in the headlines this hour the russian and u.s. presidents hold their 1st conversation since joe biden's inauguration covering a raft of topics from weapons reduction to the pandemic. iran approves of vaccine and now plans joint production in an exclusive interview with r t the country's foreign minister tells us why iran is backing me. separately india says it is nearly ready to approve the russian vaccine with the country's moscow envoy saying he has already had the shock be expected given the next couple of weeks. will be available for use in

india. and there is a vaccine vexation between britain and brussels and escalating dispute over supply as it sees the u.k. call out the plan to tightly control medicine exports. are broadcasting live direct from our studios in moscow this is arch international i'm sean thomas certainly glad to have you with us right now vladimir putin and joe biden have held their 1st phone conversation since the new u.s. president's inauguration and they touched on a number of hot button topics artie's reports. well the phone call was initiated by joe biden and it seems that much of the call focused on these start treating this is one of the nuclear agreement that was signed between the usa and russia at the

conclusion of the cold war and it limits the number of nuclear weapons and nuclear delivery systems that both the united states and russia have now in the trumpet ministration period there were a number of nuclear treaties that expire the clear skies agreement expired the i.n.f. short range agreement expired as well and the new start treaty was scheduled to expire on february 5th but from what we understand there was an agreement on the phone between joe biden and between russian president vladimir putin that the the new start treaty which is set to expire on february 5th would be extended this is the summary of the phone call that we heard from the kremlin the president's expressed satisfaction on reaching an agreement on the extension of the strategic arms reduction treaty in the coming days all the necessary procedures will be completed to ensure the further functioning of this important international legal mechanism for the mutual limitation of nuclear missile now russian president

vladimir putin has now put forward a bill before russia's duma that would actually extend the treaty for 5 years and it would not expire on february 5th joe biden indicated that he was he was favoring such an extension as well now according to reports we do understand joe biden did talk about putting pressure on russia in response to what he described as malign activities and he also mentioned the case of the russian oppositional figure alexy no valving here is the white house's summary of this phone call president biden made clear that the united states will act firmly in defense of its national interests in response to actions by russia that harm us or our allies the 2 presidents agreed to maintain. transparent and consistent communication going forward so quite a difference in emphasis there the kremlin is emphasizing the victory of you know

signing this agreement to prevent an escalation of the arms race between the 2 countries we have the white house emphasizing allegations about malign activity it cetera but overall it seems like a the result of this phone call is the likely extension of a very important nuclear agreement that prevents a new arms race we discussed of the ramifications of the call with our guests. very much the message as you could see from the u.s. and white house report of that phone call the emphasis was we're going to hold you know we're going to russia is not going to mess with us russia is going to be held accountable for all the evil deeds that they do. that's a message for the domestic population which honestly. you know he's feeding his he's feeding meat to his dogs. and that is not a sign of a sophisticated foreign policy certainly the phone call this early in the stage of the game is a good sign you know biden can kivett around completely and suddenly say you know

he wants to. develop friendlier relations with russia so he's going to be talking to best a cli. as though he's a tough guy with russia but i think realistically the goals that biden has domestically are going to require winding down of a. military. confrontation lattitude towards russia and china in the end. iran has become the latest country to approve russia's sputnik v covert vaccine and hopes to also play a part in manufacturing the medicine in an exclusive interview with r.t. the iranian foreign minister explains why his nation has chosen the russian vaccine over the western alternatives here is some of the interview which airs in full here on thursday. i think it was a public health problem with some political can considerations about the intentions of the united states and the lack of trust which is which is very clear we have

a very bad experience with another western country that i do not want to name they sent to iran. blood that had. whiteness. and so a lot of people needing blood transfusion resteal need to investigate it further but that was certainly a major public health problem and you know we will get. russian the russian ric's vaccine we will get the chinese vaccine we are in close touch with all of them be real get the indian of a vaccine but our own iranian produced vaccines bed through the 1st cycle of human. clinical testing and we hope by june we will be able to use our own vaccine separately the mexican president has described the shot as evidence of scientific progress adding that his country hopes to get millions of

doses within weeks we spoke with the president of the russian federation vladimir putin and he was genuinely affectionate i invited him to visit mexico and thank him for the decision to send us 24000000 doses of the sputnik vaccine over the next 2 months. all right meanwhile in india the final stage of sputnik v clinical trials is well underway and the country's ambassador to moscow says he has already taken the job himself. i took it last week. the 1st also sputnik vaccine i feel perfectly ready many of my colleagues in the embassy have done so as well and i am. absolutely certain that this is part of the normal. precautions that we take her during the pandemic situation just as we remain at a mosque we have certain distance but it is also good to take scientifically proven

