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The new Indian ambassador to Ukraine, Harsh Jain, presented his credentials to President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier this week. India had last month decided to reopen its embassy in Kyiv.

According to Ukraine, Zelensky noted that Ukraine and India are united by the belief in freedom and independence. “The President quoted the words of the national hero of India Mahatma Gandhi that aptly describe Ukraine and Ukrainians: ‘Strength is in the absence of fear, not in the number of muscles in our body. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win,” said the President’s office in a press release.

The Congress on Sunday termed the BJP's action against two of its spokespersons over their remarks against Prophet Muhammad as "placatory", saying it came under duress following "threats from external powers" and exposed the saffron party's "muscular posturing".

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) suspended its national spokesperson Nupur Sharma and expelled its Delhi media head Naveen Kumar Jindal on Sunday after their alleged derogatory remarks against Prophet Muhammad.

Congress general secretary and chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala accused the BJP of pushing India into a dark age of religious polarisation to "subserve its parochial political agenda in the short term".

US Secretary of State Atony Blinken said there have been rising attacks on people and places of worship in India, asserting that America will continue to stand up for religious freedom around the world. He also said people from the minority communities and women were being targeted in other Asian countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan and China. "The United States will continue to stand up for religious freedom around the world. We'll keep working alongside other governments, multilateral organisations, civil society to do so, including next month at the United Kingdom's ministerial to advance religious freedom," Blinken told media persons at the release of the annual International Religious Freedom report on Thursday (June 2).

With the construction work going on at full speed, the 75-km long Amravati to Akola highway in Maharashtra is going to be built in a record time. Construction work on the highway started on Friday, June 3, and is expected to be complete by June 7.

The highway, from Amravati's Loni village to Mana village of Akola, will be built night and day and is expected to be completed in 108 hours. If the experiment is successful, it will be entered in the Guinness Book of World Records.

A team from the Guinness Book is present at the site and is documenting the construction work of the road.

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat on Thursday said that no one is entering Ukraine and stopping the war because all parties are fearful of Russia.

RSS chief Bhagwat was addressing an event hosted in Nagpur where he said that Russia attacked Ukraine and the world is opposing it.

“If there is no policy, power becomes a disorder. We can see that right now, Russia attacked Ukraine. It is being opposed but nobody is ready to go to Ukraine and stop Russia because Russia has power and it threatens,” Mohan Bhagwat was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.