World
Indian PM Modi visits Russia visit for first time since start of Ukraine war
- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi begins his first visit to Russia since Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine on Monday.
- India’s relationship with Russia has become more fraught since Russia invaded Ukraine. India has maintained a neutral stance toward the conflict, advocating for a peaceful solution. Russia has grown closer to India’s rival, China.
- Russia is an important trading partner and defense supplier for India. Russian gear comprises some 60% of India’s military equipment, a researcher said. More than 40% of India’s oil imports come from Russia, according to analysts.
India’s prime minister begins a two-day visit to Russia on Monday, his first since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine, a war that has complicated the relationship between the longtime partners and pushed Russia closer to India’s rival China.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit will include a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, whom he last saw in Russia in 2019, in the far eastern port of Vladivostok. The two leaders also met in person in September 2022 in Uzbekistan, at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization bloc.
Russia has had strong ties with India since the Cold War, and New Delhi’s importance as a key trading partner for Moscow has grown since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China and India have become key buyers of Russian oil following sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies that shut most Western markets off to Russian exports.
STAMPEDE THAT KILLED 121 IN INDIA WAS CAUSED BY SEVERE OVERCROWDING AND LACK OF EXITS, AUTHORITIES SAY
Under Modi’s leadership, India has avoided condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine while emphasizing the need for a peaceful settlement.
The partnership between Moscow and New Delhi has become fraught, however, since Russia started developing closer ties with India’s main rival, China, because of the hostilities in Ukraine.
Modi notably stayed away last week from the most recent summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, in Kazakhstan.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi greet each other before their meeting in New Delhi, India on Dec. 6, 2021. Modi on Monday begins a two-day visit to Russia that is his first since Moscow sent troops into Ukraine, a conflict that has complicated the relationship between the longtime allies by pushing Russia closer to India’s rival China. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup, File)
Chietigj Bajpaee, senior South Asia research fellow at the U.K.-based Chatham House, said India is becoming increasingly estranged from forums in which Russia and China play a prominent role.
“This is evident in India’s relatively low key presidency of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization last year, and now the decision by Modi not to attend this year’s summit,” Bajpaee said.
A confrontation in June 2020 along the disputed China-India border dramatically altered their already touchy relationship as the rival troops fought with rocks, clubs and fists. At least 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese soldiers were killed. Tensions have since persisted despite talks.
Those tensions have seeped into how New Delhi looks at Moscow.
“Russia’s relations with China have been a matter of some concern for India in the context of Chinese increased assertiveness in the region,” D. Bala Venkatesh Verma, a former Indian ambassador to Russia, told The Associated Press.
But Modi also will seek to continue close relations with Russia, an important trading partner and major defense supplier for India.
Since Western sanctions blocked Russian oil exports after the start of the Ukraine war, India has become a key buyer of Russian oil. It now gets more than 40% of its oil imports from Russia, according to analysts.
India is also strongly dependent on Russia for military supplies, but with Moscow’s supply line hit by the fighting in Ukraine, India has been diversifying its defense procurements, buying more from the U.S., Israel, France and Italy.
“Defense cooperation will clearly be a priority area,” Bajpaee said, adding that 60% of India’s military equipment and systems is “still of Russian origin.”
“We’ve seen some delay in the deliveries of spare parts … following the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” he said. “I believe both countries are due to conclude a military logistics agreement, which would pave the way for more defense exchanges.”
India has adopted a neutral stance, neither condemning nor condoning Russia’s war on Ukraine, and has called for negotiations to end the fighting. That in turn has bolstered Putin’s efforts to counter what he calls the West’s domination of global affairs.
Facing an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for actions over the war in Ukraine, Putin’s foreign travel has been relatively sparse in recent years, so Modi’s trip could help the Russian leader boost his image.
“We kind of see Putin going on a nostalgia trip — you know, he was in Vietnam, he was in North Korea,” said Theresa Fallon, an analyst at the Center for Russia, Europe, Asia Studies. “In my view, he’s trying to demonstrate that he’s not a vassal to China, that he has options, that Russia is still a great power.”
Alexander Gabuev, head of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said that Putin’s interactions on the world stage show he “is far from isolated” and that Russia is not a country to be discounted.
Trade development also will figure strongly in the talks, particularly intentions to develop a maritime corridor between India’s major port of Chennai and Vladivostok, the gateway to Russia’s Far East.
India-Russia trade has seen a sharp increase, touching close to $65 billion in the 2023-24 financial year, due to strong energy cooperation, Indian Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra told reporters Friday.
Imports from Russia touched $60 billion and exports from India $4 billion in the 2023-24 financial year, Kwatra said. India’s financial year runs from April to March.
He said India was trying to correct the trade imbalance with Russia by increasing its exports. India’s top exports to Russia include drugs and pharmaceutical products, telecom instruments, iron and steel, marine products and machinery.
Its top imports from Russia include crude oil and petroleum products, coal and coke, pearls, precious and semi-precious stones, fertilizer, vegetable oil, gold and silver.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday rejected Virginia’s bid to restore a congressional map that would have given Democrats a chance to pick up four seats in the closely divided House of Representatives.
