Why is BJP So Jumpy About ‘Gen Z’? Cricketers Lose Control of Indian Cricket; Calls to Release Wangchuk; CPR Gets CPR — But From the Regime’s Doctors

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Tanweer Alam, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK

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Snapshot of the day

October 1, 2025

Siddharth Varadarajan

As the world watches Russia’s brutal assault on Ukraine and with relations between the United States and India at an all-time low because of that war, Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely to visit India on December 5–6 for the 23rd India-Russia Summit. This will be his first trip to New Delhi since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Last month, Prime Minister Modi met with Putin in Tianjin, China, during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit.

Despite Donald Trump’s swinging penal tariffs, Russia remained the largest supplier of crude oil to India in September with a 33.3% share. India imported 4.8 million barrels of oil during September, up 6% from August levels. This is in contrast to the moderate decline in oil imports from Russia in August, suggesting a slow diversification of oil sourcing by Indian refiners writes Arunima Bharadwaj.

In his second consecutive day of praise for the Pakistani establishment, Trump declared that he “loved the way” Pakistan army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir encapsulated his purported role in preventing further hostilities between India and Pakistan in May. Addressing US military commanders at Quantico, Trump said, twice:

“The prime minister of Pakistan was here along with the field marshal … and he said: ‘This man saved millions of lives because he stopped the war from going on.’ That war was going to get very bad. I was very honoured. I love the way he said it.”

Munir, whom Trump described as “a very important guy in Pakistan”, put it so well in fact that White House chief of staff Susie Wiles called his remarks “the most beautiful thing”. On Monday the US president had thanked Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif – both “incredible people” – for endorsing his Gaza ceasefire proposal, though it appears Pakistan may be having second thoughts about the Trump plan.

On the tariff side of things, US trade representative Jamieson Greer has reiterated Washington’s stance that it will maintain its regime of levies even if the Supreme Court strikes down Trump’s use of an emergency law to implement them. At any rate he believes the court “will defer to the president on the emergency” and the fact that “tariffs can be used under this law”, Aime Williams quotes him as saying.

Meanwhile, Trump’s latest threat to impose a 100% tariff on foreign films has “raised alarm in India’s industry from Bollywood to Tollywood, even as it is struggling to lure audiences back to cinemas and facing shrinking revenues from online platforms”, reports The South China Morning Post. Speaking to The Hindu, Ashish Kulkarni, an Indian production house founder who is also an animation and visual effects expert, said: “Under such a high tariff regime, all channels of movie showing and viewing will be impacted and become more costly. It will overall increase the cost of content consumption for the Indian diaspora.”

Hoping to lure tech-savvy STEM professionals to its shores now that the US is battening down its hatches, China has introduced a new ‘K visa’ with a provision for long-term residence. However, nationalist Chinese ‘netizens’ are warning that Indians should not be beneficiaries of this new visa regime.

Gitanjali Angmo, the wife of detained Ladakhi activist Sonam Wangchuk, has written to President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Modi demanding