Category Archives: Europe

Ukraine crisis: Russia criticises US military moves as ‘destructive step’

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Moscow says US deployments in eastern Europe increase tensions, as Nato says Russia has moved 30,000 troops to Belarus

The US decision to deploy more than 3,000 US troops in Germany, Poland and Romania is a “destructive step” that makes it harder to reach a compromise over Ukraine, Russia’s deputy foreign minister has said, as Moscow continues to build up its forces.

Alexander Grushko said the move by the US president, Joe Biden, would “increase military tension and reduce scope for political decision”, and would “delight” Ukrainian authorities, who would continue sabotaging the Minsk agreement “with impunity”. The Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015 were designed to reach a political settlement in the east of Ukraine, including greater autonomy.

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Super corals: the race to save the world’s reefs from the climate crisis – in pictures

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Few corals are safe from warming oceans, a new study warns, but studies are finding surprisingly hardy corals, natural sunscreens and how coral ‘IVF’ can regrow reefs

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While the focus is on Ukraine, Russia’s presence in the Sahel is steadily growing | Bruce Mutsvairo, Mirjam de Bruijn, Kristin Skare Orgeret

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With Russian mercenaries invited to Mali as European forces withdraw, how worried should the west be about Russia’s increasing influence across Africa?

Even in the turbulent, conflict-wracked Sahel region of Africa, the recent military takeover in Burkina Faso was intriguing. Amid the deteriorating security and humanitarian situation, the decision by neighbouring Mali’s military-led government to invite fighters from the Wagner Group, widely seen as a paramilitary network of mercenaries with Russian connections, is causing growing concern in many western capitals.

Mali’s transitional government faces a rough road to recognition after the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) announced a strengthening of economic and diplomatic sanctions in January in response to the proposal to postpone elections until at least 2026.

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Extreme weather has cost Europe about €500bn over 40 years

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European Environment Agency data shows worst-hit countries to be Germany, France and Italy

Severe floods and other extreme weather have cost Europe about half a trillion euros in the past four decades, with Germany, France and Italy the worst-hit countries.

Between 90,000 and 142,000 deaths were attributed to weather and climate-related events over the period 1980 to 2020, the overwhelming majority of them from heatwaves.

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Don’t panic: why Ukraine doesn’t like western talk of imminent attack

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Analysis: While Putin’s intentions remain unclear, Kyiv would rather it didn’t get classed as the next Kabul

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, has again insisted that Russia does not currently have enough troops in place to mount a further invasion of Ukraine, a day after Boris Johnson travelled to Kyiv and said there was a “clear and present danger” of an imminent military campaign.

Even taken together, the troops currently massed on Ukraine’s border with Russia, on the annexed Crimea peninsula and in neighbouring Belarus, are “insufficient for a large-scale military operation”, said Kuleba in a briefing for foreign journalists on Wednesday.

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Ukraine crisis: Biden to deploy more US troops to eastern Europe

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More than 3,000 troops headed to Germany, Poland and Romania after talks between Washington and Moscow failed to ease tensions

Joe Biden will deploy more than 3,000 US troops in Germany, Poland, and Romania, as Russia continues to build up its forces around Ukraine, and after talks between Washington and Moscow failed to bring any breakthrough or easing of tensions.

Nearly 2,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne division will be going to Poland, a headquarters unit from the 18th Airborne Corps will move to Germany, and a 1,000-strong army armoured unit is being transferred from Germany to Romania.

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Pupils at Jewish school in France taken into care after abuse allegations

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Rescued US and Israeli children told of ‘being locked up’ at ultra-Orthodox Beth Yossef school, prosecutor says

Pupils from an ultra-Orthodox Jewish boarding school near Paris have been taken into care after allegations they had been cut off from their families and subjected to years of abuse.

Many of the children came from Israel and the US and spoke no French. One relative said parents thought they were sending their children abroad to a “Harry Potter school”.

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Priti Patel says Macron ‘absolutely wrong’ over Channel crossings

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Home secretary rebuffs French claim UK immigration policy encourages people to risk dangerous journey

Priti Patel, the home secretary, has said Emmanuel Macron is wrong to say the UK’s immigration policy is encouraging people to risk their lives crossing the Channel from France.

In a further escalation of the row between the two countries, Patel has dismissed claims by the French president that Britain’s immigration system favours clandestine migration and does not allow for asylum seekers to seek legal ways into the country.