The court’s order, issued without any noted dissent, is the latest twist in the nation’s mid-decade redistricting competition. It was kicked off last year by President Donald Trump urging Republican-controlled states to redraw their lines and was supercharged by a recent Supreme Court ruling severely weakening the Voting Rights Act that opened up even more winnable seats for the GOP.
In recent days, the justices have sided with Republicans in Alabama and Louisiana who hope to redo their congressional maps to produce more GOP-leaning seats following the court’s voting rights decision.
But the Virginia situation was different, stemming from a 4-3 ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court that struck down a constitutional amendment that voters narrowly passed just last month.
The state court found that the Democratic-controlled legislature improperly began the process of placing the amendment on the ballot after early voting had begun in Virginia’s general election last fall.
The Supreme Court typically doesn’t intervene in state court proceedings unless they present an issue of federal law. Virginia Democrats had hoped to persuade the justices that the Virginia court misread federal law and Supreme Court precedent that hold that, even if early voting is underway, an election does not happen until Election Day itself.
Virginia’s amendment had been intended as a response to Republican gains in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, and to blunt a new map in Florida that just became law. Once the Virginia amendment passed, it briefly turned the nationwide redistricting scramble into a draw between the two parties.
That was unraveled by the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision.
The state’s attorney general, Democrat Jay Jones, slammed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, saying it was another example of what he described as a national attack on voting rights and the rule of law.
“Let’s be clear about what is happening. Donald Trump, Republican state legislatures, and conservative courts are systematically and unabashedly tilting power away from the people for Trump’s political gain,” Jones said in a statement issued late Friday night.
The state’s top Democrats had disagreed about whether it was even too late for help from the Supreme Court. “Time grows short, but it is not yet too late,” lawyers for the Democratic leaders of the legislature as well as the state told the justices in a brief filed Friday.
A day earlier, the office of Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger already had confirmed that the state will hold this year’s elections under the current districts established in 2021. Last month, Virginia Commissioner of Elections Steve Koski said a court order was needed by this past Tuesday to set the district lines for primary elections on Aug. 4.
Spanberger reacted to Friday’s decision by saying both courts had nullified the votes of the more than 3 million Virginians who cast ballots in the April 21 special election.
“These Virginians made their voices heard — casting their ballots in good faith to push back against a President who said he’s ‘entitled’ to more seats in Congress before voters go to the polls,” she posted on her X account.
The leader of the state Republican Party said the justices made the right call.
“Wisely, the Supreme Court of the United States has confirmed the judgment of the Supreme Court of Virginia,” state party chairman Jeff Ryer said. “This should once and for all put to rest the Democrats’ effort to disenfranchise half of Virginia.
___
Associated Press writer Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed to this report.
World
Trump says Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, killed in US-Nigerian operation
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President Donald Trump announced late Friday that U.S. and Nigerian forces carried out an operation that killed a global ISIS leader.
Trump identified the terrorist as Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, whom he described as ISIS’s second-in-command globally.
“Tonight, at my direction, brave American forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed a meticulously planned and very complex mission to eliminate the most active terrorist in the world from the battlefield,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
“Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, thought he could hide in Africa, but little did he know we had sources who kept us informed on what he was doing,” Trump continued. “He will no longer terrorize the people of Africa, or help plan operations to target Americans.”
100 US TROOPS LAND IN NIGERIA AS ISLAMIC MILITANTS THREATEN WEST AFRICA REGIONAL SECURITY
President Donald Trump sits at a table monitoring military operations during Operation Epic Fury against Iran at the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 2. (The White House via X Account/Anadolu/Getty Images)
Trump also thanked the Nigerian government for its cooperation in the mission.
“With his removal, ISIS’s global operation is greatly diminished,” he added.
Additional details surrounding the mission were not immediately available.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment.
US MILITARY IN SYRIA CARRIES OUT 10 STRIKES ON MORE THAN 30 ISIS TARGETS: PHOTOS
The announcement comes after U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said it carried out multiple strikes against more than 30 ISIS targets in Syria in February as part of a joint military effort to “sustain relentless military pressure on remnants from the terrorist network.”
CENTCOM said U.S. forces struck ISIS infrastructure and weapons-storage targets using fixed-wing, rotary-wing and unmanned aircraft.
DEADLY STRIKE ON US TROOPS TESTS TRUMP’S COUNTER-ISIS PLAN — AND HIS TRUST IN SYRIA’S NEW LEADER
The U.S. military carried out ten strikes against more than 30 ISIS targets in Syria following a December ambush that killed U.S. troops. (CENTCOM)
Trump told reporters on Jan. 27 that he had a “great conversation” with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“All of the things having to do with Syria in that area are working out very, very well,” he said at the time. “So, we are very happy about it.”
CENTCOM announced in February that more than 50 ISIS terrorists had been killed or captured and more than 100 ISIS infrastructure targets struck during two months of targeted operations in Syria.
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The U.S. launched Operation Hawkeye Strike in response to an ISIS ambush that killed two U.S. service members and an American interpreter Dec. 13, 2025, in Palmyra, Syria.
Fox News Digital’s Ashley J. DiMella contributed to this report.
Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said Israeli attacks have killed 2,951 people since March 2 with at least 8,988 wounded.
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