Lavrov praised the growing bilateral relations and expressed appreciation for Saudi Arabia’s balanced and principled position on the Ukraine conflict. “We value the Kingdom’s responsible approach to the Ukrainian crisis,” Lavrov stated, while also acknowledging Saudi Arabia’s efforts to promote peace and stability in the region, especially in Yemen.

Focus on Gaza, Iran, and Regional Stability

The diplomatic talks were part of Prince Faisal’s official visit to Russia, where the situation in Gaza featured prominently. “Our immediate priority must be achieving a permanent ceasefire,” Prince Faisal emphasized, urging the international community to step up pressure to end hostilities and prevent further humanitarian catastrophe.

He also called for renewed engagement over Iran’s nuclear program, urging Tehran to cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to restore diplomatic momentum.

Key Events to Boost Russia-Saudi Ties

Looking ahead, Lavrov announced several key events aimed at bolstering Russia–Saudi relations:

• Saudi Arabia will participate as Guest of Honor at the 29th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, a move Lavrov called symbolic as 2025 marks 100 years of diplomatic relations between the two nations.
• The first-ever Russian-Arab Summit is scheduled for October in Moscow.
• The 8th Russia–GCC Strategic Dialogue Ministerial Meeting will be held on September 11 in Sochi.

Lavrov described these events as “important milestones that underscore the strength of our enduring partnership and strategic alignment.”

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Developed in collaboration with multiple research centers, the vaccine is expected to be available for widespread use by early 2025.
Pre-clinical trials have shown promising results, with the vaccine successfully suppressing tumor growth and reducing the risk of metastases, according to Alexander Gintsburg, Director of the Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology.

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“He said he will be vaccinated, he made this decision and was waiting until all formalities are completed,” the spokesman was quoted as saying to Rossiya 1 TV Channel on its website.

Russia launched a voluntary vaccination programme with the Russia-made Sputnik V vaccine earlier in December, starting with the most vulnerable groups in Moscow.

People over the age of 60 may begin to apply for shots on Monday, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on his website on Sunday, the day after the Russian health ministry said the vaccine was approved for use by elderly people after a separate trial.

68-year-old Putin said earlier that the Russian vaccine was effective and safe and he saw no reason not to be vaccinated adding that he was waiting until it became available.

Since the start of the coronavirus outbreak in Russia, Putin has mainly worked remotely, held meetings via videolink and limited travel.

He said in August that one of his daughters had taken part in the clinical trial of the vaccine and felt well afterwards.

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The move, announced on Wednesday, came after Russia said on October that its domestically produced Sputnik V vaccine was 92 percent effective at preventing coronavirus.

Teachers and medics will be the first to receive shots. President Putin said that the country will produce two million doses of the vaccine within the next few days.

“Let’s agree on this – you will not report to me next week, but you will start mass vaccination … let’s get to work already,” he told Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova.

The Kremlin earlier gave assurances that Russians were first in line to be vaccinated, with Moscow also discussing supply deals with other countries.

With 2,347,401 confirmed infections as of Wednesday, Russia has the fourth-largest number of COVID-19 cases in the world behind the United States, India and Brazil.

It has recorded 41,053 deaths related to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.

On December 2 authorities recorded 589 new daily deaths tied to the virus and 25,345 new infections.

The country’s overall rise in cases has slowed after witnessing a high on November 27. Instead of imposing mass lockdown during the second wave of infections, the officials opted for targeted regional curbs.

Museums, theatres and concert halls would be closed to the public in St Petersburg of over 5million people for the duration of Russia’s New Year holidays from December 30 to January 10.

Putin statement comes hours after the United Kingdom approved the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for use that will be rolled out from early next week.

Sputnik V- named after the Soviet-era satellite is in third and final stage of clinical trials involving around 40,000 volunteers.

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Interestingly space agencies of the two country are different versions of the incident.
Roscosmos, Russia’s state-controlled space agency, said the Indian Satellite came as close as 224 metres to the Russian satellite Kanopus-V before the collision was averted.

“According to the TsNIIMash calculations, the minimum distance between the Russian and foreign satellites were 224 meters. Both spacecraft are designed for Earth’s remote sensing,” Roscosmos said.

However the Indian space agency ISRO said that the Russian satellite was 420 meters away.
ISRO Chief K Sivan acknowledged that Cartosat-2F and Kanopus- V did encounter a close approach, but the two satellites were 420 meters apart from each other.

K Sivan said that ISRO was tracking the satellite for four days, and a manoeuvre will only be done when it comes around 150 meters.

These incidents are not so uncommon in space as there are thousands of satellites orbiting the earth. The general practice is that the two agencies discuss and carry out a manoeuvre.

