Category Archives: Europe

Draft legislation on overriding Northern Ireland protocol to be published next week

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Draft legislation to be issued Monday, as Keir Starmer promises a Labour government would repeal law if it passes

Legislation to disapply parts of the Northern Ireland protocol will be published next week, but senior government sources acknowledge it is going to be a “difficult” process to get it through parliament.

The new laws are aimed at unilaterally changing parts of the protocol to make trade easier between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, but critics say overriding the post-Brexit treaty could contravene international law.

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Cholera warning from Mariupol mayor – as it happened

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This blog is closed. You can catch up on the week in Ukraine here. Live coverage will resume later.

The UK’s foreign secretary Liz Truss will raise the case of Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, the two British men sentenced to death by a pro-Russian court in occupied Ukraine, when she speaks to Ukraine’s foreign secretary Dmytro Kuleba later today, PA Media reports.

Truss has already called it a “sham judgement” and insisted it has “absolutely no legitimacy”.

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We’re almost out of ammunition and relying on western arms, says Ukraine

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Exclusive: Deputy head of military intelligence says it’s an artillery war now and ‘everything depends on what the west gives us’

Ukraine’s deputy head of military intelligence has said Ukraine is losing against Russia on the frontlines and is now almost solely reliant on weapons from the west to keep Russia at bay.

“This is an artillery war now,” said Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence. The frontlines were now where the future would be decided, he told the Guardian, “and we are losing in terms of artillery”.

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Putin compares himself to Peter the Great in quest to take back Russian lands

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President draws parallel with tsar who waged war on Sweden and says campaign in Ukraine stems from Russia’s ‘basic values’

Russian president Vladimir Putin has paid tribute to tsar Peter the Great on the 350th anniversary of his birth, drawing a parallel between what he portrayed as their twin historic quests to win back Russian lands.

“Peter the Great waged the great northern war for 21 years. It would seem that he was at war with Sweden, he took something from them. He did not take anything from them, he returned [what was Russia’s],” Putin said on Thursday after a visiting an exhibition dedicated to the tsar.

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Russian invasion is ‘Covid-22’ and arms are a vaccine, says Volodymyr Zelenskiy

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Ukrainian president pleads for more outside help in speech at gala to honour Time’s most influential people

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has compared Russia’s invasion to Covid and described weapons and sanctions as a vaccine, as Ukraine’s military position in Donbas worsens.

The Ukrainian president, speaking via video link at a gala to celebrate Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of the year, lobbied again for more outside help because “the Ukrainian military are dying on the battlefield”.

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Ukrainian troops plead for more artillery to offset Russia’s firepower in Sievierodonetsk – 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

Former Danish prime minister and former secretary general of Nato, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has been speaking on Sky News in the UK. He is currently running the Copenhagen Democracy Summit, which tomorrow will focus on the situation in Ukraine. He said:

The Ukrainian people are actually fighting on behalf of all of us, and we must stop Putin otherwise he will not stop. He will continue to conquer peaceful neighbours if he isn’t stopped in Ukraine.

Silence in Sievierodonetsk lasts only when guns are reloaded. Street fights continue in the regional centre.

Russians adhere to their primitive tactics: heavy artillery fire, then - attempts to break through. The same thing happened in the already destroyed Rubizhne and Popasna.

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Britons sentenced to death after ‘show trial’ in Russian-occupied Ukraine

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Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner were captured while fighting in Ukrainian army

Pro-Russia officials have sentenced to death two British men and a Moroccan national captured while fighting in the Ukrainian army in Mariupol.

A court in Russian-controlled east Ukraine convicted Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner after a days-long process that observers have called a “disgusting Soviet era show trial” meant to imitate war crimes trials against Russian soldiers in Kyiv.

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Irish exorcist calls for extra help for people oppressed by evil spirits

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Fr Pat Collins says there is urgent need for ‘deliverance ministry’ amid ‘crisis of meaning’ in Ireland

The appeal for help sounds like it was channelled from the TV show Stranger Things. “Exorcist: trained teams needed in parishes to fight evil spirits.”

It is, however, the splash headline in this week’s Irish Catholic, Ireland’s biggest-selling religious newspaper.

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Ex-soldiers ‘inspired by psychic to fight in Yemen’ go on trial in Germany

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Achim Allweyer, 52, and Arend-Adolf Gräss, 60, allegedly tried to form paramilitary unit to join civil war

Two former German soldiers have gone on trial accused of attempting to form a paramilitary group to fight in Yemen’s civil war after being inspired by a psychic.

