The Evening Wrap: Indian student reportedly shot at in Kyiv, says V.K. Singh

An Indian student has reportedly been shot at and injured in Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Minister of State for Civil Aviation V K Singh said on Friday. Singh is in Poland currently to facilitate the evacuation of Indians stranded in war-hit Ukraine. “Today, we heard reports that a student leaving Kyiv was shot at. He was taken back to Kyiv. This will happen in a fighting,” the minister told media persons. Recently on March 1, a young Indian medical student, Naveen SG of Karnataka, was killed in shelling in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv when he ventured out to buy food for himself and fellow students. Singh said the Centre is making efforts to ensure that the maximum number of students can come out of Ukraine with as less loss as possible. India has been airlifting its citizens through special flights from Ukraine’s western neighbours such as Romania, Hungary and Poland as the Ukrainian airspace has been shut since February 24 due to the Russian military offensive. Meanwhile, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Friday that India is primarily focusing on evacuating its nationals from the conflict zones of Kharkiv and Sumy in eastern Ukraine. MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said that around 300 Indians are stuck in Kharkiv and 700 are in Sumy. At a media briefing, he said a local ceasefire would help in the evacuation of the Indians and that New Delhi is urging both the Russian and Ukrainian sides to find ways for their safe passage from the conflict zones. “Our primary focus is to get Indian students out of conflict zones in eastern Ukraine,” he said. Bagchi said around 20,000 Indians have left Ukraine’s borders since India issued its first travel advisories in mid-February. He said 15 flights landed in India as part of the evacuation mission during last 24 hours, bringing back more than 3,000 nationals. The spokesperson said 16 flights are scheduled for the next 24 hours. Over 10,300 Indians brought back in 48 flights under ‘Operation Ganga’ so far, he added. India abstains in UNHRC vote on establishing inquiry into human rights violations India on Friday abstained in a vote in the UN Human Rights Council that has decided to urgently establish an independent international commission of inquiry as a result of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. The 47-member Council voted on a draft resolution on the situation of human rights in Ukraine. The resolution was adopted with 32 votes in favour, two against (Russia and Eritrea) and 13 abstentions, including India, China, Pakistan, Sudan and Venezuela. The countries voting in favour included France, Germany, Japan, Nepal, UAE, UK and the US. “The Human Rights Council has decided to urgently establish an independent international commission of inquiry as a result of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine,” the Council tweeted. India has abstained on two resolutions on Ukraine in the 15-nation Security Council and one in the 193-member General Assembly in the last one week. The UN General Assembly this week overwhelmingly voted to deplore Russian aggression against Ukraine and demanded that Moscow “completely and unconditionally” withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine. India abstained on the resolution, which received 141 votes in favour, five against and a total of 35 abstentions. Putin says Russia’s neighbours should not escalate tensions President Vladimir Putin urged Russia’s neighbours on Friday not to escalate tensions, eight days after Moscow sent its forces into Ukraine, Reuters reported. “There are no bad intentions towards our neighbours. And I would also advise them not to escalate the situation, not to introduce any restrictions. We fulfill all our obligations and will continue to fulfill them,” Putin said in televised remarks. “We do not see any need here to aggravate or worsen our relations. And all our actions, if they arise, they always arise exclusively in response to some unfriendly actions, actions against the Russian Federation.” Putin was shown on TV taking part online, from his residence outside Moscow, in a flag-raising ceremony for a ferry in northern Russia. Meanwhile, the Russian invasion forces seized Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant on Friday in what Washington called a “reckless assault” that risked catastrophe, although a blaze in a training building was extinguished and officials said the facility was now safe. Combat raged elsewhere in Ukraine as Russian forces surrounded and bombarded several cities in the second week of the assault launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin. A presidential adviser said an advance had been halted on the southern city of Mykolayiv after local authorities said Russian troops had entered it. If captured, the city of 500,000 people would be the biggest yet to fall. The capital Kyiv, in the path of a Russian armoured column that has been stalled on a road for days, came under renewed attack, with air raid sirens blaring in the morning and explosions audible from the city centre. The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine called the Russian assault on the Zaporizhzhia plant a “war crime”. Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said it showed how reckless the Russian invasion has been. Video verified by Reuters showed one building aflame and a volley of incoming shells before a large incandescent ball lit up the sky, exploding beside a car park and sending smoke billowing across the compound. Although the nuclear plant was later said to be safe and the fire out, officials worried about the precarious circumstances. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Raphael Grossi paid homage to the plant’s Ukrainian staff: “to their bravery, to their courage, to their resilience because they are doing this in very difficult circumstances.” The plant was undamaged from what he believed was a Russian projectile, Grossi said. Only one of its six reactors was working, at around 60% of capacity. An official at Energoatom, the Ukrainian state nuclear plant operator, told Reuters there was no further fighting and radiation was normal, but his organisation no longer had contact with the plant’s managers or control over its nuclear material. Russia’s defence ministry also said the plant was working normally. It blamed the fire on a “monstrous attack” by Ukrainian saboteurs and said its forces were in control. “Europeans, please wake up. Tell your politicians – Russian troops are shooting at a nuclear power plant in Ukraine,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address. In another address, he called on Russians to protest. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz became the latest Western leader to phone Putin and demand he call off the war. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Russia was only increasing its strikes on civilians: “It is clear to see that this war of aggression by Putin is targeting the civilian population with the most brutal rigor.” Moscow says its aim is to disarm its neighbour and capture leaders it calls neo-Nazis. Ukraine and its Western allies call that a baseless pretext for a war to conquer a country of 44 million people. In Kyiv’s Borshchahivka neighbourhood, the twisted engine of a cruise missile lay in the street where it had apparently been downed overnight by Ukrainian air defences. Residents were furious but also proud of the successful defence of the city of 3 million, which Russia had hoped to capture within days. Russian troops “all should go to hell,” said Igor Leonidovich, 62, an ethnic Russian who had moved to Ukraine 50 years ago as a boy. “For the occupiers it is getting worse and worse, every day.” In Russia itself, where Putin’s main opponents have largely been jailed or driven into exile, the war has led to a further crackdown on dissent. Authorities have banned reports that refer to the “special military operation” as a “war”. Anti-war demonstrations have been squelched with thousands of arrests. Lakhimpur Kheri case: Supreme Court to hear plea by farmers’ kin challenging bail to Union Minister’s son The Supreme Court has agreed to hear on March 11 the challenge raised by the families of farmers who were killed in Lakhimpur Kheri against bail granted by the Allahabad High Court to prime accused Ashish Mishra, son of Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Ajay Mishra Teni. In an oral mentioning of the petition before Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana, advocate Prashant Bhushan sought urgent listing of the case. “The prime accused has been granted bail for totally extraneous reasons. None of the considerations settled by the Supreme Court in law, like whether the accused can influence witnesses or tamper with evidence while out on bail, were considered by the High Court,” Bhushan submitted. He said that other accused in the case, encouraged by Ashish Mishra’s bail, were also seeking bail. “We can hear the case on March 11,” the CJI said. The families said they had appealed the February 10 bail order as the State of Uttar Pradesh did not budge. The petitioners alleged the bail was an “arbitrary” exercise of discretionary powers by the High Court and their lawyer was unable to present their side of the case. The petition said the top court had taken suo motu cognisance of the shocking case of farmers protesting the controversial farm laws being run over in broad daylight. The petition said the top court, on November 17 last year, ordered the formation of an independent SIT to conduct the investigation and filing of status report before it after the chargesheet was filed. The grant of bail to the Minister’s son would derail the prosecution of the case, they argued. The chargesheet was filed already on January 3. “The family members of the murdered farmers are seeking special leave to appeal under Article 136 of the Constitution of India against the order as the State of Uttar Pradesh, where the political party of the accused and his father is in power, has failed to file an appeal against the impugned order,” the petitioners said. The families argued that Ashish Mishra was released on bail despite the heinous nature of the crime, the character of