Category Archives: Europe

Yandex helps websites pushing false news make millions in advertising

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Yandex-delivered ads found alongside misinformation and propaganda about Ukraine on Russian-language news sites

A Russian tech giant mostly owned by western investors is helping websites pushing false claims about the war in Ukraine to make thousands of dollars every day through digital advertising.

Yandex is considered Russia’s equivalent to Google, running both a search engine and an extensive digital advertising business. Its deputy CEO, Tigran Khudaverdyan, resigned this month after the European Union imposed sanctions on him.

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Cathay Pacific plans world’s longest passenger flight, avoiding Russia

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Airline could set distance record by rerouting its New York to Hong Kong service over the Atlantic instead of the Pacific, covering more than 16,600km

Cathay Pacific is planning the world’s longest passenger flight by rerouting its New York to Hong Kong service over the Atlantic instead of the Pacific, the airline has said, in a new path that steers clear of Russia.

The flight path will cover “just under 9,000 nautical miles” (16,668km, or 10,357 miles) in 16 to 17 hours, Cathay said in a statement to Agence France-Presse.

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Russia-Ukraine war latest: western officials urge caution over Russia’s peace talk promises – live

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Concern Putin might be using peace talks to play for time as Russian negotiators say troop withdrawals not a ceasefire

Vladimir Putin’s main spokesman has said that sanctions on trade and oligarchs were akin to “total war” against Russia, and that the west has pushed the Kremlin “into the corner” with Nato expansion, as officials prepare for the resumption of peace talks with Ukraine on Tuesday.

Dmitry Peskov said in an interview on American television PBS that the punitive sanctions levelled against Russia were “quite unfriendly” and made the country feel as it were at war with the US and its western allies.

Unfortunately, those conditions, they are quite unfriendly. And they are enemy, enemy-like for us. We entered the phase, the phase of a total war. And we in Russia, we will feel ourselves amongst war, because Western European countries, United States, Canada, Australia, they actually — they actually — they are leading war against us in trade, in economy, in seizing our properties, in seizing our funds, in blocking our financial relations.

And we have to adapt ourselves to new reality. You have to understand Russia. You have to understand Russia.”

For a couple of decades, we were telling the collective west that we are afraid of your Nato’s moving eastwards. We too are afraid of Nato getting closer to our borders with its military infrastructure. Please take care of that. Don’t push us into the corner. No.

Now we said, listen, guys, we are not happy with this coup in Ukraine. And you have guarantees by Poland, by France and by Germany. You would probably remember the document with the signatures of the relevant foreign ministers. No reaction.

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‘The world is waiting for good news’: Russia-Ukraine peace talks press on in Turkey

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Politicians from the warring countries descended on Istanbul’s Dolmabahçe Palace for another round of negotiations

Sipping on a tulip-shaped glass of Turkish black tea, Roman Abramovich sat on the sunlit terrace of Istanbul’s Shangri-La hotel on Tuesday afternoon and talked intently with the Ukrainian negotiating team.

Despite the seafood and burger restaurant’s extensive menu and large fridge advertising its stock of dry-aged meat, the Russian oligarch did not appear to eat during the entire meeting. Less than 24 hours had passed since he was reported to have suffered symptoms consistent with poisoning.

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Russia vows to ‘radically reduce’ military activity in northern Ukraine

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Experts and western diplomats voice caution over pledge on first day of face-to-face talks in Istanbul

Russia has pledged to drastically cut back its military activity in northern Ukraine to help advance peace talks, but experts and western diplomats expressed doubts that the move was more than a ploy to dress up setbacks on the ground.

Russia’s deputy defence minister, Alexander Fomin, said after talks in Istanbul on Tuesday that Moscow wanted to “increase mutual trust, create the right conditions for future negotiations and reach the final aim of signing a peace deal with Ukraine”, and that the Kremlin would “radically reduce military activity in the direction of Kyiv and Chernihiv”.

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Macron kickstarts re-election campaign as Le Pen gains ground

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Voters trust French president over his handling of war in Ukraine but accuse him of ducking political debate at home

The French president Emmanuel Macron is aiming to kickstart his re-election campaign this week with walkabouts outside Paris and a big rally in the capital, after the diplomatic pressures of the war in Ukraine limited his canvassing at home – leading to a dip in the polls and worries of a low turn-out.

Macron, 44, is hoping next month to be the first French president to win re-election in 20 years, but he has recently dropped two to three points in the polls as the gap between him and the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen narrows. While he remains favourite the next 10 days of campaigning are seen as fraught and risky amid anger over the cost of living, disillusionment with the level of campaign debate and politics in general.