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Terrorism is the biggest problem facing the world today. We have to ensure that countries that support and assist the terrorists are also blamed, and this problem is tackled in an organised manner,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his speech.

He also emphasised on reform of institutions like IMF, WTO, WHO to gain credibility.

The purpose of the Russian BRICS chairmanship in 2020, as it is for multifaceted cooperation between the BRICS countries, is to contribute to raising living standards and quality of life of our people, a Russian statement said.

“Despite the current global situation due to the spread of the coronavirus infection, the activities under the Russian BRICS Chairmanship in 2020 are carried out in a consistent manner. Since January 2020 more than 60 events have been organised, including via video-conferencing,” said Anton Kobyakov, Adviser to the President of the Russian Federation.

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“Look at China, how filthy it is. Look at Russia. Look at India. The air is filthy. I walked out of the Paris Accord as we had to take out trillions of dollars and we were treated very unfairly,” said Trump during his final presidential debate in Tennessee.

This is not the first time that Trump has blamed countries like China and India for not doing anything to control the adverse effects of climate change. Earlier, the US president had claimed that India and China are regions in the world where it is impossible to breathe.

““We have the best environmental numbers, ozone numbers, and so many other numbers. In the meantime, China, Russia, India all these countries they’re spewing stuff into the air,” added Trump during the rally.

In the final presidential debate, Trump’s opponent Joe Biden lashed out at the US president for befriending with North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un. Biden started attacking Trump when the president claimed that he has avoided war through his summits with Kim Jong-un.

Calling Kim Jong-un a thug, Biden revealed that Trump’s move was very similar to becoming a friend of Adolf Hitler before the second world war.

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In India, an expert panel at the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) has asked Dr Reddy’s Laboratories to submit a revised protocol for conducting both phase 2 and phase 3 human clinical trials for the Russian vaccine against Covid-19, Sputnik V.
The Hyderabad-based pharmaceutical company had applied to the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) late last week, seeking permission to conduct phase-3 human clinical trials of the Russian vaccine.

According to reports, India’s drug regulator has refused the proposal from Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd to conduct a large study in the country to evaluate Russia’s Sputnik-V Covid-19 vaccine and has asked it to first test the vaccine in a smaller trial.

The reason for the setback happened after the recommendations by the expert panel of the CDSCO. They noted that safety and immunogenicity data from early-stage studies being conducted overseas is small, with no inputs available on Indian participants.

India’s move comes as a setback for Russia’s plan to roll-out the vaccine even before full trials show how well it works, while pushing back its efforts to win approval for the vaccine in the country that leads the world on average number of new infections.

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It was on September 22 that the International Space Station (ISS) performed an avoidance manoeuver to avoid a collision from small space junk. Soon after the incident, Nasa revealed that the manoeuver was made possible by a joint operation by the Russian and US flight controllers, and the space agency urged better management of space debris to world countries. And now, a new report has suggested that 75 per cent of space debris in the space is unknown objects.

The new study suggested that satellite-threatening debris in the high-earth orbit is not tracked closely enough, and it could negatively impact the functioning of satellites that are responsible for serving multifarious things on the earth that includes navigation, communication, and weather services.

Human-made trash has been steadily increasing in the orbit since the 1950s as it was during this time that humans started launching satellites. According to space experts, orbital debris comprises old, defunct satellites and, rockets that were used to take these satellites to the earth’s orbit.

“It’s important that we continue to observe the geosynchronous region with large telescopes wherever possible, to start to build up a more complete feel for the faint debris environment. With this survey, we’ve probed deeper than ever before, and still, the population appears to be climbing as our sensitivity limit is reached. While we’re dealing with small number statistics here, it’s unsurprising that we see many more small, faint objects than large, bright ones,” said James Blake, a PhD student at the University of Warwick Department of Physics and the lead author of the study.

A few months back, the International Astronomical Union had slammed Elon Musk’s Starlink project, claiming that the rising number of satellites on earth’s orbit could affect star gazing. Some other space experts believe that increased space debris could trap humans on the earth, as they will be unable to conduct deep space missions in the future due to these rising trash.

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The total case tally in the country now stands at 5,646,011 including 9,68,377 active cases, 45,87,614 cured/discharged/migrated and 90,020 deaths, Health Ministry’s latest update informed.

Reporting more cases of recovered ones over fresh infections for five consecutive days, India also recorded over one lakh recoveries for the first time on September 22.

India reported its lowest daily tally of coronavirus cases in almost a month on Tuesday as it prepares for clinical trials of a potential Russian vaccine in the next few weeks.

