Category Archives: Europe

Ukraine needs many more rocket launchers from west, says adviser

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UK and US have so far promised a handful; official says with 60 they can stop Russians ‘dead in their tracks’

Ukraine needs 60 multiple rocket launchers – many more than the handful promised so far by the UK and US – to have a chance of defeating Russia, according to an aide to the country’s presidency.

Oleksiy Arestovych, a military adviser to the president’s chief of staff, told the Guardian that while he believed the rocket launchers were “a gamechanger weapon”, not enough had been committed to turn the tide in the war.

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European unity on Ukraine growing more difficult, says Estonian PM

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Kaja Kallas warns pain of sanctions will test relations, and also criticises Macron’s stance on Putin

European unity over the response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is proving difficult to maintain in the face of the war’s impact on inflation and living standards across the continent, Estonia’s prime minister has said.

Kaja Kallas also criticised the French president, Emmanuel Macron, for trying to provide Vladimir Putin with a diplomatic way out of the conflict, saying the only effect was to give the Russian leader the belief that he will not be isolated or face justice for his army’s war crimes.

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Paris protesters celebrate saving trees around the Eiffel Tower

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City abandons €72m scheme to develop area and create huge garden in time for 2024 Olympics

Protesters in Paris are celebrating having saved more than 40 trees – one of them over 200 years old – from being chopped down or threatened with damage around the Eiffel Tower as part of a €72m scheme to create a huge garden.

Paris’s city hall has been forced to row back on plans to clear the area around the structure on the Champ-de-Mars to improve access to the tower and make the traffic-clogged area greener in time for the 2024 Paris Olympics.

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France puts 18 on trial over alleged involvement in vast horsemeat scandal

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Defendants are accused of participation in supply of horsemeat unfit for human consumption across Europe

When Aline Oudin was forced to find a new home for her beloved 28-year-old chestnut horse Ténor du Pluvinage, she placed an advert asking if anyone could offer him a new field to see out his final days.

A man in his 60s responded saying he was looking for a calm companion for the young mare he had bought his daughter, so Oudin let him take the horse away with the promise she could visit him regularly.

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Ryanair forces South Africans to do Afrikaans test to prove nationality

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Airline accused of discrimination after it introduces test due to ‘high prevalence of fraudulent passports’

Ryanair is facing accusations of racial discrimination after forcing South Africans to take a test in Afrikaans before boarding flights home from the UK and Europe.

The budget airline, which claimed the “simple questionnaire” was part of efforts to tackle fraudulent South African passport holders, is facing criticism for conducting the general knowledge test in a language that is the third most used in the country and had a controversial role in the oppression of black citizens during apartheid.

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Russia-Ukraine war: UN says war creating human trafficking crisis; Russian ships pushed back, Ukraine claims – live

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‘Unprecedented’ displacement of millions of Ukrainians; Russian warships pushed back more than 100km, Ukraine says

Russian forces continue to storm the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk and fired missiles at the nearby cities of Sloviansk, Lysychansk and Orikhove, Ukraine’s military has said.

Russian troops fired at Ukrainian units defending Sievierodonetsk with mortars and artillery fire, damaging infrastructure in the towns of Metolkino, Borivske, Ustynivka and Toshkivka, according to the latest operational report released by Ukraine’s general staff of the armed forces.

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Zelenskiy visits Ukrainian troops on frontline as Russia pushes them back

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President makes rare publicised visit outside Kyiv to Lysychansk

The Ukrainian president has visited the frontline close to the fiercest fighting between his country’s troops and Russian forces in the east, where a regional official said the situation had worsened for Ukraine.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited the beleaguered city of Lysychansk on Sunday, just a few kilometres south from Sievierodonetsk, the main battlefield in the east where Russia has concentrated its forces.

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‘Weakness’ of UK position shaped Northern Ireland protocol negotiations, David Frost says

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Former Brexit negotiator criticises Irish government’s focus on ‘all-island’ economy

Boris Johnson’s former Brexit negotiator David Frost has said the “weakness” of the UK’s position shaped the negotiations for the Northern Ireland protocol but blamed a lack of pragmatism in the EU’s approach for the current difficulties.

Frost said the deal he negotiated while in Johnson’s government would have run smoothly only if it had never been fully applied by the EU.

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Putin warns that Moscow will hit new targets if the west supplies Ukraine with long-range missiles – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed, you can find our latest coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war here

President Vladimir Putin said Russia would strike new targets if the United States started supplying Ukraine with longer-range missiles, the TASS news agency reported on Sunday.

The TASS news agency reports:

Putin said that if such missiles are supplied, that Russia will strike at those targets which we have not yet been hitting”, in an Rossiya-1 state television channel

Putin did not name the targets Russia planned to pursue if western countries began supplying Ukraine with longer-range missiles.

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Christo before Christo: Paris exhibition reveals artist’s earlier works

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Exhibition to show items the artist experimented with before larger wrapped pieces that defined him

Long before scaling the heights of the Reichstag in Berlin or the Pont Neuf in Paris, the artist known as Christo started on a much smaller scale.