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Ukraine gives medal to soldier who told Russian warship to ‘go fuck yourself’

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Roman Hrybov, released in a prisoner swap, was stationed on Snake Island when he told a Russian invader to ‘go fuck yourself’

A Ukrainian soldier who told an officer on a Russian warship to “go fuck yourself” at the start of the invasion has been released as part of a prisoner exchange, and awarded a medal for his services, the Ukrainian ministry of defence said on Tuesday.

Roman Hrybov, a Ukrainian border guard, was serving on Snake Island – a rocky outcrop south of the port of Odesa – when it came under Russian air and sea bombardment on the first day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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Canada police renew effort to arrest ‘devil priest’ for alleged abuse of Inuit children

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Royal Canadian Mounted Police say an arrest warrant was issued last month for Johannes Rivoire, who currently lives in France

Police in Canada have laid a new charge against a “devil priest” hiding in France amid allegations he sexually abused multiple Inuit children.

The case against Johannes Rivoire, who victims say has evaded justice for decades, received renewed focus this week when Canada’s Inuit leader requested the pope personally intervene during a visit to the Vatican by a delegation of Indigenous groups.

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UN official concerned over videos showing apparent abuse of PoWs in Ukraine

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One video shows a man with a blue armband shooting three prisoners in the leg in Malaya Rohan’

A senior UN official has said they have seen videos purporting to show the abuse of prisoners of war on both sides in Ukraine, as Russia raised the mistreatment of its soldiers at the first day of the latest peace talks.

Matilda Bogner, head of the UN’s human rights office in Ukraine, said a number of videos of the abuse of Russian and Ukrainian prisoners were being examined, adding that “on the face of it, it does raise serious concerns”.

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UK must seize chance to repair relations with EU, says thinktank head

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Director of Chatham House says Britain’s role in Ukraine crisis is an opportunity to work more formally with Brussels

Britain should use its leading role in the Ukraine war urgently to repair its relations with the EU by offering to help strengthen European security both via Nato and rapidly evolving EU defence plans, the director of Chatham House, Dr Robin Niblett, has proposed.

That will require working more formally with Brussels on foreign policy and defence, including issues such as cyber, intelligence and disinformation, said Niblett, who heads Britain’s leading foreign policy thinktank.

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‘I make no apologies’: Biden stands by ‘Putin cannot remain in power’ remark

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President says he was not calling for regime change but was expressing personal ‘moral outrage’ over Russia’s invasion

Joe Biden on Monday defended the unscripted remarks he made at the end of an important speech in Poland at the weekend, in which he said that Russian president Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”, which had prompted hurried efforts by other senior figures in the administration to play down the comment in the face of international criticism.

The US president, when questioned on Sunday after attending church following his return to the White House, denied that he was seeking “regime change” as a new policy.

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Abramovich and Ukrainian MP may have been poisoned this month

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Russian billionaire and Rustem Umerov had symptoms consistent with poisoning earlier in March, says source

The latest round of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, set to begin in Istanbul on Tuesday, have been overshadowed by claims that the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and other members of an informal Russian-Ukrainian negotiating group suffered symptoms consistent with poisoning during an informal round of talks earlier this month.

The allegations surfaced on the eve of the first face-to-face peace talks in weeks, amid fears that the Kremlin was not ready to compromise, despite the stiff resistance its forces have encountered since the invasion began.

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As Russia tries to focus its offensive, Ukraine seeks to scattergun

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Analysis: overstretched Russian forces are trying to concentrate on the east, but Kyiv is doing its best not to let them

Russia’s military may have announced a change of plan at the end of last week to focus on the “liberation of Donbas”, but the apparent decision reflected the reality that Moscow’s initial multi-front invasion plan has failed in the face of dogged resistance from Ukraine.

The advance on Kyiv became bogged down after less than a week, particularly to the north-west of the city. If Ukraine’s declaration that it has retaken the heavily contested town of Irpin’ on Monday is correct, the advance may now even be going into reverse.

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Russia-Ukraine war latest: Don’t push us into a corner, Kremlin warns; Zelenskiy tells world leaders ‘fear makes you an accomplice’

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Billionaire lost his sight for several hours, according a source with direct knowledge of the incident; Ukraine president saying his people are ‘paying with their lives’ if sanctions don’t work

The UK’s Ministry of Defence has released its latest intelligence report, claiming there has been “no significant change” to Russian forces dispositions in Ukraine over the past 24 hours.

The report, released at 6am GMT, reads:

In the last 24 hours there has been no significant change to Russian forces’ dispositions in occupied Ukraine.

