The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), the country’s sovereign wealth fund, and Stelis Biopharma, the biopharmaceutical division of Bengaluru-based Strides Pharma, have entered into a partnership to produce and supply a minimum of 200 million doses (enough to vaccinate 100 million people) of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against coronavirus.
The agreement between RDIF and Stelis Biopharma was reached under the aegis of Enso Healthcare LLP (part of Enso Group), RDIF’s coordination partner for sourcing Sputnik V vaccine in India, as per a joint statement.
According to the statement, the parties intend to commence supplies of the vaccine from the third quarter of calendar 2021. Stelis will also continue to work with the RDIF to provide additional supply volumes beyond the initial agreement.
Arun Kumar, Founder of Strides Group said, “We are delighted to partner with RDIF to make a substantial contribution towards providing global supply of the Sputnik V vaccine which is one of the most efficacious approved vaccines commercially available.”
“The Russian vaccine with the efficacy of 91.6% is one of the best vaccines against coronavirus in the world. The significant vaccine volumes which will be produced jointly with Stelis will help to widen access to the vaccine on a global scale,” said Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund.
Sputnik V, the world’s first registered vaccine against the novel coronavirus infection, is now approved for use in over 50 countries. Sputnik V is a two-dose vaccine that uses two different human adenoviral vectors in the course of vaccination.
NEW DELHI: The training of four astronauts in Russia for India’s first human space flight will complete this month and the second phase of training, which will be module specific, is scheduled to take place in the country, Union minister Jitendra Singh said on Thursday. India’s first human space flight, ‘Gaganyaan‘, will be preceded by an unmanned flight by 2021, followed by another flight carrying “Vyom Mitra”. “Four astronauts are being trained for India’s first human space flight. Their one-year training in Russia is completing this month, with some delay on account of the COVID pandemic,” Singh told PTI. “The second phase of training, which will be module specific, is scheduled to take place in India,” the minister said. The ‘Gaganyan’ flight, estimated to be around Rs 9,023 crore, is scheduled sometime before or on the eve of the 75th anniversary of India’s independence. India’s heaviest launch vehicle, ‘Bahubali’ GSLV Mark-III, will the carry astronauts to space.
Russia called its US ambassador back to Moscow for consultations on Wednesday after Joe Biden described Vladimir Putin as a “killer” who would “pay a price” for election meddling, prompting the first major diplomatic crisis for the new American president.
In an interview with ABC News, Biden was asked about a US intelligence report that the Russian leader tried to harm his candidacy in the November 2020 election and promote that of Donald Trump. “He will pay a price,” the 78-year-old Biden said.
Asked if he thought Putin, who has been accused of ordering the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and other rivals, is a “killer,” Biden said: “I do.”
The comments were aired as the US Commerce Department announced it was toughening export restrictions imposed on Russia as punishment for Navalny’s poisoning.
Russia responded by summoning its envoy home, though the State Department did not reciprocate by recalling its own ambassador to Moscow.
“The Russian ambassador in Washington, Anatoly Antonov, has been invited to come to Moscow for consultations conducted with the aim of analyzing what should be done and where to go in the context of ties with the United States,” the Russian foreign ministry said.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told RIA Novosti that “responsibility for further deterioration of Russian-American ties fully rests with the United States.”
In Washington, the State Department noted the Russian move and said the United States will “remain clear-eyed about the challenges that Russia poses.”
A State Department spokeswoman told AFP said the US envoy would remain in Moscow in in the hopes of maintaining “open channels of communication” and in order to “reduce the risk of miscalculation between our countries.”
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki was asked by reporters whether the president considers Putin literally or just metaphorically a killer.
“He does not hold back on his concerns about what we see as malign and problematic actions,” Psaki said, citing election interference, Navalny’s poisoning, cyberattacks and bounties on US troops in Afghanistan.
“He’s not going to hold back in his direct communications, nor is he going to hold back publicly,” she said. “We are not going to look the other way as we saw a little bit over the last four years.”
Biden told ABC News he had a “long talk” with Putin after taking office in January. “The conversation started off, I said, ‘I know you and you know me. If I establish this occurred, then be prepared’,” Biden said.
Biden’s assessment that Putin is a “killer” marked a stark contrast with Trump’s steadfast refusal to say anything negative about the Russian president.
In a 2017 interview with Fox News, Trump was asked about Putin being a “killer.” “There are a lot of killers,” he replied. “You think our country’s so innocent?”
