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In Ukraine, Russia claims to have fired the first hypersonic Kinzhal missile

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According to Russia’s defence ministry in Moscow, a hypersonic ballistic missile was fired and destroyed a large underground arms depot in western Ukraine. If confirmed, it would be Russia’s first use of the Kinzhal, or Dagger, ballistic missile from the air, most likely by a MiG-31 warplane, in this war.

Russia’s investment in hypersonic missiles, which can travel at more than five times the speed of sound, or Mach 5, has been emphasised by President Vladimir Putin on several occasions. According to Russian officials, the Kinzhal can hit a target up to 2,000 kilometres (1,240 miles) away and travel at speeds of over 6,000 kilometres per hour. But does this make them any more dangerous than other missiles or even artillery, both of which can kill and destroy just as many people?

“I don’t think it’s that significant,” says James Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a nuclear policy expert. “I’m not sure how much of a competitive advantage Russia gets from hypersonic missiles.”

Last December, President Putin boasted that Russia was the world leader in hypersonic missiles, which are difficult to track because they can change direction in mid-flight. Russia released a video of a missile strike on an arms depot in Deliatyn, a village in south-western Ukraine only 100 kilometres from Romania’s border. “It’s a sign of dexterity. Even if it is used, we should regard it as a one-off event because Russia has a limited number of these missiles “Dominika Kunertova of the Zurich-based Center for Security Studies agreed.

The Kinzhal was unveiled four years ago by Russian President Vladimir Putin as one of a series of “invincible” weapons that he claimed could evade enemy defences. The Zirkon and the Avangard are the other hypersonic missiles, with the Avangard being faster and having a much longer range. The Kinzhal can carry both nuclear and conventional warheads, and recent reports claim that MiG-31 fighters have been dispatched to Kaliningrad, putting a number of European capitals within striking distance. The attack on the arms depot was launched from an unknown location.

Despite the fact that the Iskander-M has a much shorter range than the air-launched missile, Ukraine’s defence ministry claimed this week that Russia had fired nearly all of its Iskander missiles in the first 20 days of the conflict. Russian forces have fired over 1,080 missiles since February 24, according to a US defence official quoted on Friday.

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Putin praises the annexation of Crimea and the war as lessons in heroism

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Eight years after Russian troops seized Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, the event is being commemorated in Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium with flag-waving crowds and special lessons in schools. In front of the crowd, President Vladimir Putin made a special appearance.

Workers for the state claimed they had been ordered to participate. Teachers held lessons in schools to commemorate the “Crimean spring.” The Russian army has seized towns and cities along Ukraine’s south coast from its bases in Crimea. Mr. Putin has used the anniversary to emphasize his love for the motherland on several occasions.

Officials claimed that over 200,000 people had gathered at the stadium, but the figures could not be confirmed. The stadium holds an official capacity of 81,000 people, but there were large crowds outside as well. President Putin praised the military for demonstrating Russian unity, saying: “When necessary, they act as brothers, shielding each other from bullets with their bodies. We haven’t seen such unity in a long time.” He also repeated the lie that Russian troops were preventing genocide in eastern Ukraine.

In what the Kremlin later described as a technical glitch, his address on almost every major state TV channel abruptly cut to singer Oleg Gazmanov belting out the words “Forward, Russia” as he spoke on stage. Sergei Sobyanin, the mayor of Moscow, spoke at the event, as did Margarita Simonyan, a top state television journalist, and Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the foreign ministry.

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Ukraine Russia War: Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has sparked fears it will spill over into Poland

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Poland is holding its breath as Russia’s war in Ukraine rages on its doorstep. It is vulnerable on two fronts: the number of refugees entering the country is increasing, and a military base near its Ukrainian border has been attacked.

According to the latest UN figures, over 1.7 million Ukrainians have chosen to flee to Poland as a first responder in one of Europe’s largest refugee crises since World War Two. Some leave, but the majority choose to remain due to cultural, linguistic, or familial ties. As a result, the population of Warsaw, Poland’s capital, has increased by 15% in the last two weeks.

Alarm bells are also ringing in terms of security. Russia bombed a Ukrainian military base in Yavoriv, just 16 kilometres (10 miles) from the Polish border, over the weekend.

For years, Poland has warned the West that Russia was planning to redress the power balance in Europe in its favour. At the time, Polish leaders were dismissed as alarmists. But that is no longer the case. Mateusz Morawiecki, the Polish Prime Minister, said on Monday that Ukrainian soldiers needed and deserved Western assistance. He insisted that they were fighting not only for their own liberties, but also for the liberties of their Eastern European neighbours. He also described Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine as part of a calculated geopolitical strategy.

The Western defence alliance’s charter says an attack against one of its nations will be viewed as an attack against all. That would mean a face-off between two global nuclear powers – Russia and the US – something the West is keen to avoid. Moscow too, it hopes.

Rafal Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw and a high-profile political figure, told me that his country was not panicking, but that people were beginning to ask questions, particularly in light of Russia’s missile strike so close to the Polish border and Nato’s suggestion that Russia was planning chemical attacks. The mayor insisted that something urgent be done about the refugee crisis as well.

Mayor Trzaskowski has also urged the UK to “get rid of its red tape” and make it easier for Ukrainian refugees to enter the country.

Poland’s painful past, it could be argued, makes it fearful of the future. The arrival of Ukrainian refugees in this country has brought back memories of war and Soviet occupation. I met Kristina, a Polish pensioner, and her friends in Warsaw this week, who were busy making Ukrainian flag solidarity ribbons. “Kristina explained, “I’m too poor to give money and too old to hold a gun, so I do what I can for the refugees.” Partly because I am concerned about my own future.”

