Category: Євросоюз

In the wake of Friday’s deadly Russian missile strikes, Ukraine’s air force said the country would soon have weapons with which to try to prevent such attacks: a Patriot air defense system. The delivery of the Patriot is expected in Ukraine sometime after Easter, Ukrainian air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said. The primarily Orthodox Christian country observes Easter on Sunday. Speaking Saturday on Ukrainian state TV, Ihnat declined to give a precise timeline for the arrival of the defensive missile system but said the public would know “as soon as the first Russian aircraft is shot down.” A group of …

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Ireland’s president has led tributes to Mark Sheehan, guitarist with Irish rock band The Script, after his death at 46. The band said Sheehan died in a hospital Friday after a brief illness. In a statement, The Script called him a “much-loved husband, father, brother, band mate and friend.” Formed in Dublin in 2001 by Sheehan, singer Danny O’Donoghue and drummer Glen Power, The Script topped U.K. and Irish charts with its self-titled debut album in 2008. It included the hits We Cry, Breakeven and The Man Who Can’t Be Moved, which reached No. 1 in five countries. The band’s pop-inflected …

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Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni acknowledged “anomalies” in the handling of a Russian businessman who escaped from house arrest in Italy to avoid extradition to the United States and said Saturday she would speak with the justice minister to understand what happened. During a visit to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Meloni termed the case of Artyom Uss “grave” and vowed to get to the bottom of it when she returned to Rome. Uss, the 40-year-old son of a Russian regional governor, was detained in October 2022 at Milan Malpensa Airport on a U.S. warrant accusing him of violating sanctions. In November, a …

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In a muddy trench under fire from Russian forces 200 meters away, Ukrainian servicemen injured while holding the line near the bloodiest battle of Moscow’s invasion face a precarious extraction. “If someone gets unlucky, we have to carry them between 1 and 3 kilometers to the nearest place they can be collected,” a Ukrainian soldier, who calls himself Begemot, told AFP journalists several kilometers from the embattled city of Bakhmut. “Even a light injury can be fatal in these conditions,” he added, the sound of artillery thundering behind him. The difficulty of hauling out injured troops is one of the …

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Germany will switch off its last three nuclear reactors Saturday, exiting atomic power even as it seeks to wean itself off fossil fuels and manage an energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. While many Western countries are upping their investments in atomic energy to reduce their emissions, Germany is bringing an early end to its nuclear age. Europe’s largest economy has been looking to leave behind nuclear power since 2002, but the phase-out was accelerated by former chancellor Angela Merkel in 2011 after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. The exit decision was popular in a country with …

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The construction of barbed-wired fence along Finland’s long border with Russia – primarily meant to curb illegal migration – has broken ground near the southeastern town of Imatra less than two weeks after the Nordic country joined NATO as the 31st member of the military alliance.  The Finnish Border Guard on Friday showcased the building of the initial three kilometer (1.8 mile) stretch of the fence to be erected in Pelkola near a crossing point off Imatra, a quiet lakeside town of some 25,000 people.  Finland’s 1,340-kilometer (832 miles) border with Russia is the longest of any European Union member.  …

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Ukrainian soldiers evacuate parts of Bakhmut as fighting there intensifies. Russian President Vladimir Putin signs a bill to make it easier to mobilize Russians into the military. China has promised not to sell weapons to either Ukraine or Russia, The Associated Press reports. Russian forces have brought large amounts of provisions and water to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and may barricade a skeleton staff inside, says Kyiv’s state atomic agency, Energoatom. The head of the Wagner Group wants Russia to get out of Ukraine. The time has come for a “firm end” to the war in Ukraine, Yevgeny Prigozhin …

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“Remember, Joey, the best drop of blood in you is Irish,” President Joe Biden said, quoting his grandfather. Such fierce ethnic pride from “the most Irish of all American presidents,” as the Taoiseach describes him, was guaranteed to be a crowd-pleaser, and Biden knew it. Biden displayed an endless supply of that pride during a three-day visit that culminated in a Friday night speech in Ballina, County Mayo, where his paternal ancestors once lived. The speech was the last item on his schedule before he returned to Washington. “Being here feels like coming home,” he told the crowd of 27,000, …

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For 35 years, the Emsland nuclear power plant in northwestern Germany has reliably provided millions of homes with electricity and many with well-paid jobs in what was once an agricultural backwater. Now, it and the country’s two other remaining nuclear plants are being shut down. Germany long ago decided to phase out both fossil fuels and nuclear power over concerns that neither is a sustainable source of energy. The final countdown Saturday — delayed for several months over feared energy shortages because of the Ukraine war — is seen with relief by Germans who have campaigned against nuclear power. Yet …

