Category: Євросоюз

An orphaned Ukrainian teenager who was taken to Russia last year during the war in his country returned home after being reunited with relatives in Belarus on his 18th birthday Sunday. Bohdan Yermokhin was pictured embracing family members in Minsk in photographs shared on social media by Russia’s children’s rights ombudswoman, Maria Lvova-Belova. Andrii Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, confirmed that Yermokhin had arrived back in Ukraine and shared a photo of him with a Ukrainian flag. Yermak thanked UNICEF and Qatari negotiators for facilitating Yermokhin’s return. Yermokhin’s parents died two years ago, before Russia invaded Ukraine. …

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About 3,000 mostly Ukrainian trucks were stuck on the Polish side of the border as of Sunday morning due to a more than 10-day blockade by Polish truckers, Ukrainian authorities said. Polish truckers earlier this month blocked roads to three border crossings with Ukraine to protest against what they see as government inaction over a loss of business to foreign competitors since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Ukrainian officials said last week Kyiv and Warsaw had again failed to reach an agreement to stop the protest. “For over 10 days, Ukrainian drivers have been blocked at the Polish …

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A hat belonging to Napoleon Bonaparte when he was French emperor sold for a record of nearly two million euros at a French auction on Sunday, the auction house said. It went for 1.932 million euros ($2.1 million) — breaking the previous record for a Napoleonic hat, held by the same auction house, of 1.884 million euros in 2014 shelled out by a South Korean businessman. The hat, known as a bicorne, is in Napoleon’s trademark colors — black, with the French flag’s colors blue-white-red as insignia — and attracted interest from collectors “the world over”, auctioneers Osenat said, declining to give …

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Gale-force winds and heavy rain and snow hit large parts of Bulgaria Sunday, claiming the lives of two people, causing severe damage and disrupting the power supply in towns and villages, officials said Sunday. Residents in eastern Bulgaria, that was hit hardest by the storm said they had never experienced such weather. A state of emergency has been declared in the Black Sea city of Varna, where officials said the extreme weather poses serious risks to the population. The port city was struck by gale-force winds and torrential rain mixed with snow. The mayor’s office reported that the power supply …

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Survivors of Nazi atrocities joined young Jewish activists outside the Paris Holocaust memorial Saturday to sound the alarm about resurgent antisemitic hate speech, graffiti and abuse linked to the Israel-Hamas war. The impact of the conflict is drawing increasing concern in France and beyond. Thousands of pro-Palestinian and left-wing activists rallied in Paris and around Britain on Saturday to call for a cease-fire, the latest of several such protests in major cities around the world since the war began. France is home to the largest Jewish population outside Israel and the U.S., and western Europe’s largest Muslim population. The war …

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Pope Francis’ recent gesture of welcome for transgender Catholics has resonated strongly in a working class, seaside town south of Rome, where a community of trans women has found help and hope through a remarkable relationship with the pontiff forged during the darkest times of the pandemic. Thanks to the local parish priest, these women now make monthly visits to Francis’ Wednesday general audiences, where they are given VIP seats. On any given day, they receive handouts of medicine, cash and shampoo. When COVID-19 struck, the Vatican bused them into its health facility so they could be vaccinated ahead of …

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President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has sanctioned 37 Russian groups and 108 people including a former prime minister and a former education minister and said he aimed to fight wartime abductions of children from Ukraine and other “Russian terror.” “We are increasing the pressure of our state onto them and each of them must be held responsible for what they have done,” he said Saturday in his nightly video address after his office issued corresponding decrees with his signature. Zelenskyy did not associate specific individuals or groups with particular wrongdoings. The decrees showed a range of 10-year penalties against individuals and five-year …

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Dozens of migrants stood behind barriers Saturday at two crossings on Finland’s border with Russia, the Finnish Border Guard said, after Helsinki erected barricades to halt a flow of asylum-seekers it says was instigated by Moscow.  The Finnish government has accused Russia of funneling migrants to the crossings in retaliation for its decision to increase defense cooperation with the United States, an assertion dismissed by the Kremlin.  The Finnish Border Guard erected barriers from midnight Friday at the Vaalimaa, Nuijamaa, Imatra and Niirala border posts in southeast Finland, which account for most of the traffic between the two countries.  Despite …

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About 170,000 people marched through Madrid Saturday in the largest protest yet against an amnesty law that Spain’s Socialists agreed over Catalonia’s 2017 separatist bid to form a government.  The demonstration, the latest in a series of protests in cities across the country against the amnesty, took place two days after Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez won a four-year term with the backing of Catalan and Basque nationalist parties in return for agreeing to the law.  Protesters, many waving Spanish flags and holding signs that read “Sanchez traitor” and “Don’t sell Spain,” demonstrated against the law that four judicial …

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Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Saturday that his country and Azerbaijan are speaking “different diplomatic languages” even though they were able to agree on the basic principles for a peace treaty.  Azerbaijan waged a lightning military campaign in September in the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The offensive ended three decades of rule there by ethnic Armenians and resulted in the vast majority of the 120,000 residents fleeing the region, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.  Addressing the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Pashinyan said it was “good that the basic principles …