. scenes and of course the sport big vaccine is one such vaccine all right approval is putting being in india could come within weeks once it completes the trials and is also considering producing the drug on its territory for both domestic and global demand the countries envoy to russia told us why new delhi got involved doesn't come as a surprise that we have a such a long tradition of cooperation between india and russia their cooperation continued during the code trying to make it so grand the idea. is to carry the material approach the indian authorities or the testing of the sputnik alexian this was really come to an india these phase 2 trials of picnics you have been completed his 3 commenced and be assured that us when our state regulatory approvals are given in india it will be available for use in india

. aim is to finally. about the vaccination of 300000000 indians so it is one of the largest vaccination programs in the butt but at the same time we wish to reach out to dear friends and neighbors and we have done so be have given the nation doses. supplies have been sent by air to an apollo booked on bangladesh myanmar shows maldives and this is just the beginning we do not believe in vaccine competition we do not believe in vaccine nationalism we believe in rexy and cooperation and friendship and we intend to extend our hand of friendship rules for all of their explanation programs for number of countries. who are in need of and in the book who landed on the ritual forward and i'm sure in the weeks ahead they will be cooperation between

india and russia on the growth of explanation programs and there will be clear potential for cooperation because the number of the vaccines that are produced in india will also be used abroad and that will include that action sputnik rock scene that would be produced in india. has been in touch with a number of very good indian companies to take this forward and we expect in the next couple of weeks sputnik rex enough to use the regulatory approval will be available for use in india and also for export to russia and other countries. the netherlands endured a 3rd night of anti-lock down the riots on monday it saw fires lit police vehicles burned and windows smashed in protest at some of europe's toughest covert restrictions which include an overnight curfew.

or more than 180 people were arrested in the latest unrest in amsterdam and rotterdam where shops were vandalized and looted local officials and the prime minister have condemned the violence as criminal with some fearing the unrest puts the country on the path to civil war. germany has formally demanded that the e.u. stop all export of covert vaccines produced within the block that is while a spat over vaccine supplies continues between the e.u. and london britain's vaccines that minister has hit out at brussels decision to control exports calling it vaccine nationalism and wrong it stems from european politicians accusing the british swedish drug company astra zeneca of diverting

promised e.u. vaccine supplies to other countries here is our europe correspondent peter over. governments across europe are struggling to bring down the number of cases of covert 19 and the number of fatalities from the virus that's the spite putting in place lock downs and restrictions on people like those that we've seen in the netherlands that have resulted in on breasts they're the latest issues that we're seeing a regarding the logistics of getting the vaccine where it needs to go there simply isn't enough being produced at the moment to put into people's arms at a spot is a ripping between the u.k. and the e u which is ended up with the u.k. vaccines minister accusing the european union of well vaccine diplomacy vaccine politics whatever you want to call it he's got a name for it vaccine nationalism is the wrong way to go we've got to make sure we

protect our own people and then actually you know put our you know leaning as far as we can to protect the rest of the world to deal with the shortfalls in the number of vaccine doses available the european union has said that it wants pharmaceutical companies to inform brussels whenever vaccines manufactured inside the european union are to be exported outside of the block well that really could end up resulting in delays to vaccines arriving in the united kingdom that's the concern in london despite 10 downing street playing down the idea of a vaccine war it's clear from what we just heard from the vaccine minister it is causing some concern now there's also concern over vaccines coming the other way earlier on we heard from astra zeneca the past oxford based part based pharmaceutical company saying that they were going to cook the number of vaccines expected to be delivered to the european union in the 1st quarter of 2021 by

a whopping 60 percent that did not go down well in fact it resulted in. and the european commission president coming out and saying that well they needed to get the vaccines that they paid for she also made accusations that perhaps some of these vaccines may be going to the highest bidder as opposed to those that it signed contracts like the e.u. to get them in the 1st place lash sums when vested to built research cap acids and production facilities early europe invested billions to help develop the world's 1st covered 1000 vaccines and now the companies must deliver they must under their obligations and this is why we will set up a vaccine export transparency mechanism make no bones about it the european commission and ursula fund alone personally are under extreme scrutiny across the

european union for the way that the vaccine program has been dealt with what we have is a situation whereby the vaccination program in the e.u. is being late silly slow if you compare it to countries like the united states and the united kingdom which is done particularly well it isn't looking too great the way that vaccines are being rolled out across the block and there are a lot of people asking a lot of questions why that is the case it's unsure of course where the arguing between the e.u. and the u.k. is the way to solve that particular impasse. the e.u. and the u.s. have been eagerly backing protests in support of jailed kremlin critic alexina vonnie and russia however at the same time they have been criticizing the far bigger rallies taking place in their own backyard and he's brought ghazi of comments. the united states has come out in the strongest terms against the