‘Know the other guy’
Despite his thoughts about the Russian leader, Biden said “there are places where it’s in our mutual interest to work together.”
“That’s why I renewed the START agreement with him,” he said of the nuclear treaty. “That occurred while he’s doing this, but that’s overwhelmingly in the interest of humanity, that we diminish the prospect of a nuclear exchange.”
Biden said he had learned from dealing with “an awful lot” of leaders during a political career spanning almost five decades — including eight years as vice president — that the most important thing was to “just know the other guy.”
Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, denounced Biden for agreeing with the description of Putin as a “killer.”
“Biden insulted the citizens of our country,” Volodin said. “Attacks on (Putin) are attacks on our country.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the US determination that Russia had targeted election infrastructure during the 2020 presidential election as “absolutely groundless and unsubstantiated” and an excuse for new sanctions.
Tense relations
According to US intelligence, Putin and other senior officials “were aware of and probably directed” Russia’s influence operation to sway the vote in Trump’s favor.
It concluded, however, that the election results were not compromised.
Russia faced allegations of US election meddling in 2016 for launching a social media campaign to boost Trump’s candidacy and discredit his opponent Hillary Clinton.
After Biden’s victory over Trump, Putin was among the last world leaders to congratulate the newly elected Democratic president.
Tensions between the former Cold War rivals have soared in recent months over hacking allegations and US demands that Russia free Navalny.
Navalny returned to Russia in January after being treated for the poisoning in Germany, and is serving a two-and-a-half year jail term in a penal colony outside Moscow.
The Commerce Department said the new sanctions prevent export to Russia of more items controlled for national security reasons, including technology and software.
“The Department of Commerce is committed to preventing Russia from accessing sensitive US technologies that might be diverted to its malign chemical weapons activities,” it said.
The latest sanctions add to US penalties imposed on Moscow since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Russia and Iran targeted election infrastructure during the 2020 US vote but did not compromise any of the results, the departments of Homeland Security and Justice said Tuesday.
“Broad Russian and Iranian campaigns targeting multiple critical infrastructure sectors did compromise the security of several networks that managed some election functions,” the government agencies said in a joint report.
“But they did not materially affect the integrity of voter data, the ability to vote, the tabulation of votes, or the timely transmission of election results.”
Russian, Iranian and Chinese government-affiliated actors also “materially impacted” the security of networks associated with American political organizations, candidates, and campaigns, the report said.
“Several such actors gathered at least some information they could have released in influence operations, but ultimately we did not see any such materials deployed, modified, or destroyed,” it said.
The report said there was “no evidence that any foreign government-affiliated actor prevented voting, changed votes, or disrupted the ability to tally votes or to transmit election results.”
It specifically shot down a conspiracy theory floated by lawyers for former president Donald Trump’s campaign that a voting tabulation company had links with Venezuela and manipulated election results in favor of his opponent Joe Biden.
The report said the public claims had been investigated and “determined that they are not credible.”
The authors of the report said they looked solely at the impact of foreign government activity on the security and integrity of election infrastructure.
“It did not address the effect of foreign government activity on public perception or the behavior of any voters, nor did it address the impact of non-state foreign actors like cybercriminals,” they said.
Democratic Senator Mark Warner, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the report “highlights the ongoing and persistent efforts by our adversaries to influence our elections.”
“Russia, in particular, has expended real effort, not just in 2020, but also as we all recall in 2016, to influence election results,” Warner said.
“The problem of foreign actors trying to influence the American electorate is not going away and, given the current partisan divides in this country, may find fertile ground in which to grow in the future,” he said.
Trevor Reed, an American jailed in Russia, was transferred without notice to a different pre-detention center last week and his family has not heard from him since, according to the family spokesperson.
“On March 2nd, Trevor was taken by two urbane, English speaking FSB agents to a Court ordered evaluation. After that exam, he was inexplicably taken to a different pre-detention center without consular notification and has been held non-comm since in violation of Russia’s multilateral obligations,” spokesperson Jonathan Franks said.
“It is time for the Russian government to tell the truth about where Trevor Reed is now and where he has been since March 2nd and to afford the Embassy immediate, in-person and unfettered consular access to Trevor in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations to which the Russian Federation is a signatory,” Franks added.
Franks told CNN the family’s understanding is he was transferred to SIZO 2, which includes Lefortovo Prison in Moscow.
