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Putin lauds ‘heroism’ of North Koreans in liberating Kursk, Pyongyang says

Putin lauds ‘heroism’ of North Koreans in liberating Kursk, Pyongyang says

Call between the two leaders comes days ahead of US President Donald Trump’s summit with Putin in Alaska. Russian President Vladimir Putin lauded the “bravery” and “heroism” of North Korean soldiers in retaking Russia’s Kursk region from Ukrainian forces during a call with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, North Korean state media has reported. Putin told Kim that he “highly appreciated” North Korea’s support and the “self-sacrificing spirit” displayed by its troops during the liberation of the western region, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Wednesday. Kim expressed his “heartfelt thanks” to Putin and said Pyongyang would “always remain faithful” to the spirit of the mutual defence treaty signed by the sides last year, as well as “fully support all measures to be taken by the Russian leadership in the future”, the KCNA said. “The heads of states of the two countries exchanged views on the issues of mutual concern,” the KCNA said. “Kim Jong Un and Putin agreed to make closer contact in the future.” The call, days before Putin is set to meet United States President Donald Trump in Alaska to discuss efforts to end the war in Ukraine, is the latest sign of strengthening ties between North Korea and Russia amid Moscow’s ostracisation on the world stage. “There are a lot of ifs still in the air, but the call suggests there’s a role for Russia, similar to the role South Korea played in 2018, in helping create an opening for US-DPRK relations,” Jenny Town, the director of the Korea programme at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Advertisement “It might not be a focal point of the upcoming meeting, but it is likely to be part of the conversation.” Last month, Kim told Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov that Pyongyang would “unconditionally support” all actions taken by Moscow in Ukraine, according to North Korean state media reports. North Korea has deployed more than 10,000 troops to support Russia’s war and has drawn up plans to dispatch thousands more, according to assessments by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service. In April, Putin announced that Moscow had fully recaptured Kursk, though Ukrainian officials disputed his claim that the entire region had been brought under Russian control. At his scheduled summit with Putin on Friday, Trump is expected to press the Russian leader to agree to a peace deal. On Monday, he told reporters that he will probably know within the “first two minutes” of meeting Putin whether they can reach a deal and that any agreement would involve “some swapping, changes in land” between Moscow and Kyiv. Adblock test (Why?)

Will Trump’s India tariffs shut down world’s biggest cut diamond supplier?

Will Trump’s India tariffs shut down world’s biggest cut diamond supplier?

For Kalpesh Patel, Diwali, the festival of lights celebrated across India, might well mark lights out for his eight-year-old diamond cutting and polishing unit. The 35-year-old employs about 40 workers who transform rough diamonds into perfectly polished gems for exports at the small factory in Surat, a city located in the western Indian state of Gujarat. His business has survived multiple speed bumps in recent years. But United States President Donald Trump’s mammoth 50 percent tariffs on imports from India might be the final nail in the coffin for his unit, part of an already struggling natural diamond industry, he said. “We still have some orders for Diwali and will try to complete them,” he told Al Jazeera. Diwali, arguably India’s single biggest festival, scheduled for late October this year, usually sees domestic sales of most goods soar. “But we might have to shut the business even before the festival, as exporters might cancel the orders due to high tariffs in the US,” Patesh said. “It is becoming increasingly difficult to pay the salaries and maintain other expenses with falling orders.” He is among the 20,000-odd small and medium traders in Surat, known as the “Diamond City of India”, which together cut and polish 14 out of every 15 natural diamonds produced globally. The US is their single largest export market. According to the Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC), India’s apex body for the industry, the country exported cut and polished gems worth $4.8bn to the US in the 2024-25 financial year, which ended in March. That is more than one-third of India’s total exports of cut and polished diamonds, at $13.2bn over the same period. Advertisement Dimpal Shah, a Kolkata-based diamond exporter, told Al Jazeera that orders have already started getting cancelled. “Buyers in the US are refusing to offload the shipped products, citing high tariffs. This is the worst phase of my two-decade-old career in diamonds.” Kalpesh Patel, who runs a diamond cutting and polishing business in Surat, Gujarat, fears that he may not be able to continue his business for long, because of US tariffs on Indian imports [Photo courtesy of Kalpesh Patel] US imposes penalty A 25 percent reciprocal tariff on all Indian goods, which Trump announced on April 2, came into effect on August 7, after talks between the two countries failed to yield a trade deal by then. Negotiations are continuing. Meanwhile, on August 6, Trump announced an additional 25 percent tariff, taking the total tariff rate to 50 percent. He termed the additional tariff that would come into effect from August 27 as a penalty for India’s continued buying of Russian oil, as the US president tries to push Moscow into accepting a ceasefire in Ukraine. For the gems industry, which already faced a pre-existing 2.1 percent tariff, the effective tariff now amounts to 52.1 percent. Ajay Srivastava, the founder of Global Research Trade Initiative (GTRI), a trade research group, termed the Trump government’s additional hike as an act of “hypocrisy”, citing how the US itself continues to trade with Russia, and how China – Russia’s biggest oil buyer – faces no similar penalty. “Trump is targeting India out of frustration as it refused to toe the US line on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and for its refusal to open its agriculture and dairy sector,” he added, referring to broader ongoing trade talks and differences over US demands for greater access to critical Indian economic sectors. Yet, whatever the reasons for Trump’s tariffs, they are hurting a diamond industry already bleeding from multiple hits. India supplies almost all of the world’s cut and polished diamonds, produced in small units across the state of Gujarat [Photo courtesy Ramesh Zilriya, president of the state’s Diamond Workers Association] Diamond sector badly hit More than 2 million people are employed in diamond polishing and cutting units in Surat, Ahmedabad and Rajkot cities in Gujarat — and many have already suffered salary cuts in recent years, first because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and then Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “The pandemic led to economic slowdown affecting the international markets in Hong Kong and China,” Ramesh Zilriya, the president of Gujarat’s Diamond Workers Union, told Al Jazeera. The “Western ban on rough diamond imports from Russia due to the Russia-Ukraine war and the G7 ban on Russia also affected our business”, he added. Advertisement Russia has historically been a major source of raw diamonds. Zilriya claimed that 80 diamond workers have died by suicide over the past two years because of this economic crisis. “The situation in the international market led to the wages of the workers getting halved to approximately 15,000-17,000 rupees ($194) per month, which made survival difficult in the face of rising inflation,” he said. Once the Trump tariffs fully kick in, Zilriya fears that up to 200,000 people in Gujarat may lose their livelihoods. Already, more than 120,000 former diamond sector workers have applied for benefits. A 13,500-rupee ($154) allowance per child, to support their families, was promised in May by the state government to those who have lost jobs due to the tumult in the sector in recent years. But the tariffs, pandemic and war are not alone to blame for the crisis: Lab-grown diamonds are also slowly eating into the market of their natural counterparts. “Unlike natural [diamonds], the lab-grown diamonds are not mined but manufactured in specialised laboratories and priced at just 10 percent of the natural ones. It is difficult even for a seasoned jeweller to identify the natural and lab-grown with a naked eye. The taste of consumers is now shifting to lab-grown [diamonds], as they are cheap,” said Salim Daginawala, the president of the Surat Jewellers Association. A worker checks the polishing of a lab-grown diamond  in Surat, India, Monday, February 5, 2024 [Ajit Solanki/AP Photo] Decline in exports In the 2024-25 financial year, India imported rough diamonds worth $10.8bn, marking a 24.27 percent decline from the $14bn imported in 2023-24, as per the statistics by the