Drugmaker Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd said it could begin late-stage trials of a vaccine within the next few weeks. Indian trials of the Sputnik-V vaccine candidate, being developed by Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, will enroll 1,000-2,000 participants and be conducted at multiple government and private hospitals across the country.

The coronavirus pandemic appears to be accelerating worldwide, with new cases soaring last week to a new seven-day high of almost two million, even as new deaths decreased, WHO statistics showed. The World Health Organization said that during the week ending on September 20, 1,998,897 new cases of the novel coronavirus were registered around the world.

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Conspiracy theorists have long been alleging that aliens are already here on the earth, and to substantiate their theory, they often put forward the videos of UFO sightings that had happened in various parts of the world. One such video has now gone viral on the internet, and it was captured from the skies of Russia.

A video of the bizarre sky sighting was uploaded to YouTube by a user named Offin. The video was shot in broad daylight, and we can see a disc-shaped UFO hovering in the skies.

Interestingly, the disc-shaped UFO spotted in the skies seems very similar to the alien ships often get depicted in Hollywood movies. The video was later analyzed by popular conspiracy theorist Scott C Waring who runs the blog UFO Sightings Daily.

After watching the video, Waring suggested that aliens have once again visited the earth. Waring has several times claimed that aliens have been visiting the earth for hundreds of thousands of years to monitor human activities. He also believes that space agencies like NASA and the governments are well aware of extraterrestrial presence in the skies.

“Youtube user Offin caught sight of a metallic disk in the distance, but was unable to record more than ten seconds of the craft. The object does appear to be a classic 1950s style alien disk. With sightings on the rise I’m sure the governments of the world will require lock downs more and more to keep the public from seeing these UFOs,” wrote Waring on his blog.

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A group of researchers have expressed concern about repetitive patterns of data in a paper describing early-phase clinical trials of Russia’s coronavirus vaccine — the first jab worldwide to be approved for widespread use, according to a report in Nature.

In an open letter to the study authors, who published the trial results this month in The Lancet, the researchers highlighted values that seem to be duplicated, and warn that the paper presents its results only as box plots without providing a detailed breakdown of the data on which they are based. “While the research described in this study is potentially significant, the presentation of the data raises several concerns which require access to the original data to fully investigate”, the letter says. It has so far been signed by 38 scientists.

The trials tested two slightly different viral-vector vaccines — which use genetically engineered adenoviruses to produce coronavirus proteins in the body — on 76 volunteers. The results indicated that the vaccine produced a strong immune response, and that side effects were limited to mild, short-term effects, such as irritation at injection sites or headaches, in a few people. In August, the Russian authorities approved the vaccine, called Sputnik V, for widespread use, and have said that it could be available to the general public within months.

This fast-track approval caused consternation among researchers, who argued that the decision to roll out the vaccine before larger safety and efficacy trials had been completed was dangerously rushed.

The open letter was posted on a blog run by molecular biologist Enrico Bucci, who heads a science-integrity company called Resis in Samone, Italy. Bucci says that he noticed irregularities in the Lancet paper soon after it was published.

For example, in one figure in which the authors report their measurements of markers of a type of immune cell in the blood, many members of two groups of nine volunteers tested with different formulations of the vaccine seem to have the same levels. “The odds of this arising by coincidence are extremely small,” Bucci says.

“To see such similar data patterns between unrelated measurements is really not likely,” says Konstantin Andreev, who studies viral respiratory infections at Northwestern University at Evanston, Illinois. “These discrepancies are not minor.” Andreev had been independently concerned about aspects of the clinical trial, and signed the open letter shortly after it was made public.

“We are not alleging scientific misconduct, but asking for clarification about how these apparently similar data points came about,” says Bucci. “When we read reports that Russia had started to inject the vaccine into people outside clinical trials, we felt we had to speak out immediately.” Late-phase clinical trials of the vaccine, which will involve tens of thousands of people, began on August 26.

The paper’s underlying data should be made available, says epidemiologist Michael Favorov, president of DiaPrep Systems, a diagnostics company in Atlanta, Georgia. “We have a lot of questionable data — in terms of its presentation,” he says. “Maybe the data are good — we can’t judge.” He adds that the decision to publish the reports without the underlying data seems unusual. By contrast, when clinical studies involving a coronavirus vaccine that was developed by the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, UK, were published in the same journal2, they were accompanied by a large amount of supplementary data that other researchers were able to scrutinise.

The Russian paper’s lead author, Denis Logunov at the Gamaleya National Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow, did not respond to requests for comment from Nature’s news team. But he told the Russian news outlet Meduza that he did not intend to respond to the open letter. He denied that there were errors in the publication, and stated that measured antibody levels were “exactly as they were presented” in the figures. He added that he was in contact with the Lancet and “was ready to clarify any issues”.

