Russia to scrap pacts with Nepalese men in its force
Kathmandu, March 18: Nepal’s Deputy Prime Minister Narayan Kaji Shrestha has said that Russia has given its “in-principle consent” to cancel the contracts of Nepalese nationals who joined the Russian Army and are engaged in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, a media report said on Monday. Shreshta, also the country’s foreign minister, said in a meeting of the House of Representatives that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that it has “agreed in principle to assist those who have joined the army to cancel their contracts”, the Republica newspaper reported. However, its modality is yet to be decided, he added. The 65-year-old CPN (Maoist Centre) leader said the Nepali Embassy in Moscow is constantly following up on this. “Photos of those held captive in Ukraine have been released. Efforts are being made to bring them back to Nepal,” Shrestha said. Last week, Shrestha had asked Russia to share a list of Nepalese citizens serving the Russian Army but stressed that complications remained in bringing them back from the war zone. The comments by Shrestha came while speaking to media persons after the Russian Ambassador to the Himalayan nation Aleksei Novikov called on him, the Kathmandu Post newspaper reported. (PTI)
One step shy of World War: Putin to NATO
Moscow, March 18: Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned the US-led NATO military alliance against the deployment of troops in Ukraine, saying such a move would “be one step shy of a full-scale World War III”. It is no secret that fighters from NATO nations are present on the ground in Ukraine, he claimed while speaking to his supporters and the media on early Monday after his landslide presidential election victory. Putin stressed that Moscow is “well aware of the US-led military bloc’s push to deploy troops in Ukraine”. “We hear both French and English speech there. There is nothing good in this, first of all for them, because they die there and in large numbers,” he was quoted by Russian media as saying. “Anything is possible in the modern world… But everyone knows that this would be one step shy of a full-scale World War III. I don’t think that anyone is interested in that,” Putin said. (IANS)
‘Famine is imminent in northern Gaza’
Rafah, March 18: The UN food agency says “famine is imminent” in northern Gaza, where an estimated 70% of the population faces catastrophic hunger. The World Food Program on Monday released the latest findings of its Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, an international process for estimating the scale of hunger crises. It says virtually everyone in Gaza is struggling to get enough food, and around 210,000 people in northern Gaza are in Phase 5, the highest, which refers to catastrophic hunger. It warned that if Israel broadens its offensive to the packed southern city of Rafah, the fighting could drive around half of Gaza’s total population of 2.3 million into catastrophic hunger. In December, the IPC estimated that a quarter of Gaza’s overall population was starving. Israel says it places no limits on the import of humanitarian aid and blames bottlenecks on the UN agencies distributing it. The U.S. and other countries have carried out airdrops in recent days and a sea corridor has just opened up. (AP)