Andrew Osborne

India is one of the big

sources of labor that it is targeting at the moment.

I mean, if we look at the figures before the war in Ukraine in 2021, Russia was issuing around 5,000 work permits for Indian nationals.

Now, last year, that figure rocketed and was actually closer to about 72,000.

So that's a huge increase.

It's a relatively new trend.

And it means that for the first time in many years, we're seeing Indian nationals working on farms, in textile factories, sweeping the snow from streets, and in shops.

U.S.

President Donald Trump, who of course we know is very keen, has been trying to broker a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine.

He has been piling pressure on India to stop buying

Russian oil and Russia of course has been listening to all of this at the same time as it's been flying in these Indian workers and so far it has said that India is abiding by all of its agreements and it's playing down the prospect that anything could derail the friendship between Moscow and New Delhi.

I mean, WhatsApp for years now has been one of the most popular messenger apps inside Russia.

It's been under pressure for some time.

This is not an overnight development.

In August, Russia's state communications regulator

came out with an announcement that said it wasn't happy with WhatsApp.

And at that point, Russians lost the ability to make phone calls on WhatsApp.

It just stopped working overnight.

What the authorities are trying to do is they're trying to make the Mac's state-backed app an indispensable part of everyday life, something that you cannot

do without to carry out your kind of basic business.