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Netflix has put future projects in Russia on hold

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Streaming behemoth Netflix has announced a halt to all future Russian projects and acquisitions.

The company stated that it was assessing the impact of Ukraine’s current invasion. The production of the Russian language series Zato will be halted. Oracle, a cloud computing company, has also announced the suspension of its operations in Russia. The two companies are the most recent US technology firms to take action against Russia as the number of attacks on Ukrainian cities has increased.

Apple also announced on Tuesday that it would suspend sales in Russia. Oracle’s Twitter announcement came three hours after Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation tweeted the company, requesting assistance. In recent days, global brands such as Shell, Nike, H&M, and Boeing have severed ties with Russia or temporarily suspended sales.

Moscow has responded to foreign companies withdrawing from Russia by temporarily restricting foreign asset sales in Russia.

On Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin met with the president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs to discuss how the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs would attempt to mitigate the impact of the sanctions announced thus far.

Netflix declined to comment on the number of people who use its streaming service in Russia.

However, it confirmed earlier this week in a Hollywood Reporter report that it would not carry Russian state channels.

“Given the current situation, we have no plans to add these channels to our service,” said a Netflix spokesperson in a statement to the magazine.

According to a law that took effect on March 1, “audiovisual services” in the country with more than 100,000 users will be required to carry 20 major state television channels.

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Why Ukraine: Know The Back Story…..

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By invading Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has provoked one of Europe’s worst security crises since World War II, with missiles and artillery barrages accompanying troops as they entered the nation from various directions. In a video by WION YouTube Channel, Palki Sharma Upadhyay pointed out her view point about the matter ‘Why putin wants Ukraine’.

The Ukraine-Russia problem does not begin in 2021 or 2014; rather, it begins in the ninth century. Once these two countries were united. Ukraine used to hand over its nuclear weapons to Russia. But what happened now that they ready for the war.

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin initiated a military assault against Ukraine. The armies entered Ukraine from multiple routes, sparking fears of a European conflict over Russia’s demands for a stop to NATO’s eastward expansion.

WHAT IS NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, often known as the North Atlantic Alliance, is a military alliance made up of 28 European and two North American countries. The organisation was founded in the aftermath of World War II to carry out the North Atlantic Treaty, which was signed on April 4, 1949.

For months, Putin denied that he was plotting an invasion. In a televised statement, he said he had ordered “a special military action” to safeguard Russian citizens who had been victims of “genocide” in Ukraine.

Tensions between Russia and Ukraine have existed for many years. Tensions rose in 2021, however, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pushed US President Joe Biden to allow Ukraine to join NATO. Ukraine is a democratic country with a population of 44 million people and a history dating back over 1,000 years. It is also, after Russia, the largest country in Europe by area.

It voted for independence from Moscow after the demise of the Soviet Union. Putin sees Ukraine as a man-made country ripped out of Russia by adversaries. He has also referred to Ukraine as a Western puppet. Russia was enraged by Zelensky’s request to join NATO, and it began stationing troops along the Ukraine border. The US observed unexpected Russian army movements near the Ukrainian border on November 10, 2021. On November 28, Ukraine announced that Russia has amassed about 92,000 troops in preparation for an attack in late January or early February.

Moscow, on the other hand, denied it and accused Kyiv of conducting its own military build-up. President Biden warned in December that if Russia invaded Ukraine, he would face heavy consequences. Putin has insisted on assurances from the West and Ukraine that the country will not join NATO.

This isn’t the first time that relations between Russia and Ukraine have risen. In 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine and occupied the Crimean peninsula. President Putin’s backed rebels captured significant swaths of eastern Ukraine and fought the army. When its pro-Russian president was overthrown, the attack began. Since then, the battle has taken the lives of over 14,000 people.

He claims that contemporary Ukraine was totally built by communist Russia and that it is now a puppet state under Western influence. President Putin has also said that if Ukraine joins NATO, the alliance will attempt to reclaim Crimea.

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Vladimir Putin Receives the First Dose of Covid-19 Vaccine in Private

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Russian President Vladimir Putin received Covid-19 vaccination on Tuesday, according to his spokesman Dmitry Peskov without saying further which vaccination he had administered.

Although he has been filmed earlier on horseback, flying with cranes, etc. this was however ket private behind closed doors.  Peskov had said that the reason why the vaccination was kept private is that Putin doesn’t like to get the vaccine in front of the camera, and also stated that people would just have to “take our word for it”.

Now that he’s been vaccinated, Russians can see him more in the flash. Much of the pandemic time was spent by him in his official residence, wherein those who wanted to meet him have had to quarantine first.

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Russia arrests opposition leader Alexei Navalny

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The Russian government, led by Vladimir Putin, has arrested opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has returned to his home country from Germany – where he was taken after he had been found poisoned in his home country.

The airport, in which the flight carrying the opposition leader has landed, has witnessed several dramatic sequences.

A video has been releasing showing the disrespectful manner in which he has been informed about the arrest by an officer who has reached the venue to arrest the opposition leader.

Another airport, in which the flight carrying the leader was supposed to land, has seen violence, as the police has tried to forcefully disperse the crowd who has gathered there to greet the retuning opposition leader. Several people have been arrested in connection with the incident by the Russian police.

The arrest of the Russian opposition leader has triggered a serious outrage across the world. Several western countries including France have demanded the immediate release of the opposition leader.

The European Union has also voiced its unhappiness in the arrest of Mr. Navalny, who accused the Russian president for the poisoning attack against him.

Recently, the Russian government has charged several cases against the opposition leader, who is the most vocal critic against the Russian President.

Mr. Navalny’s supporters have dismissed the charges as politically motivated.   

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