The Lancet declined to comment on its policy for providing data in support of clinical trials that it publishes, but issued a statement saying that it “has invited the authors of the Russian vaccine study to respond to the questions raised in the open letter by Enrico Bucci”, and that it would continue to follow the situation closely, the report said.

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External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar urged full support of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) in reforming the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to reflect contemporary global realities and the feelings of millions of people in the world.

Thank FM Sergey Lavrov for convening the #BRICS Foreign Ministers’ Meeting today.

Positively assessed the progress made during the Russian Chair, especially in counter-terrorism, economic cooperation, ICTs and people-to-people contacts. pic.twitter.com/QOZMliC9tW

— Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) September 4, 2020

Mr Jaishankar made the comments during a virtual meeting of the BRICS Foreign Ministers convened by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on September 4.

India, Japan, Germany and Brazil (G4) are eyeing a permanent seat at the UNSC, which currently has only five veto-wielding powers- United States, Russia, Britain, France and China.

Jaishankar also called for reformed multilateralism including the restructuring of international bodies like the World Trade Organisation, International Monetary Fund, World Health Organisation.

The EAM thanked his Russian counterpart for convening the meeting and highlighted that in the wake of several challenges in economic, political and social/ health fields, BRICS has an important to play.

He also raised the issue of terrorism, in situation in Afganistan and West Asia, and called for enhanced BRICS operation in countering terror.

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The announcement came in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic that has infected more than 20 million people and killed nearly 750,000 worldwide, thus, crippling world economies.

The president has asked Health Minister Mikhail Murashko to keep him informed about the Covid-19 vaccine, while at the same time noting that he knows “it works quite effectively” and “forms a stable immunity”, according to Russian news agencies.
“This morning, for the first time in the world, a vaccine against the new coronavirus was registered” in Russia, Putin said during a televised video conference call with government ministers.

Putin further thanked everyone who worked on the vaccine’s development and described it as “a very important step for the world”. He hopes the country’s research body will soon start mass production of coronavirus vaccine.

“I know that it works quite effectively, forms strong immunity, and I repeat, it has passed all the needed checks,” said Putin.

He emphasized that the vaccine underwent the necessary tests. He added that one of his two daughters has received a shot of the vaccine and is feeling well, according to reports.

However, the vaccine’s registration is conditional and trials will continue while production gets underway, said Murashko.

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The coronavirus, that originated from a seafood market in Wuhan is continuing to spread chaos in all nooks of the planet. With a rising number of positive cases and deaths, the pandemic has shattered the economic balance of many countries. In the meantime, researchers at the Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University, Russia has successfully completed the world’s first coronavirus trials on volunteers.

A milestone development by Russian researchers

Vadim Tarasov, the director of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Biotechnology told Sputnik that the first group of volunteers who were part of this study will be discharged on July 15, while the second group will leave the clinical setting on July 20. It was on June 18 that researchers began the clinical trials of this experimental vaccine candidate developed by Russia’s Gamalei Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology.

“Sechenov University in a pandemic situation acted not only as an educational institution but also as a scientific and technological research center that is able to participate in the creation of such important and complex products as drugs … We worked with this vaccine, starting with preclinical studies and protocol development, and clinical trials are currently underway,” said Tarasov.

Uncertainty surrounding coronavirus mutation capabilities

Recently, several studies conducted by international researchers had suggested that coronavirus has already mutated to more than 33 different strains, and some of them have emerged as the lethal form of the virus. The study report has shocked many medical experts, and they now believe that the entire global healthcare sector has underestimated the mutation capabilities of this pathogen.

As different strains of coronavirus have affected people in different parts of the world, medical experts strongly believe that finding an overall cure for COVID-19 will not be an easy task.

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Opening the way for President Vladimir Putin, Russians voted for a package of constitutional changes that would allow him to stay in power until 2036. According to Russia’s Central Election Commission, 78% of votes counted had supported in favour and 21% had voted against the constitutional changes. The overall turnout was 65% and in some regions, almost 90% of eligible voters cast votes, the election officials said.

However critics questioned the turnout figures and said the outcome was falsified on an industrial scale. Opposition politician Alexei Navalny called the vote an illegitimate and illegal show designed to legalise Putin’s presidency for life.On the other hand, Ella Pamfilova, head of the commission, said the vote had been transparent and that officials had done everything to ensure its integrity.

Meanwhile, several activists staged a symbolic protest on Red Square on July 1 forming the date – 2036 – with their bodies in protest before being detained by police. In the event, dozens of people protested amid a heavy police presence and demanded for the resignation of Putin.

Vladimir Putin is the longest-serving Russian leader since Josef Stalin

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