Having fled communist Bulgaria for Paris and working in a maid’s room, the impoverished refugee began creating his first wrapped sculptures using everyday objects such as cans, bottles and – when he found a bigger studio – old oil barrels.

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Newly released doctor’s letters show Adolf Hitler’s fear of illness

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Carl Otto von Eicken, an ear, nose and throat specialist, treated Nazi dictator for 10 years from 1935

The Swiss descendent of one of Adolf Hitler’s doctors has released details of letters that show how he treated the Nazi dictator for voice problems, the newspaper NZZ am Sonntag reported on Sunday.

The letters show Hitler’s fear of serious illness. “If there is something bad, I absolutely have to know,” Hitler told the doctor after their first consultation in May 1935, according to the letters.

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Russia claims to have targeted western-supplied tanks in Kyiv airstrikes

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Putin warns of more strikes if deliveries continue, as Ukrainian railways chief says ‘no such tanks’ were at targeted plant

Russia launched airstrikes on Kyiv for the first time in five weeks on Sunday, claiming it had targeted western-supplied tanks – while the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, warned more targets would be struck if weapons deliveries continued.

Several explosions were heard around the eastern Kyiv suburbs of Darnytskyi and Dniprovskyi early on Sunday morning, wounding one person. The strikes represented a change of tack on the part of the invading forces.

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Woman killed as storms cause chaos across France

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Many more people injured as thunder and hail lead to flooding, power cuts and flight delays

One woman has been killed and 14 people injured in France as thunder and hailstorms hit the country, ravaging vineyards and delaying flights.

Residents of south-west France posted photos online of hail the size of tennis balls, and drivers in the Paris region shared images of flooded roads and daytime skies blackened by thunder clouds.

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Mercedes-Benz issues global recall of one million older cars

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German carmaker says move due to a potential problem with the braking system

Mercedes-Benz has announced it is immediately recalling nearly one million older vehicles worldwide due to a potential problem with the braking system.

Germany’s federal transport authority (KBA) said that the recall affected cars built between 2004 and 2015 of the SUV series ML and GL, and the R-Class luxury minivan.

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Ukraine counterattack recaptures parts of Sievierodonetsk in Donbas

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Russians ‘suffering huge losses’, region’s governor claims, amid heavy fighting

Ukraine has staged a counterattack on the frontline city of Sievierodonetsk and recaptured a fifth of the city it had previously lost to the Russian invaders, according to the head of the region.

Serhiy Haidai, governor of Luhansk, said Russian forces were giving up recent gains in the city, as reports also emerged of foreign fighters joining the battle for the easternmost city held by Kyiv in the fiercely contested Donbas.

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Residents evacuated as wildfire on outskirts of Athens threatens homes

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Clouds of thick smoke build over Greek capital’s southern suburbs as more than 100 firefighters fight blaze

A wildfire on the outskirts of the Greek capital Athens is threatening homes and infrastructure, with some residents being evacuated by the authorities.

The blaze has spread across the slopes of Mount Hymettus, which overlooks Athens, sending clouds of thick smoke drifting over the city’s southern suburbs. Strong winds have helped fan the fire.

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Fury in France as Champions League final chaos tarnishes nation’s global image

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As elections loom, public turns against interior minister Gérald Darmanin after he blames Liverpool fans for Paris fiasco

When Paris stepped in to host the Champions League final, the biggest match in international football after the World Cup final, the French authorities saw a chance to show that the nation was the ideal place to hold global sporting events.

This weekend, those hopes appear to be dashed as French opinion polls show widespread disapproval of the chaos that ensued, amid growing criticism of politicians and the police.

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Russia must not be humiliated in Ukraine, says Emmanuel Macron

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French president says door must be left open to allow for improvement in diplomatic relations after war

Russia must not be humiliated in Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron has said, to allow an improvement in diplomatic relations between the west and Moscow whenever the war comes to an end.

The French president said his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, had made a “historic and fundamental” error in invading Ukraine, but that nevertheless a wider escalation in hostilities had to be avoided.

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US supports international inquiry into war crimes in Ukraine – as it happened

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US embassy in Kyiv says ‘those responsible for war crimes must face justice’

Russian forces have combined airstrikes and massed artillery fires to bring its “overwhelming” firepower to bear in Donbas, the UK Ministry of Defence has said in its latest intelligence report released this morning.

This combined use of air and artillery strikes has been a key factor in Russia’s recent tactical successes in the region, the report reads.

Russian air activity remains high over contested ground in the Donbas with Russian aircraft conducting strikes using both guided and unguided munitions.

These strikes alone however have failed to have a meaningful impact on the conflict and Russian stocks of precision guided missiles are likely to have been significantly depleted as a result.

The combined use of air and artillery strikes has been a key factor in Russia’s recent tactical successes in the region. The increased use of unguided munitions has led to the widespread destruction of built-up areas in the Donbas and has almost certainly caused substantial collateral damage and civilian casualties.

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