Ongoing logistical shortages have been compounded by a continued lack of momentum and morale amongst the Russian military, and aggressive fighting by the Ukrainians.

This poses a very serious risk of damaging the insulation structures built over the station’s fourth unit after its 1986 explosion.

Such damage will inevitably lead to the entry into the atmosphere of a significant amount of radioactive dust and contaminate not only Ukraine but also other European countries.”

Russian occupiers transport tens of tons of rockets, shells and mortar ammunition every day. Hundreds of tons of ammunition are being stored in the neighbouring city of Pripyat Chernobyl, which is also a short distance from the nuclear power plant.”

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NatWest bank returns to majority private control, oil prices fall on Shanghai lockdown – business live

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Major investors have launched a campaign calling for Sainsbury’s to help tackle the cost of living crisis by becoming the first supermarket group to pay all its workers the “real living wage” of £9.90 an hour, reports my colleague Rupert Jones.

Legal & General Investment Management, Nest (National Employment Savings Trust), which is Britain’s largest workplace pension scheme, and several MPs have formed a coalition to push for the change after reports that increasing numbers of supermarket workers are having to turn to food banks to feed themselves and their families.

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Polish woman is first to face trial for violating strict abortion law

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Justyna Wydrzyńska, who gave a woman experiencing domestic violence miscarriage-inducing pills, could be jailed for three years

The first person to be charged in Poland for breaking the country’s strict abortion law by providing miscarriage-inducing tablets to a pregnant woman is due to face trial next week.

Justyna Wydrzyńska, from the Polish group Aborcyjny Dream Team (ADT), is charged with illegally aiding an abortion and faces up to three years in prison if she is found guilty.

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Olaf Scholz’s SPD secures major win in Saarland state election

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Rare absolute majority suggests there may be more to centre-left’s revival than good fortune

The German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left party has passed its first electoral test since entering government, after the Social Democratic party secured a rare absolute majority at Saarland state elections.

Led by Anke Rehlinger, a trained lawyer and former shot putter, the SPD won 43.5% of Sunday’s vote in the small state on the French border.

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Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 33 of the Russian invasion

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Russia and Ukraine to hold fresh talks; Ukrainian military claims Russian troops withdrawn from around Kyiv after heavy losses

The Kremlin has said peace talks between Russia and Ukraine may get under way in Turkey on Tuesday, adding that it is important the discussions are held face-to-face despite scant progress in negotiations so far.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, used a video interview with independent Russian media outlets to signal his willingness to discuss having Ukraine adopt a “neutral status”, and also make compromises about the status of the eastern Donbas region, in order to secure a peace agreement with Russia. But he said he was not willing to discuss Ukrainian demilitarisation, and that Ukrainians would need to vote in a referendum to approve their country adopting a neutral status.

Russia’s foreign affairs minister, Sergei Lavrov, appears to have ruled out any direct meetings between Vladimir Putin and Zelenskiy, saying it would be counterproductive at this point.

The southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol is on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe and must be evacuated, its mayor has warned. Vadym Boichenko said about 160,000 civilians were trapped in the city without power.

Ukraine has no plans to open humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians from besieged cities on Monday because of intelligence reports warning of possible Russian “provocations” along the routes, the deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said.

The Ukrainian military claimed in its latest operational report that Russia had withdrawn troops that were surrounding Kyiv after significant losses.

The UK’s Ministry of Defence released its latest intelligence report, claiming there had been “no significant change” to Russian forces’ dispositions in Ukraine over the past 24 hours.

The US president has denied he is calling for regime change in Russia, after saying during a visit to Poland that Putin “cannot remain in power”. When asked by a reporter if he wanted to see the Russian president removed from office, Joe Biden said “no”.

The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said Russian investigators would look into a video circulating on social media that purported to show Ukrainian forces mistreating captured Russian soldiers. He also said Biden’s comments that Putin could not remain in power were a cause for concern.

Schools in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, will reopen today via remote learning online.

The UK government’s Cabinet Office has issued a procurement policy note for public sector organisations holding contracts with Russian or Belarusian suppliers, urging them to investigate where they can cancel contracts.

The UK education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, said he had no doubt that Russia had carried out war crimes in Ukraine.

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HSBC cuts references to Ukraine ‘war’ from its analyst reports

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Bank has softened language in research documents, according to report, amid pressure to exit Russia

HSBC has reportedly removed references to a “war” in Ukraine from research reports, amid calls for the British bank to close its operations in Russia.

Russia’s government refers only to a “special military operation” in Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin’s regime has criminalised reporting on its invasion that contains any information from non-official sources, with prison sentences of up to 15 years.

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