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The government of Nepal urged all the parties concerned to exercise maximum restraint not to escalate tension in Ukraine.

Issuing a statement on Thursday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Nepal has closely been following the developments in Ukraine.

“As a member of the United Nations, Nepal views that the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity as enshrined in the UN Charter are sacrosanct and must be fully respected by all member states,” the statement read.

Recognition of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions as independent entities goes contrary to the provisions of the UN Charter.

Nepal opposes any use of force against a sovereign country in any circumstance and believes in peaceful resolution of disputes through diplomacy and dialogue, the statement further read.

A meeting of the Business Advisory Committee has started at the Parliament building in New Baneshwor on Thursday.

A meeting of the House of Representatives has been scheduled for 1 pm today.

The meeting of the Business Advisory Committee was held to decide the agenda for the Parliament meeting.

The government is preparing to present the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) in the Parliament for a general discussion today.

The main opposition CPN-UML boycotted the meeting today as well.

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman held a meeting on Thursday.

During the meeting, the duo discussed the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) debate process, PM’s press advisor Govinda Pariyar said.

“They have discussed to endorse the MCC within the given time frame. The House of Representatives will start a debate on the MCC compact from today,” he said.

Dahal reached Baluwatar after holding a meeting with CPN (Unified Socialist) Chairman Madhav Nepal this morning.

The Parliament meeting is scheduled for 1 pm today.

It has been learnt that the Finance Minister Janardan Sharma will present the compact in the Parliament for a general discussion.

The United States has given the government of Nepal a deadline of February 28 to secure parliamentary ratification of the compact.

Ukraine’s parliament and other government and banking websites were hit with another punishing wave of distributed-denial-of-service attacks Wednesday, and cybersecurity researchers said unidentified attackers had also infected hundreds of computers with destructive malware, Associated Press reported.

Some of the infected computers were in neighboring Latvia and Lithuania, the researchers said.

Early Thursday local time in Ukraine, as fears of a Russian invasion heightened, the foreign ministry and council of ministers were unreachable and other sites were slow to load, suggesting the DDoS attacks were continuing, though there was no official confirmation. 

Officials have long expected cyber attacks to precede and accompany any Russian military incursion, and analysts said the activity hewed to Russia’s playbook of wedding cyber operations with real-world aggression.

ESET Research Labs said it detected a previously unseen piece of data-wiping malware Wednesday on “hundreds of machines in the country.” It was not clear how many networks were affected.

“With regards whether the malware was successful in its wiping capability, we assume that this indeed was the case and affected machines were wiped,” said ESET research chief Jean-Ian Boutin. He would not name the targets but said they were “large organizations.” ESET was unable to say who was responsible.

Symantec Threat Intelligence detected three organizations hit by the wiper malware — Ukrainian government contractors in Latvia and Lithuania and a financial institution in Ukraine, said Vikram Thakur, its technical director. Both countries are NATO members.

All three had “close affiliation with the government of Ukraine,” said Thakur, indicating the targeted attacks. He said roughly 50 computers at the financial outfit were impacted, some with data wiped.

Asked about the wiper attack, senior Ukrainian cyber defense official Victor Zhora had no comment.