971 that called for international intervention in Kashmir, insisting that it is a bilateral issue that needs to be solved through negotiations between India and Pakistan. And it took a similar stance on the Indo-Pak conflict in general. Such a stance was appreciated across the political spectrum in India.

In 1978, then Foreign Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee a founding member of the right-wing, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who served as Indias prime minister between 1998 and 2004 for example, put aside his ideological differences with the Soviet Union, and greeted a Soviet delegation to India saying, our countryfound the only reliable friendin the Soviet Union alone.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has worked to maintain its special relationship with India.

In 2000, Russias President Vladimir Putin and then Prime Minister Vajpayee signed a Declaration of Strategic Partnership. In 2010, marking a decade of this strategic partnership, both countries signed the Special and Strategic Partnership. As part of this special partnership, Russia reaffirmed its pro-India stance on Kashmir.In 2019, when India scrapped Article 370 of its constitution that gave Jammu and Kashmir special status, the Modi government faced severe criticism in the international arena, but Russia once again deemed this to be an internal matter for India.

In January 2020, following a China-led push for international intervention in Kashmir, Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russias first deputy permanent representative to the UN, tweeted, UNSC discussed Kashmir in closed consultations. Russia firmly stands for the normalisation of relations between India and Pakistan. We hope that differences between them will be settled through bilateral efforts.

About the same time, after envoys of several countries announced their intention to visit Kashmir, the Russian Ambassador to India Nikolay Kudashev refused to do so. He said, I do not feel there is a reason for me to travel. This is an internal matter belonging to the Constitution of India This is not an issue for Russia. Those who believe that this is an issue, those who are concerned about the situation in Kashmir, those who doubt the Indian policies in Kashmir can travel and see for themselves. We never put it in doubt.

New Delhi may not have the political clout that comes with being a permanent member of the UN Security Council, but since entering into a strategic partnership with the Soviet Union soon after independence, it has done everything it can to show its support for Moscow in the international arena.

In 1956, for example, India refrained from publicly condemning the Soviet Unions violent suppression of the Hungarian revolution this despite Indias then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru being critical of Moscows actions in private.

More than a decade later, in 1968, when Soviet forces invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi gave a disapproving speech in the lower house of the Indian parliament but refrained from criticising Moscow on an international platform. India abstained from a subsequent vote on a resolution condemning the invasion.

When the Soviet Unionentered Afghanistan in 1979 to prop up the new pro-Soviet regime, many in India including Prime Minister Charan Singh strongly opposed the invasion. However, having been the beneficiary of many Soviet vetoes across the decades, India once again abstained from voting in the UN General Assembly resolutioncondemning the Soviet Union. It was the onlynon-aligned country to do so.

Maintaining this pro-Moscow voting record in the 2000s, India voted against a UN Human Rights Commission resolution that condemned Russias disproportionate use of force in the second Chechen war. In 2008, along with North Korea, Iran, and Myanmar, it also voted against a UN General Assembly resolution that declared the right of return of those displaced by Russias campaign in Abkhazia. India also abstained from voting in the 2013 and 2016 UN General Assembly resolutions critical of the Assad regime supported by Russia. Expectedly, in 2014, it also abstained from the UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russias invasion of Crimea and, in 2020, it voted against a Ukraine-sponsored UN General Assembly resolution condemning human rights violations in Crimea.

The relationship between Russia and India, however, is not dependent only on UN vetoes and favourable political statements. The decades-old Indo-Russian alliance is also underpinned by a long history of bilateral collaborationon economic and strategic issues.

The Soviet Union was Indias largest trading partner until its collapse. Soviet economic contributions and technical know-how were essential in the establishment of Indias domestic industries, including oil and gas and mining. The Soviet Union also helped ensure Indias energy security. The first Indian citizen to travel to space, Rakesh Sharma, had done so through the Soviet Unions Intekosmos programme.

Cultural exchanges have also been at the centre of Russia and Indias bilateral relations from the very beginning. Russian historians, philosophers and artists have expressed their admiration and respect for revolutionary and literary Indian figures. During the height of the Cold War, Hindi films were dubbed into Russian and were immensely popular among Muscovites. The Soviet Union also went to great lengths to ensure that Russian classic texts were available in India, setting up publishing houses that were solely focused on the Indian market.

As Deepa Bhasthi recounted in a recent essay, For a generation that came of age at the cusp of that very strange period in India when socialism ended and capitalism was becoming wholeheartedly embraced, these books remain a kind of sentimental paraphernalia. The world depicted in the Russian stories was an exotic one different in weather, names, food, and faades. But the affordable books made it a world its readers felt able to touch, to sense and know well.