the overwhelming evidence against the accused in the chargesheet, the position and status of the accused with reference to the victim and witnesses, the likelihood of the accused fleeing from justice and repeating the offence, and the possibility of his tampering with the witnesses and obstructing the course of justice. The petitioners said the bail order was perverse in law. The accused had not brought on record the fact that the chargesheet had been filed even before the final hearing on the question of bail on January 18. “The High Court neither considered nor dealt with the overwhelming evidence against the accused in chargesheet,” the petitioners contended. “The victims were prevented from bringing the relevant material as regards the settled principles for grant of bail to the notice of High Court as their counsel ‘got’ disconnected from the hearing on January 18 before he could barely make any submissions and repeated calls to the court staff to get reconnected were to no avail,” the petitioners said. The petitioners further pointed out that non-consideration in the order of the power and influence wielded by the accused and his supporters in the area where the victims, family members, witnesses, and their advocates reside and who have consistently been under pressure was perverse and there was “an immediate threat of the streams of justice being sullied.” Australia cricket legend Shane Warne passes away Australia’s legendary leg-spinner Shane Warne passed away in the early hours of Saturday in Koh Samui, Thailand, according to Fox News. The report said, “Shane was found unresponsive in his villa and despite the best efforts of medical staff, he could not be revived.” Shane Warne’s international career spanned 15 years and saw him take 708 Test wickets — No. 2 in the list of Test wicket-takers. Covid Watch: Numbers and Developments The number of reported coronavirus cases from India stood at 4,29,51,687 at the time of publishing this newsletter, with the death toll at 5,14,642. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. [logo] The Evening Wrap 04 MARCH 2022 [The Hindu logo] Welcome to the Evening Wrap newsletter, your guide to the day’s biggest stories with concise analysis from The Hindu. [[Arrow]Open in browser]( [[Mail icon]More newsletters]( Indian student reportedly shot at in Kyiv: V.K. Singh [An Indian student has reportedly been shot at and injured in Ukrainian capital Kyiv]( Minister of State for Civil Aviation V K Singh said on Friday. Singh is in Poland currently to facilitate the evacuation of Indians stranded in war-hit Ukraine. “Today, we heard reports that a student leaving Kyiv was shot at. He was taken back to Kyiv. This will happen in a fighting,” the minister told media persons. Recently on March 1, a young Indian medical student, Naveen SG of Karnataka, was killed in shelling in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv when he ventured out to buy food for himself and fellow students. Singh said the Centre is making efforts to ensure that the maximum number of students can come out of Ukraine with as less loss as possible. India has been airlifting its citizens through special flights from Ukraine’s western neighbours such as Romania, Hungary and Poland as the Ukrainian airspace has been shut since February 24 due to the Russian military offensive. Meanwhile, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Friday that India is primarily focusing on evacuating its nationals from the conflict zones of Kharkiv and Sumy in eastern Ukraine. MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said that around 300 Indians are stuck in Kharkiv and 700 are in Sumy. At a media briefing, he said a local ceasefire would help in the evacuation of the Indians and that New Delhi is urging both the Russian and Ukrainian sides to find ways for their safe passage from the conflict zones. “Our primary focus is to get Indian students out of conflict zones in eastern Ukraine,” he said. Bagchi said around 20,000 Indians have left Ukraine’s borders since India issued its first travel advisories in mid-February. He said 15 flights landed in India as part of the evacuation mission during last 24 hours, bringing back more than 3,000 nationals. The spokesperson said 16 flights are scheduled for the next 24 hours. Over 10,300 Indians brought back in 48 flights under ‘Operation Ganga’ so far, he added. India abstains in UNHRC vote on establishing inquiry into human rights violations   India on Friday [abstained in a vote in the UN Human Rights Council]( has decided to urgently establish an independent international commission of inquiry as a result of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. The 47-member Council voted on a draft resolution on the situation of human rights in Ukraine. The resolution was adopted with 32 votes in favour, two against (Russia and Eritrea) and 13 abstentions, including India, China, Pakistan, Sudan and Venezuela. The countries voting in favour included France, Germany, Japan, Nepal, UAE, UK and the US. “The Human Rights Council has decided to urgently establish an independent international commission of inquiry as a result