suppression of protests and against put he has proof let me try again the united states says it can deadens police brutality it other countries the united states strongly condemns the use of harsh tactics against protesters and journalists this weekend in cities throughout russia prior to today said vents the russian government sought to suppress the rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression i've go to ahead and put together a least a list of people in that disease that have the right to lecture others on police brutality so there's luas for example they knew this stuff right what's legal and what isn't there as the pope i'm not catholic but i haven't seen vatican security roughing anyone up recently than that as yada yada oh oh there's no america in this least the very good reason there won't be defining there will be

a dismantling of our police and they're not going to be the disbanding of our police our police have been letting us live in peace we can't give up the finest law enforcement anywhere in the world is nothing like it. few people few countries have a record and trouble is right few countries have a police force that unhinged i didn't see anyone getting shot in moscow nor t.-a gas nor sprayed with water cannons but that was trump let's see what biden thinks about opposition protests but witness yesterday it was not dissent it was not disorder it was not protest it was chaos. there were protesters don't dare call them protesters there were a riotous mob insurrectionists domestic terrorists. stat basic it's. that said look nobody is ever again buying your lectures about police

brutality the world has seen behind the mosque not that it stops some from drive. to find this authoritarian drift is very worrying so there is france right in the 1st 3 months of the year to vest protests french police arrested $10000.00 protesters people died people will crippled lost eyes lost limbs tear gas and rubber bullets were used in france in industrial quantities and you know what macron is proud of the police do not speak of repression or police violence these words are unacceptable where there is rule of law then is germany demanding the release of all peaceful protesters detained in russia detained for peacefully attacking police peacefully punching traffic cops and peacefully destroying cars maiming drivers and marshaling kids 1011 year olds to attend violent protests

germany itself has been rattled with anti lockdown protests and you know what the german officials and police did they dismiss them as loons crazies extremists and beat them around the head for good measure the democratic institution state is alive in the police or is protective shield a thing called the emergency services for this important service to our country there was a ton not long ago when the world looked up to europe and america as beacons of freedom and liberty the right way to do things but that beacon that light has gone out there are no illusions anymore about europe or america being superior or better than everyone else the time for hypocritical lectures has pos no one can be bothered to listen anymore. the hate speech acts as. following on another social media presence this time facebook has taken down

a group called patriots against joe biden it was allied to the conservative news site the scoop whose founders have also had their personal profiles permanently banned here's how facebook explained its decision to page patriots against jim boulden has been removed for violating the terms of use pages the hateful threatening all obscene we also take down pages that that's how an individual group or the sits upon an authorised individual the big tech purge ramped up a gear earlier this month when donald trump and some of his closest allies found themselves silenced by twitter facebook and other platforms many conservatives flocked instead to twitter rival parlor but that too fell foul of the internet gate keepers 1st it was dropped by apple and google's app stores then amazon pulled the plug on hosting the website on its cloud service and facebook has banned the page of a group for disillusioned democrat voters

a relative new kid on the block telegram is under fire now as well an internet safety campaign group is making legal moves to get apple and google to drop the messenger app saying it is failing to filter out extremist activity the man behind the scoop website told my colleague nicky aaron earlier that social media bans will only see people move elsewhere to share their opinions. we made the patriots against joe biden group after the capitol riots several days after and we had a strict clause in the about section of the group this group is about peace we reject all violence they still say it was extreme they shut down the group and they banned me from facebook permanently the scoop we're small organization we're doing well but we're not big funded media and we need to depend on these social media companies to make money we've barely ever gotten any strikes on our pages and this was pretty much our 1st warning and we were taken down i think it's just because the social media companies want to defend joe biden they're so terrified about what

happened happened in the capital and they're using that as cover to just purge all conservatives on social media is there a clear distinction between energize free political speech and the aggressive and dangerous tribalism which any civilized society would expect it to be neutered on line you know the problem is very difficult i understand that before social media when we would have discourse it would be in person with the shelter of the internet it obviously allows for people to have cover and be a lot more extreme in what they say i don't know what the solution is but banning people from social media because you think they're too extreme is not the answer people are moving to platforms like telegram to parlor if you ban people for their speech and they don't think they didn't think it wrong there to keep on moving to other platforms twitter is facing another wave of criticism over censorship this time over a new mechanism the platform says is aimed at addressing misleading information the mechanism called birdwatch allows users to create notes for tweets containing