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A drawing of a nude Donald Trump. A punching bag sculpture shaped like a woman’s torso. A display of women’s party shoes standing proudly on prayer rugs. All are pieces of contemporary art that have provoked debate and, sometimes, violent reactions.  These pieces and dozens more that were subjected to some sort of censorship have found a home in Spain at Barcelona’s Museum of Forbidden Art, or “Museu de l’Art Prohibit” in Catalan. The collection of over 200 works, including ones by well-known creators such as American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and Spain’s own Pablo Picasso, is intended to challenge visitors …

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The British Defense Ministry said Saturday in its daily intelligence update on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that over the last week there has been intense ground combat in three areas – the Kupiansk axis in Luhansk oblast; Avdiivka in Donetsk oblast; and on the left bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson oblast, where Ukrainian forces have established a bridgehead. While Russia had “particularly heavy casualties” around Avdiivka, the report said, neither side has achieved much progress in any of the locations. There are not likely to be any substantial changes in the areas, the British ministry warned, as the …

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Britain’s medicines regulator has authorized the world’s first gene therapy treatment for sickle cell disease, in a move that could offer relief to thousands of people with the crippling disease in the U.K. In a statement Thursday, the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency said it approved Casgevy, the first medicine licensed using the gene editing tool CRISPR, which won its makers a Nobel prize in 2020. The agency approved the treatment for patients with sickle cell disease and thalassemia who are 12 years old and older. Casgevy is made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals (Europe) Ltd. and CRISPR Therapeutics. To date, bone …

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Pending legislation in Ukraine aimed at preventing the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from becoming a conduit for Russian influence is attracting attention in the United States and is being used by some U.S. conservatives to paint Ukraine as hostile to religious freedom. Ukrainian authorities insist the proposed law would not limit the activities of the church, which many believe maintains a relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church and has seen its membership plummet since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. They say it would simply authorize a relevant state agency to investigate the presence of connections between any religious organization and Russia …

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After a barrage of earthquakes that herald an impending volcanic eruption, some evacuated residents of the Icelandic town of Grindavik wonder if they will ever return. “There are going to be a lot of people who don’t want to go there. My mother said, ‘I never want to go there again,’” Eythor Reynisson, who was born and raised in Grindavik, told AFP. The fishing port of 4,000 people on Iceland’s south coast was evacuated on November 11 after magma shifting under the Earth’s crust caused hundreds of earthquakes — a warning of a likely volcanic eruption. Thousands of smaller tremors …

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Ukraine’s military said on social media Friday that it had gained “a foothold on several bridgeheads” on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, near the key southern city of Kherson.  Russia conceded that Ukrainian forces had claimed back some territory on the opposing bank.  Ukrainian troops are trying to push Russian forces away from the Dnipro to stop them from shelling civilian areas on the Ukrainian-held west bank, the general staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in a report Friday. Ukraine also said Friday it has destroyed 15 Russian naval vessels and has damaged 12 others in the Black Sea …

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The Spanish-language article with a Moscow dateline and a provocative headline first appeared in early August, suggesting a heist of sorts was underway in Ukraine. “Why are sacred objects being transferred to the West from Ukraine?” it asked, describing an effort to send Ukrainian religious relics to the United States and other countries to plunder Ukraine’s riches under the guise of saving them from destruction in the war between Kyiv and Moscow. But according to U.S. officials, the real ruse was the article itself, an early example of a Russian influence operation aimed at winning hearts and minds for the …

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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will visit Kosovo and Serbia next week amid soaring tensions between the Balkan neighbors, the military alliance said Friday. An armed ambush in Kosovo’s volatile north in September near the border with Serbia killed a police officer, triggering one of the worst escalations in the former Serbian breakaway province, which is dominated by ethnic Albanians. Stoltenberg will head to Kosovo on Monday for talks with its prime minister and president before visiting peacekeepers from the Western military alliance deployed there. The next day he will be in Belgrade for a meeting with the Serbian president, …

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South Africa has requested that the International Criminal Court in The Hague investigate alleged Israeli war crimes in its war with Hamas. President Cyril Ramaphosa made the announcement while on a state visit to Qatar, where he said he had spoken to the country’s ruler about the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza. “We both abhorred what is happening right now in Gaza, which has now turned into a concentration camp where genocide is taking place,” he said. Ramaphosa said South Africa did not condone the actions taken by Hamas when the group launched a deadly attack on Israel last month …

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The United States on Thursday targeted 10 individuals in a new round of sanctions aimed at containing Russian influence in the Western Balkans, the U.S. Treasury said. The Treasury also imposed sanctions on 20 entities, including 11 based in Russia, in line with executive orders related to the Western Balkans and Russia, according to a Treasury website. The Western Balkans-related sanctions are the latest imposed by the United States on politicians, other individuals and organizations designed to contain Russian efforts to prevent the region’s integration into international institutions, the Treasury said. The sanctions freeze all property and other assets those …

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