Achim Allweyer, 52, and Arend-Adolf Gräss, 60, took steps to set up what prosecutors say amounted to a “terrorist organisation” after receiving “messages from a fortune teller that they understood as binding instructions for action”, according to the indictment read out at Stuttgart’s higher regional court on Thursday.

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Huge mystery spill detected in Baltic off Swedish coast

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Coastguard checking ships’ routes and says samples being sent for analysis

A massive spill of an unknown substance has been detected in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Sweden, the country’s coastguard said on Thursday.

Covering a surface area of 30 sq miles (77 sq km) in both Swedish and Finnish waters, the spill was detected on Wednesday in the Bothnian Sea.

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Berlin crash driver had history of paranoid schizophrenia, authorities say

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Mayor says incident where teacher died and 14 children were injured was probably deliberate

A 29-year-old man who killed a teacher and injured 14 children after driving his car into a crowd in Berlin on Wednesday had a history of suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and was probably intending to kill or injure, German authorities say.

“There are no clues pointing to a terrorist motivation behind this deed, and we can also rule out that it was an accident”, said the spokesperson for the Berlin public prosecutor’s office, Sebastian Büchner. “It was probably a deliberate act.”

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Russia-Ukraine war: Russian bombardment of Sievierodonetsk ‘pushes Ukrainian troops back to city’s outskirts’ – live

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Luhansk governor says Ukraine now only controls the outer parts of the eastern city

With neither side prevailing on the battlefield, there seems little prospect of negotiations.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he “simply cannot see the preconditions for ending the war” in an interview with the Financial Times.

China has always played a constructive role in the assistance to peaceful talks.

It is necessary under the present-day situation to be aware of third parties’ attempts to drag countries of the region into the conflict of world powers and to avoid their threats to take a certain side.

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Ukraine: Captured Britons ‘face 20 years in jail’

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Russian state media shows Aiden Aslin, 28, and Shaun Pinner, 48, appearing in court in Donetsk

Russia-Ukraine war: latest developments

Two British men captured by Russian forces while fighting alongside Ukrainian soldiers face 20 years in prison, according to a video shared by Russian state media.

Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, who were serving in the Ukrainian military, were detained in April while fighting in Mariupol.

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Thieves stole Banksy Bataclan door mural with crowbar, French court told

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Seven Frenchmen and Italian on trial for theft of work thought to be a tribute to victims of Paris attacks

Thieves who stole a mural by the street artist Banksy on an emergency exit door of the Bataclan concert hall in Paris used a crowbar and angle grinder to prise it free, in a crime that lasted just minutes, a French court heard.

The work depicting a veiled and mournful figure is thought to have been a tribute to victims of the Islamist militant attacks against the Bataclan and other entertainment venues in Paris in 2015.

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Man detained after driving car into Berlin crowd, killing teacher

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Police say 14 children on school trip injured on road adjacent to 2016 fatal attack

A man has been detained after driving his car into a crowd of people in western Berlin, killing a teacher and injuring 14 children who were on a school trip, police have said.

The man drove into people on a street corner before getting the car back on the road and crashing into a shop window further on.

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MEPs reject key EU climate proposal after aims watered down

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European parliament defeats centre-right lawmakers’ attempts to weaken climate target

The European parliament has voted to end the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2035, defeating attempts by centre-right lawmakers to weaken the target.

Lawmakers hailed a major victory for the climate after an intense day of votes on a set of laws that make up the EU green deal, the bloc’s main response to the climate crisis.

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Ukraine forces pushed back to outskirts of Sievierodonetsk, say Donbas leaders

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Luhansk governor says most of eastern city now in Russian hands and it is no longer possible to rescue civilians

Ukrainian forces have been pushed back to the outskirts of the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk amid heavy fighting in the city and frontline villages to the south as Russia pursues a breakthrough in Donbas, regional leaders have said.

Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Luhansk, said most of the city was now in Russian hands and that it was no longer possible to rescue civilians stranded there.

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No regrets over handling of Vladimir Putin, says Angela Merkel

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Former German chancellor claims her opposition to Ukraine’s Nato membership helped country

Angela Merkel has said she feels no regrets for her handling of Vladimir Putin during her time in power, arguing that Russia’s president would have perceived a 2008 Nato membership plan for Ukraine that was blocked by her government as a “declaration of war”.

The former German chancellor also claimed that an oligarch-run and democratically immature Ukraine would have been less prepared for an invasion then than it is now.

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