Of course,the mostenduring aspect of the Indo-Russian ties has been themilitary cooperationbetween the two countries.

The Soviet Union is said to have supplied India during the years with enough military hardware to equip several fleets. This has included aircraft carriers, tanks, guns, fighter jets, and missiles. The Soviet Union was also central to the creation of the Indian navy and, in the 1980s, it even leased a nuclear-powered submarine to India.

This Soviet-era legacy has persisted post-1991. Russian-origin weapons are believed to account for 60 to 85 percent of the hardware of the Indian armed forces today.

According to theStockholm International Peace Research Institute, Russia was the second-largest global arms exporter to India between 2016 and 2020. As its largest importer, India received 23 percent of Russian hardware. Admittedly, compared with 2011-2015, exports to India dropped by 53 percent. However, there are several recent deals in the works. This includes a deal to buy state-of-the-art air defence systems, a Russian proposal to build AIP-powered conventional submarines, as well as a plan to lease two Russian nuclear-ballistic submarines.

In light of this long history of strong diplomatic, military, cultural and economic ties, it is hardly surprising that the Indian government and the public at large, chose to stand with Russia as it faced condemnation from the international community.

India wants to maintain a positive relationship with Russia because it needs Moscows support in resolving its territorial conflicts with its neighbours, especially China. It also wants to continue to enjoy economic and military support from Russia. Furthermore, as Russia repeatedly supported India at the UN on issues like Kashmir, many Indians feel as if it is now their turn to return the favour.

Maintaining support for Russia is not going to be easy for India in the coming weeks and months especially as Moscow, facing crippling sanctions, comes closer to officially becoming a pariah state.

India, however, is experienced in maintaining a needs-based partnership with pariah states. It did so with Iran, for example, despite mounting pressure from the US. Furthermore, under Modis leadership, India cultivated strong relationships with other authoritarian leaders like Putin, who had received much criticism from the international community because of their rhetoric and actions, on issues like human rights, democracy and migration, in recent years. Modi famously enjoyed a bromance with populist right-wing US President Donald Trump. Under Israels far-right leader Benjamin Netanyahu,Israel laid the foundations for a robust economic and strategic alliance with India.In 2020, Brazils far-right President Jair Bolsonaro was aguest of honourat Indias annual Republic Day celebration in New Delhi.

But all this does not mean India will maintain its support for Russia whatever it does. In recent years, New Delhi has been rapidly strengthening its ties with the West, and it may soon become too costly for it to maintain its traditional ties with Moscow.

Indeed, if Russia fails to score a decisive victory in Ukraine, or struggles to maintain its economic and military influence in Asia due to sanctions, the Indian government may feel the need to reassess its stance on Putin.

But, at least for now, no one should be at all surprised that India is standing with Russia and supporting Putin.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.

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Why is India standing with Putins Russia? - Al Jazeera English

China risks paying "high reputational costs" should it decide to assist Russia in its war against Ukraine, according to one political analyst.

Even if China wanted to bail out Russia either financially or economically its capacity to do so is verylimited, saidRobert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the U.S.

"Much of Russia's exposure, China's exposure to the international financial system remains in U.S. dollars not in rubles and the Chinese currency RMB. They could make a slight difference at the margin, but [China] would pay a pretty high reputational costs for doing that," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box Asia" on Tuesday.

On Monday, U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan held an "intense" seven-hour meeting with China's top foreign policy advisor Yang Jiechi in Rome.

At the meeting, Sullivan conveyed to Chinese officials that the U.S. is concerned Beijing may attempt to help Russia blunt global sanctions. The trip came amid reports that Moscow asked China to help provide military equipment for its invasion on Ukraine, including surface-to-air missiles, armored vehicles, and drones.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a Victory Day military parade marking the 74th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian on Monday denied such reports of the Russian request and called them malicious "disinformation."

"The top priority at the moment is for all parties to exercise restraint, cool the situation down instead of adding fuel to the fire, and work for diplomatic settlement rather than further escalate the situation," Zhao told a regular briefing in Beijing.

The U.S., together with Ukraine and the Western allies, have "already won the information war" against Russia, said Daly.

"Valdimir Putin is the bad guy in the eyes of the world," and Moscow is fast becoming a "pariah state," he said. China needs to "ask itself if that's the side that it wants to be on," Daly added.

"China had declared on February 4th that it had stood with Russia. But Russia, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran this isn't really the international club that most Chinese people aspire to be part of. And circumstances are pushing China further in that direction. So there's a reputational risk," he noted.

The most shocking development would be Chinese agreement to provide military hardware or even lethal weapons to Russia...