information they believe to be misleading it is now being tested by users across the u.s. and twitter ultimately aims to make the notes visible for all users around the world but already many view the new feature with skepticism. this is going to be mediately weaponized against any trends past the present scholarship about transmissible even just talks about their own experiences this is a bad idea that will be misused and gamed by the far right without reducing anything please think harder on how you do things if your approach was taken in 2001 then masses of users would have silenced the correct alternative voices and enforced official position that iraq was in possession of fissile material for nuclear weapons you're weaponize ing misinform consensus author and legal activist stephen newcomb sees an ominous trend in twitter's plan this is another one of

those kinds of developments where people can collectively pile on so to speak or jump on particular viewpoints and attempt to suppress them there is a great effort to suppress speech at the current time suppress viewpoints that people don't agree with and i think that's a real danger i think that any society that suppresses viewpoints and the open expression of dialogue and discussion from one side of the political spectrum or the other if you have perhaps even more than 2 sides of a political spectrum it's important to get all views. well despite an overall shortage of vaccines many doses of the pfizer job in spain have been wasted that is because the country lacks the special syringes needed to extract all doses from each vile and medical expert broke down the problem in

a bit more detail. they have already talked about the 6 and even 7th doses it's not possible with old vials. you have to be prepared for that and use more expensive syringe just unusual it's a lot of money and requires more caution so while 165000 doses of the pfizer shot have been given so far in the couple on the region an estimated 10000 doses have been wasted and of the shortages could have been worse had it not been for the fact that some regions do have the right needles the country is going through tough times in the midst of a 3rd wave of the pandemic daily infection rates hit a new high last week salvador pay will again went on to tell us that the shortage of vaccines has amplified the problem. the main problem is that the number of vaccine supplied under the agreements and procurement of the european commission is

still very small i believe that until new vaccines are allowed their numbers will be significantly lower than we and the rest of the european union needs now the european met since agency is changing the technical detail induces per ample as soon as the labels changed they're going to give us 20 percent less those of us than we should have because any mistake means a loss of dos i think what this really means is a 20 percent increase in price. leaders in scotland are laying the groundwork for another referendum on independence from the u.k. hoping to build not only on briggs it frustrations but also new research which says many younger scottish voters really do not feel all that british authorities shouted words dosh he explains. the union jack could soon be losing its white lines of said andras so tired as nicholas sturgeon revived the famous battle cry from north of the border. the good news for

pro independence scots is that the us minister said on to a new referendum the bad wife minster has the final say and has always told them this should be only once in a generation we already had a referendum 6 years ago and it was quite decisive i can certainly rule out any such referendum. but with the s.n.p. expecting a round side win in may let's make this 7 says hold on a wee minute and the ground is the same defense downing street isn't back to talking brussels democracy is frightened of democracy if the s.n.p. win the scottish. on the proposition of giving the people that choice or democrat. in the we have found. public opinion is finally swinging in sturgeon's favor almost half think an independent scotland when i've done better in the pandemic than london watch response and then out right majority now think decisions should be made in edinburgh i would say as

a young person in my focus has really been on money travelling. very very i think the biggest impact for me is just going to be not travelling and really not feeling like. you anymore and i think that's just been kind of ripped away which if you think you know she. is given the wheel arch and got very little in return. a lot more complicated. appears to have delivered it ever say to go to british identity fracturing it across the aisles and time is on independent side a majority already consider themselves will scottish than british and the younger you are the more passionate they feel about. all this is boris johnson in panic mode so he's heading there on a charm offensive to save the kingdom but considering how he was booed on

a previous trip maybe he should say well aware. but it's not the only home nation voter might want to think twice about stepping in in northern ireland most now want a referendum about its border even usually friendly wales support for independence has jumped from the teens to almost a quarter this month final divorce from the e.u. already left warnings that britain's global voice would diminish but even britain itself now looks more and more like a disunited kingdom. school and the situation is entirely precedented. in succession suggesting a majority. one independent we know how over 2020 just excess of opinion polls through 2020 in the beginning of 2021 suggesting

clearly that scotland ones to lead people in scotland when i'm not a. rural crossed off things like an improvement in shipbuilding contraction of truman and democracy and proven and none of that was developed it was all a perspective of a lie and that's why people are afraid of they want to know what a referendum will and they want to leave the euro and see scotland stand closer to again as a nation of a dozen for me this album back of headlines and 29 and a half minutes from start international. join me every.