of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine,” the Council tweeted. India has abstained on two resolutions on Ukraine in the 15-nation Security Council and one in the 193-member General Assembly in the last one week. The UN General Assembly this week overwhelmingly voted to deplore Russian aggression against Ukraine and demanded that Moscow “completely and unconditionally” withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine. India abstained on the resolution, which received 141 votes in favour, five against and a total of 35 abstentions. Putin says Russia’s neighbours should not escalate tensions   President Vladimir Putin urged Russia’s neighbours on Friday not to escalate tensions, eight days after Moscow sent its forces into Ukraine, Reuters reported. “There are no bad intentions towards our neighbours. And I would also advise them not to escalate the situation, not to introduce any restrictions. We fulfill all our obligations and will continue to fulfill them,” Putin said in televised remarks. “We do not see any need here to aggravate or worsen our relations. And all our actions, if they arise, they always arise exclusively in response to some unfriendly actions, actions against the Russian Federation.” Putin was shown on TV taking part online, from his residence outside Moscow, in a flag-raising ceremony for a ferry in northern Russia. [Surveillance camera footage shows Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant during shelling in Enerhodar, Zaporizhia Oblast, Ukraine on March 4, 2022, in this screengrab from a video obtained from social media. Photo: Zaporizhzhya NPP via Reuters] Meanwhile, the [Russian invasion forces seized Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant]( on Friday in what Washington called a “reckless assault” that risked catastrophe, although a blaze in a training building was extinguished and officials said the facility was now safe. Combat raged elsewhere in Ukraine as Russian forces surrounded and bombarded several cities in the second week of the assault launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin. A presidential adviser said an advance had been halted on the southern city of Mykolayiv after local authorities said Russian troops had entered it. If captured, the city of 500,000 people would be the biggest yet to fall. The capital Kyiv, in the path of a Russian armoured column that has been stalled on a road for days, came under renewed attack, with air raid sirens blaring in the morning and explosions audible from the city centre. The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine called the Russian assault on the Zaporizhzhia plant a “war crime”. Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said it showed how reckless the Russian invasion has been. Video verified by Reuters showed one building aflame and a volley of incoming shells before a large incandescent ball lit up the sky, exploding beside a car park and sending smoke billowing across the compound. Although the nuclear plant was later said to be safe and the fire out, officials worried about the precarious circumstances. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Raphael Grossi paid homage to the plant’s Ukrainian staff: “to their bravery, to their courage, to their resilience because they are doing this in very difficult circumstances.” The plant was undamaged from what he believed was a Russian projectile, Grossi said. Only one of its six reactors was working, at around 60% of capacity. An official at Energoatom, the Ukrainian state nuclear plant operator, told Reuters there was no further fighting and radiation was normal, but his organisation no longer had contact with the plant’s managers or control over its nuclear material. Russia’s defence ministry also said the plant was working normally. It blamed the fire on a “monstrous attack” by Ukrainian saboteurs and said its forces were in control. “Europeans, please wake up. Tell your politicians – Russian troops are shooting at a nuclear power plant in Ukraine,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address. In another address, he called on Russians to protest. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz became the latest Western leader to phone Putin and demand he call off the war. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Russia was only increasing its strikes on civilians:  “It is clear to see that this war of aggression by Putin is targeting the civilian population with the most brutal rigor.” Moscow says its aim is to disarm its neighbour and capture leaders it calls neo-Nazis. Ukraine and its Western allies call that a baseless pretext for a war to conquer a country of 44 million people. In Kyiv’s Borshchahivka neighbourhood, the twisted engine of a cruise missile lay in the street where it had apparently been downed overnight by Ukrainian air defences. Residents were furious but also proud of the successful defence of the city of 3 million, which Russia had hoped to capture within days. Russian troops “all should go to hell,” said Igor Leonidovich, 62, an ethnic Russian who had moved to Ukraine 50 years ago as a boy. “For the occupiers it is getting worse and worse, every day.” In