Given the lack of evidence at this point that China actually provided military aid to Russia, this issue will likely raise further questions, said Yun Sun, a senior fellow and co-director of the East Asia Program and director of the China Program at the Stimson Center.

"There's very little information as to what we're actually talking about in terms of military assistance," she told CNBC on Tuesday. "There's also the question as to whether Beijing actually provided those assistance or Beijing just expressed a willingness," to provide some kind of military support, she added.

Still, political observers believe China's move to provide any kind of military or economic assistance to Russia could be a gamechanger and lead to far-reaching geopolitical consequences.

Political risk consultancy Eurasia Group said Monday it "still believes with only moderate conviction that China is unlikely to directly assist Russia's invasion to this degree, as it is attempting toprojectneutrality in the conflict."

One key point to watch in the coming days is whether China fulfills Russia's request for help in its invasion of Ukraine, the analysts said in a note.

"The most shocking development would be Chinese agreement to provide military hardware or even lethal weapons to Russia, which would amount to Beijing actively taking Moscow's side in the conflict for the first time," they said.

"This development would soon elicit US and EU sanctions and would produce a long-term geopolitical fracture between China and the West, including pressures for more extensive economic decoupling."

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China's reputation is at risk if Beijing were to help Russia in its war on Ukraine - CNBC

American intelligence officials have discovered that the barrage of ballistic missiles Russia has fired into Ukraine contain a surprise: decoys that trick air-defense radars and fool heat-seeking missiles.

The devices are each about a foot long, shaped like a dart and white with an orange tail, according to an American intelligence official. They are released by the Iskander-M short-range ballistic missiles that Russia is firing from mobile launchers across the border, the official said, when the missile senses that it has been targeted by air defense systems.

Each is packed with electronics and produces radio signals to jam or spoof enemy radars attempting to locate the Iskander-M, and contains a heat source to attract incoming missiles. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about intelligence matters, described the devices on the condition of anonymity.

The use of the decoys may help explain why Ukrainian air-defense weapons have had difficulty intercepting Russias Iskander missiles.

Powered by a solid-fuel rocket motor, the Iskander can reach targets more than 200 miles away, according to U.S. government documents. Each mobile launcher can fire two Iskanders before it must be reloaded.

Photographs of the dart-shaped munitions began circulating on social media two weeks ago. They had stumped experts and open-source intelligence analysts many of whom mistook them for bomblets from cluster weapons based on their size and shape.

Richard Stevens, who spent 22 years in the British Army as an explosive ordnance disposal soldier, and later worked as a civilian bomb technician for 10 years in southern Iraq, Africa and other regions, said he had been exposed to plenty of Chinese and Russian munitions, but I had never seen this.

Mr. Stevens posted photos of the munitions to a site for military and civilian bomb disposal experts that he started in 2011, and found that no one else seemed to have seen these mystery munitions before either.

That Russia is using that size of weapon the Iskander-M and quite a few of them I believe, thats why were seeing this now, Mr. Stevens added. Its just that, post-conflict in the past 10 to 15 years, no one has had the opportunity to see this.

The devices are similar to Cold War decoys called penetration aids, the intelligence official said, that have accompanied nuclear warheads since the 1970s and were designed to evade antimissile systems and allow individual warheads to reach their targets. The incorporation of the devices into weapons like the Iskander-M that have conventional warheads has not been previously documented in military arsenals.

March 15, 2022, 5:21 a.m. ET

The minute people came up with missiles, people started trying to shoot them down, and the minute people started trying to shoot them down, people started thinking about penetration aids, Jeffrey Lewis, a professor of nonproliferation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif., said in an interview. But we never see them because theyre highly secret if you know how they work, you can counteract them.

The use of the decoys may point to some level of carelessness or urgency by Russian military leadership, Mr. Lewis said, given that Russia knows they will inevitably be collected and studied by Western intelligence services so that NATO air defenses can be programmed to defeat the Iskanders countermeasures.

American journalist killed. Brent Renaud, an award-winning American filmmaker and journalist who drew attention to human suffering, was fatally shot while reporting in a suburb of Kyiv. Mr. Renaud, 50, had contributed to The New York Times in previous years, most recently in 2015.

And it is highly unlikely, he said, that the version of the Iskander that Russia has sold to other countries would contain these decoys.

That suggests to me that the Russians place some value on keeping that technology close to home and that this war is important enough to them to give that up, Mr. Lewis said. Theyre digging deep, and maybe they no longer care, but I would care if I were them.

I think that there are some very excited people in the U.S. intelligence community right now, he added.

William J. Broad contributed reporting.

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Russia Deploys a Mystery Munition in Ukraine - The New York Times