Tag: Russia

Russian oil discount shrinks 87% to $4/barrel as sellers game shipping, insurance to skirt G7 price cap
Business

Russian oil discount shrinks 87% to $4/barrel as sellers game shipping, insurance to skirt G7 price cap

NEW DELHI: The love affair with Russian oil appears to be losing its charm for Indian refiners as discounts have shrunk to $4 per barrel from peaks of $25-30, with sellers going dark on shipping rates to cover the gap with benchmark Brent crude and skirt western price cap, people in the know told TOI.Russian crude now accounts for about 40% of India’s total oil imports, up from less than 2% in before the Ukraine conflict. Indian refiners began lapping up Russian crude as sellers began offering hefty discounts as Western buyers shunned those barrels as the US and the EU slapped sanctions on Russia, including its energy exports.Indian refiners buy Russian oil on delivered basis, wherein the seller arranges shipping and insurance, to avoid falling foul of the sanctions. This aspect became mo...
Russia’s Notorious Troll Farm Disbands
Technology

Russia’s Notorious Troll Farm Disbands

When Yevgeny Prighozin, the head of the notorious mercenary army known as the Wagner Group, staged an aborted coup against the Russian government, his brief revolt led to the deaths of 13 Russian fighter pilots and a serious blow to Vladimir Putin's sense of invulnerability. Now the fallout of that strange story has also apparently taken another casualty: the most notorious troll farm in the world, known as the Internet Research Agency.But we'll get to that. First, Elon Musk is having a tough week. After Twitter’s baffling decision to temporarily limit the number of tweets users can read each day, Mark Zuckerberg sucker-punched the self-sabotaged platform with the launch of Threads. The Instagram-linked microblogging app surged to the top of the app store charts, gaining a staggering 30 m...
Ukraine War: Botanists Risked Their Lives for a Priceless Collection
Technology

Ukraine War: Botanists Risked Their Lives for a Priceless Collection

Limited resources, another knock-on effect from the ongoing conflict, also threatened to upend the men’s carefully laid plans. While Moisienko drove around to dozens of Kyiv’s home hardware stores in search of plastic boxes to transport the collection’s vascular plants, Khodosovtsev returned to Kherson equipped with little more than a headlamp strapped across his brow and a backpack filled with the same household tools you might use to move apartments.On this second trip, the magnitude of the task became clear to Khodosovtsev. He had 700 boxes to evacuate. On his first incursion, it had taken him 15 minutes—and way too much tape—to wrap, stack, and rope together half a dozen boxes of samples. At this rate, the botanist said, he’d be blowing past the three days earmarked for this section o...
Biden Says U.S. ‘Had Nothing To Do With’ Mutiny In Russia
Politics

Biden Says U.S. ‘Had Nothing To Do With’ Mutiny In Russia

President Joe Biden said on Monday that the United States and its allies strongly communicated to the Kremlin that they were not involved in the short-lived mutiny in Russia this weekend by the Wagner mercenary group.On Saturday, the private military company’s far-right leader Yevgeny Prigozhin led an armed rebellion focused on Russia’s military brass ― specifically Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu ― accusing them of botching the war against Ukraine and attacking his fighters. The Kremlin has denied attacking Wagner fighters.Wagner mercenaries who were fighting in Ukraine on behalf of Russia left to seize a military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, a city in southern Russia. Prigozhin, once a protege of Russian President Vladimir Putin, then led his uprising largely unopposed for hundreds of ...