Russia itself, where Putin’s main opponents have largely been jailed or driven into exile, the war has led to a further crackdown on dissent. Authorities have banned reports that refer to the “special military operation” as a “war”. Anti-war demonstrations have been squelched with thousands of arrests. Lakhimpur Kheri case: Supreme Court to hear plea by farmers’ kin challenging bail to Union Minister’s son   The [Supreme Court has agreed to hear on March 11 the challenge raised by the families of farmers]( who were killed in Lakhimpur Kheri against bail granted by the Allahabad High Court to prime accused Ashish Mishra, son of Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Ajay Mishra Teni. In an oral mentioning of the petition before Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana, advocate Prashant Bhushan sought urgent listing of the case. “The prime accused has been granted bail for totally extraneous reasons. None of the considerations settled by the Supreme Court in law, like whether the accused can influence witnesses or tamper with evidence while out on bail, were considered by the High Court,” Bhushan submitted. He said that other accused in the case, encouraged by Ashish Mishra’s bail, were also seeking bail. “We can hear the case on March 11,” the CJI said. The families said they had appealed the February 10 bail order as the State of Uttar Pradesh did not budge. The petitioners alleged the bail was an “arbitrary” exercise of discretionary powers by the High Court and their lawyer was unable to present their side of the case. The petition said the top court had taken suo motu cognisance of the shocking case of farmers protesting the controversial farm laws being run over in broad daylight. The petition said the top court, on November 17 last year, ordered the formation of an independent SIT to conduct the investigation and filing of status report before it after the chargesheet was filed. The grant of bail to the Minister’s son would derail the prosecution of the case, they argued. The chargesheet was filed already on January 3. “The family members of the murdered farmers are seeking special leave to appeal under Article 136 of the Constitution of India against the order as the State of Uttar Pradesh, where the political party of the accused and his father is in power, has failed to file an appeal against the impugned order,” the petitioners said. The families argued that Ashish Mishra was released on bail despite the heinous nature of the crime, the character of the overwhelming evidence against the accused in the chargesheet, the position and status of the accused with reference to the victim and witnesses, the likelihood of the accused fleeing from justice and repeating the offence, and the possibility of his tampering with the witnesses and obstructing the course of justice. The petitioners said the bail order was perverse in law. The accused had not brought on record the fact that the chargesheet had been filed even before the final hearing on the question of bail on January 18. “The High Court neither considered nor dealt with the overwhelming evidence against the accused in chargesheet,” the petitioners contended. “The victims were prevented from bringing the relevant material as regards the settled principles for grant of bail to the notice of High Court as their counsel ‘got’ disconnected from the hearing on January 18 before he could barely make any submissions and repeated calls to the court staff to get reconnected were to no avail,” the petitioners said. The petitioners further pointed out that non-consideration in the order of the power and influence wielded by the accused and his supporters in the area where the victims, family members, witnesses, and their advocates reside and who have consistently been under pressure was perverse and there was “an immediate threat of the streams of justice being sullied.” Australia cricket legend Shane Warne passes away [Shane Warne. ] Australia’s legendary leg-spinner [Shane Warne passed away in the early hours of Saturday]( in Koh Samui, Thailand, according to Fox News. The report said, “Shane was found unresponsive in his villa and despite the best efforts of medical staff, he could not be revived.” Shane Warne’s international career spanned 15 years and saw him take 708 Test wickets — No. 2 in the list of Test wicket-takers. Covid Watch: Numbers and Developments The [number of reported coronavirus cases from India]( stood at 4,29,51,687 at the time of publishing this newsletter, with the death toll at 5,14,642.  Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. Today‘s Top Picks [[Who is Anna Sorokin, the subject of the new Netflix series ‘Inventing Anna’?] Who is Anna Sorokin, the subject of the new Netflix series ‘Inventing Anna’?]( [[Who are Russia’s oligarchs?] Who are Russia’s oligarchs?]( [[Rodney Marsh, Australian cricket great, dies aged 74] Rodney Marsh, Australian cricket great, dies aged 74]( [[Daily Quiz | World Wildlife Day] Daily Quiz | World Wildlife Day]( Copyright @ 2021, THG PUBLISHING PVT LTD. If you are facing any trouble in viewing this newsletter, please [try here]( If you do not wish to receive such emails [go here](