A State Department spokesperson told CNN on Friday that “Embassy Moscow is aware of Trevor Reed’s whereabouts and has requested a phone call and an in-person meeting with him.”
CNN has reached out to the Russian embassy for comment.
A Russian court sentenced Reed to nine years in prison in July 2020 for endangering “life and health” of Russian police officers in an altercation. Reed, an ex-Marine, denies the charges and US Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan called the trial “theater of the absurd.”
In a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday, Secretary of State Tony Blinken said he was committed bringing Reed home and to raising the case with his Russian counterparts, which he said he did in his first call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
According to a readout of that early February call, Blinken “reiterated President Biden’s resolve to protect American citizens and act firmly in defense of U.S. interests in response to actions by Russia that harm us or our allies. This includes the release of Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed so that they are able to return home to their families in the United States.”
Whelan, another former Marine, has been detained in Russia since December 2018 and was was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in prison in June 2020. He has denied the spying charges.
Both the Reed and Whelan families — along with the loved ones of other Americans held hostage or unlawfully detained abroad — spoke with the top US diplomat in February.
Paula Reed, Trevor’s mother, told CNN at the time the call “just made my heart sing. I felt like a whole weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I felt heard. I felt cared for. And it was just, it was awesome to feel that way.”
Though Moscow was once at the forefront of space travel, it has been eclipsed by China and the United States in recent years.
Russia and China unveiled plans on Tuesday for a joint lunar space station, as Moscow seeks to recapture the glory of its space pioneering days of Soviet times, and Beijing gears up its own extraterrestrial ambitions.
Though Moscow was once at the forefront of space travel — it sent the first man into space — its cosmic ambitions have dimmed thanks to poor financing and endemic corruption.
It has been eclipsed by China and the United States, which have both clocked major wins in space exploration and research in recent years.
The Russian space agency Roscomos said in a statement that it had signed an agreement with China’s National Space Administration (CNSA) to develop a “complex of experimental research facilities created on the surface and/or in the orbit of the Moon”.
The CNSA, for its part, said that the project was “open to all interested countries and international partners” in what experts said would be China’s biggest international space cooperation project to date.
Moscow is seeking to re-take the lead in the space race.
This year, it celebrates the 60th anniversary of Russia’s first-ever manned space flight — it sent Yuri Gagarin into space in April 1961, followed by the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova, two years later.
The United States NASA space agency launched its first manned space flight a month after Russia, in May 1961, sending Alan Shepard up aboard Mercury-Redstone 3.
But Moscow has lagged behind both Washington and Beijing in the exploration of the Moon and Mars in recent years.
In the meantime, China — which has sought closer partnership with Moscow — has started a successful space programme of its own.
‘Big deal’
Last year, it launched its Tianwen-1 probe to Mars that is currently orbiting the Red Planet.
And in December, it successfully brought rock and soil samples from the Moon back to Earth, the first mission of this type in over 40 years.
Chen Lan, an independent analyst specialising in China’s space programme, said the joint lunar space station was “a big deal”.
“This will be the largest international space cooperation project for China, so it’s significant,” Mr. Lan told AFP.
Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin wrote on Twitter that he had invited CNSA chief Zhang Kejian to the launch of Russia’s first modern lunar lander, Luna 25, scheduled for October 1 — the first lunar lander to be launched by Russia since 1976.
Eyes on Mars
The U.S. space agency NASA has now set its sights on Mars, with its Perseverance rovers last week conducting their first test drive on the planet.
NASA eventually intends to conduct a possible human mission to the planet, even if planning is still at a very preliminary stage.
Moscow and Washington are also collaborating in the space sector — one of the few areas of cooperation left between the Cold War rivals.
However, Russia did not sign the U.S.-led Artemis Accord last year for countries that want to participate in a lunar exploration scheme spearheaded by NASA.
Under the Artemis programme announced during the tenure of former U.S. President Donald Trump, NASA plans to land the first woman and the next man on the moon by 2024.
In another blow to Russia’s space reputation, Roscosmos last year lost its monopoly for manned flights to the International Space Station (ISS) after the first successful mission of the U.S. company Space X.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has become a key player in the modern space race and has announced plans to fly several members of the public to the Moon in 2023 on a trip bankrolled by a Japanese millionaire.
A SpaceX Starship prototype exploded after landing in Texas in March, after climbing to an altitude of 10 kilometres. The test flight was part of the company’s ambitious project to take people to Mars.
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