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A French court on Friday convicted 11 alleged members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on charges of terror financing. The defendants, all Kurds from Turkey who speak little or no French, were accused of being part of a network that seeks a so-called revolutionary tax, or “kampanya,” from the Kurdish diaspora.  Deemed a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Turkey, the PKK has been waging a decades-long armed struggle against Ankara for greater autonomy for the Kurdish minority in the country’s southeast. Organized cells are believed to be active among France’s up to 150,000 Kurdish …

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Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a bill Friday allowing authorities to issue electronic notices to draftees and reservists amid the fighting in Ukraine, sparking fears of a new wave of mobilization. Russia’s military service rules previously required the in-person delivery of notices to conscripts and reservists called up for duty. Under the new law, the notices issued by local military conscription offices will continue to be sent by mail, but they would be considered valid from the moment they are put on a state portal for electronic services. In the past, many Russians avoided the draft by staying away from …

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Russia said Friday that Afghanistan’s Taliban had made progress against terrorism and drug trafficking but needed to resolve women’s rights issues and create an inclusive government to win recognition for their rule. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made the remarks a day after participating in a regional conference in Uzbekistan, along with six immediate neighbors of Afghanistan, including China. “Everyone unanimously agreed that we will continue to develop contacts with the Taliban government. … It preserves the authority and maintains control over the country,” Lavrov told a televised news conference in the Uzbek city of Samarkand. He reminded the fundamentalist …

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Some 400,000 survivors of February’s earthquake in southern Turkey have arrived in the coastal city of Mersin over the past two months, according to its mayor, who has pleaded for more government help to cope with the influx. Located a couple hundred kilometers west of the fault lines that caused the February 6 earthquake, Mersin was spared any damage. However, the city is now struggling to cope with the influx of survivors, along with Syrian refugees, according to its mayor, Vahap Secer. “The population of our city was 1.9 million. Currently, it has reached 2.7 million, 400,000 of which are …

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A new draft bill passed by Russian lawmakers on April 11 will make it nearly impossible for men to avoid military conscription, just as Moscow is expected launch a fresh counteroffensive in its war on Ukraine. Anna Rice has the story. …

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NATO allies Greece and Turkey came to the brink of war just a few years ago over competing energy rights in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean seas. Now, as both sides near key national elections, the government in Athens is extending an olive branch, saying it is open to Turkey joining in on lucrative energy projects. In a television interview with Greece’s national broadcaster, Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias said it was imperative for Athens and Ankara to capitalize on their thawed relations. After national elections are held in both countries next month, both sides can sit down and talk seriously. …

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China won’t sell weapons to either side in the war in Ukraine, the country’s foreign minister said Friday, responding to Western concerns that Beijing could provide military assistance to Russia. China has maintained that it is neutral in the conflict, while backing Russia politically, rhetorically and economically at a time when Western nations have imposed punishing sanctions and sought to isolate Moscow for its invasion of its neighbor. Qin Gang is the highest-level Chinese official to make such an explicit statement about arms sales to Russia. He added that China would also regulate the export of items with dual civilian …

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French President Emmanuel Macron has stunned allies by saying that Europe must reduce its dependency on the United States and avoid getting dragged into a confrontation between China and the U.S. over Taiwan, a position experts say is calibrated to persuade China to mediate the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. At a news conference during a state visit in the Netherlands on Wednesday, Macron emphasized that France’s position on Taiwan has not changed, and Paris favors the status quo for the island. “It’s the One China policy and a Pacific resolution of the situation. That’s what I said in my one-to-one …

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Russia on Thursday said there would be no extension of the U.N.-brokered Black Sea grain deal beyond May 18 unless the West removed a series of obstacles to the export of Russian grain and fertilizer. The Ukraine grain Black Sea export deal was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey in July last year to help alleviate a global food crisis worsened by conflict disrupting exports from two of the world’s leading grain suppliers. “Without progress on solving five systemic problems … there is no need to talk about the further extension of the Black Sea initiative after May 18,” …

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A Moscow court on Thursday again fined Wikipedia for a Russian-language article it refused to remove about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the latest in a series of government moves to silence objective reporting or criticism of the war and restrict the Russian public’s access to information.  The court fined Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs the free, publicly edited online encyclopedia, 2 million rubles ($24,464) for not removing a Wikipedia article titled “Russian occupation of the Zaporizhzhia region,” a reference to one of four Ukrainian provinces that Russia annexed last September. Most countries have condemned the annexation, as well as …

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Continuing his three-day visit to the Republic of Ireland, President Joe Biden on Thursday spoke to the Houses of the Oireachtas in Dublin, becoming the fourth American leader after John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton to address a joint sitting of the Irish parliament. Biden reminisced about his Irish heritage and focused on the enduring strength of the bond with Ireland that began with the very founding of the United States. “The Irish hearts that helped kindle the torch of liberty in my country and fire its revolutionary spirit,” he said. “The Irish blood from across this island …

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