• Top diplomat cites oil purchases, joint drills as obstacles.
• EU seeks to finalise free trade agreement by 2025.
• Brussels plans high-level EU–India summit early next year.
  

The European Union’s top diplomat warned on Wednesday that its push for closer ties with India could be hampered by New Delhi’s purchases of Russian oil and involvement in military drills with Moscow.

The 27-nation bloc is pressing to seal a trade deal with the world’s most populous nation and strengthen bonds in areas like defence as US President Donald Trump has rocked the global order.

“Ultimately, our partnership is not only about trade, but also about defending the rules-based international order,” EU foreign policy chief Kallas said, as she unveiled a new strategy from Brussels to bolster relations.

“Participating in military exercises, purchases of oil — all these are obstacles to our cooperation when it comes to deepening the ties,” Kallas said.

But she acknowledged the EU did not believe India would “completely decouple” from Russia and the two sides sought to talk through their issues.

Alongside other Moscow allies including Iran, India has taken part in Russia’s Zapad (West) joint drills with Belarus this month, part of which took place close to NATO borders.

India became a major buyer of Russian oil — saving itself billions of dollars and providing a much-needed export market for Moscow after it was cut off from traditional buyers in Europe because of the Ukraine war.

US President Donald Trump last week pushed the EU to slap hefty tariffs on India and China to force Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war.

But EU diplomats say that is unlikely while Brussels chases a trade deal with New Delhi, although it could take steps against Russian entities in India as in a previous sanctions package against Moscow.

Despite a lack of alignment over Russia, the European Union and India are also working to conclude talks on a free trade agreement by the end of 2025, amid New Delhi’s own tensions with Washington.

US-India ties have been strained since Trump raised tariffs on most Indian exports to 50% last month in retaliation for New Delhi’s continued purchases of Russian oil.

In the wake of that move, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi put on a public show of warmth with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping at a summit this month.

Trade talks

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen insisted in a post on X that “now is the time to double down on partnerships” as she reiterated the hope of finalising the trade deal by the end of this year.

But her trade chief Maros Sefcovic sounded a downbeat note as well as he said he had “hoped for more progress to be achieved” during a visit to India last week.

He stressed though that it was important to deepen EU ties with different countries, otherwise “this void is filled by China and other actors”.

The EU is India’s largest trading partner, with trade between the two economic giants up 90% over the past decade, Sefcovic said alongside Kallas in Brussels.

Senior figures from India and the European Union hope to meet for a high-level summit early next year.

The wife of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said Wednesday that laboratory analysis of smuggled biological samples found he was killed by poisoning while incarcerated at an Arctic prison in February 2024.

Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most formidable critic for years, died in mysterious circumstances while serving a 19-year prison sentence on a string of charges widely seen as retribution for his opposition.

The charismatic anti-corruption campaigner had rallied hundreds of thousands across Russia in anti-Kremlin protests as he exposed the alleged ill-gotten gains of Putin´s inner circle.

His allies allege he was murdered in prison, and Moscow has never fully explained the causes of his death, saying only that he fell ill while walking in the prison yard on February 16, 2024.

Before he was buried, his wife Yulia Navalnaya said his allies “were able to obtain and securely transfer biological samples of Alexei abroad”.

“Laboratories in two countries came to the conclusion that Alexei was killed. Specifically: poisoned,” she said in a video posted on social media.

She did not divulge details of what samples were obtained nor the results of the analysis, but she urged the labs to independently release their results and to specify which poison they believe was used.

Navalnaya also published unverified photos she said were of his prison cell after his body was removed, showing a pool of vomit on the floor, and claimed that testimony from prison officials said he had been convulsing on the floor.

‘Murder’

Navalny was previously poisoned with a nerve agent of the Novichok type in 2020 while campaigning in Siberia and flown to Germany on an emergency evacuation flight, where he spent months recovering.

Jailed upon his return to Russia in January 2021, he was convicted on a series of charges, including “extremism”.

From behind bars, he continued to campaign against Putin and spoke out against the invasion of Ukraine.

Russian authorities said he died suddenly after falling ill while walking outside after lunch in his prison colony.

Following Navalny’s death, officials refused for days to release his body to his relatives, raising suspicions among his followers.

Navalnaya has maintained that her husband was killed on Putin’s orders, an accusation she repeated Wednesday.

“Vladimir Putin is guilty of the murder of my husband, Alexei Navalny,” she said.

The Kremlin denies the charges.

It escalated a crackdown against his allies and opponents even after his death, adding Navalnaya to a “terrorists and extremists” blacklist and sentencing his lawyers and journalists who followed his court cases to years in prison.

Most of his family and key allies have long lived abroad.

The Russian opposition, plagued by infighting, has struggled for relevance in exile following Navalny’s death.

Public displays of opposition to Putin inside Russia have become exceptionally rare since he invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

The Kremlin introduced military censorship, ramped up its targeting of dissenters and critics and effectively outlawed criticism both of the Kremlin and the invasion.

PARIS: Scientists estimated Wednesday that rising temperatures from human-caused climate change were responsible for roughly 16,500 deaths in European cities this summer, using modelling to project the toll before official data is released.

The rapidly-produced study is the latest effort by climate and health researchers to quickly link the death toll during heatwaves to global warming –without waiting months or years to be published in a peer–reviewed journal.

The estimated deaths were not actually recorded in the European cities, but instead were a projection based on methods such as modelling used in previously peer-reviewed studies.

Death tolls during heatwaves are thought to be vastly underestimated because the causes of death recorded in hospitals are normally heart, breathing or other health problems that particularly affect the elderly when the mercury soars.

To get a snapshot of this summer, a UK-based team of researchers used climate modelling to estimate that global warming made temperatures an average of 2.2 degrees Celsius hotter in 854 European cities between June and August.

Using historical data indicating how such soaring temperatures drive up mortality rates, the team estimated there were around 24,400 excess deaths in those cities during that time.

They then compared this number to how many people would have died in a world that was not 1.3C warmer due to climate change caused by humans burning fossil fuels.

Nearly 70% – 16,500 – of the estimated excess deaths were due to global warming, according to the rapid attribution study.

This means climate change could have tripled the number of heat deaths this summer, said the study from scientists at Imperial College London and epidemiologists at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

The team had previously used similar methods to find a similar result for a single European heatwave that started in late June.

The researchers said they were not able to compare their estimates to actual excess deaths recorded in European cities this summer because most countries take a long time to publish that data.

“It’s impossible to get real-time statistics right now,” however, the estimates are “in the right ballpark,” study co-author Friederike Otto told a press conference.

‘Even more alarming’

The estimates did reflect previous peer-reviewed research, such as a Nature Medicine study, which determined there were more than 47,000 heat-related deaths during the European summer of 2023.

Numerous prominent climate and health researchers also backed the study.

“What makes this finding even more alarming is that the methods used in these attribution studies are scientifically robust, yet conservative,” said atmospheric science researcher Akshay Deoras at the UK’s University of Reading.

“The actual death toll could be even higher.”

The study said that Rome had the most estimated deaths attributed to climate change, with 835, followed by Athens with 630 and Paris with 409.

More than 85% of the estimated excess deaths were among people aged 65 or over.

The researchers emphasised the study did not represent Europe as a whole because some areas — such as the Balkans — were not included.

“An increase in heatwave temperature of just 2-4C can be the difference between life and death for thousands of people — this is why heatwaves are known as silent killers,” study co-author Garyfallos Konstantinoudis said.

This year was Europe’s fourth-hottest summer on record.