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Monica Vitti, ‘queen of Italian cinema’, dies aged 90

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Vitti shot to international fame in Michelangelo Antonioni’s drama L’Avventura in 1960

• Monica Vitti – a life in pictures


Italian actor Monica Vitti, an icon best known for her starring roles in films by Michelangelo Antonioni, has died aged 90, the country’s culture ministry said on Wednesday.

“Goodbye Monica Vitti, goodbye queen of Italian cinema. Today is a truly sad day, we have lost a great artist and a great Italian,” the culture minister, Dario Franceschini, said in a statement.

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Netherlands fertility doctor used own sperm to father 21 children

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Investigation into Jos Beek matches his DNA with children of mothers he treated between 1973 and 1986

A gynaecologist in the Netherlands conceived 21 children and potentially dozens more using his own sperm after prospective parents turned to him for fertility treatment, an investigation has discovered.

Jos Beek worked at Elisabeth hospital in Leiderdorp, now part of Alrijne hospital, between 1973 and 1998. He died in 2019.

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New gender-neutral pronoun likely to enter Norwegian dictionaries

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‘Hen’ expected to be recognised as alternative to feminine ‘hun’ and masculine ‘han’ in official language this year

A new gender-neutral pronoun is likely to enter the official Norwegian language within a year, the Language Council of Norway has confirmed.

“Hen” would become an alternative to the existing singular third-person pronouns, the feminine “hun” and the masculine “han”.

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Archaeologists uncover ancient helmets and temple ruins in southern Italy

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Finds date to sixth-century BC Battle of Alalia, in which the Greeks defeated Etruscans and Carthaginians

Two ancient warrior helmets, metal fragments believed to have come from weapons, and the remains of a temple have been discovered at Velia, an archaeological site in southern Italy that was once a powerful Greek colony.

Experts believe the helmets, which were found in good condition, and metal fragments date to the sixth-century BC Battle of Alalia, when a Greek force of Phocaean ships clinched victory over the Etruscans and their Carthaginian allies in a naval battle off the coast of Corsica. One of the helmets is thought to have been taken from the enemies.

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Russian invasion of Ukraine would be a disaster, says Boris Johnson in Kyiv

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PM joins Volodymyr Zelenskiy to spell out consequences of Russian aggression and declare UK will be judged by the level of its support

A Russian invasion of Ukraine would end in a humanitarian, political and military disaster for Russia and the world, Boris Johnson has warned as he stood alongside the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in Kyiv, saying the UK would be judged by the level of help it gave to Ukraine.

On a flying visit to the Ukrainian capital, he denied the US and the UK were exaggerating the scale of the Russian threat, saying they were not trying to “big up” the intelligence. “The grim reality” was that Russian troops were “massing on Ukraine’s border. This is a clear and present danger,” he said, addingthat the troop concentration was “perhaps the biggest demonstration of hostility to Ukraine in our lifetimes”, saying it dwarfed the Russian forces mounted before the invasion in 2014.

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Italian League’s Matteo Salvini calls for new alliance based on US Republicans

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Attempt to create a rightwing political force may mean the end of partnership with Brothers of Italy

The Italian League leader, Matteo Salvini, has proposed creating a rightwing political force styled on America’s Republican party in a move that threatens to spell the end of his tense partnership with his far-right sometime rival Giorgia Meloni.

Salvini’s League and other parties including the centre-left Democratic party and populist Five Star Movement that make up Italy’s broad ruling coalition have been left in disarray after failing to agree on a mutually acceptable candidate for head of state in last week’s presidential election, culminating with Sergio Mattarella, 80, being elected for a second term against his earlier expressed wishes.

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From eastern Europe we watch Ukraine in fear. Its fate could decide the continent’s future

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Past trauma means we worry about Russia reclaiming its cold war sphere of influence and that the west will again abandon us

Two points about the Ukraine crisis are crystal clear. First, Vladimir Putin wishes to reimpose Russian control over Ukraine, whatever the price. His political dream of restoring the Soviet sphere of influence is echoed in a wishlist of “security guarantees” presented to western governments by Russia in December 2021. Nato, he maintains, should return to the pre-1997 state of affairs; Russia, apparently, need not.

Second, whatever Putin decides in the current crisis, there are real fears in central and eastern Europe that settled borders are now under threat. These fears are grounded in reason. What seemed unrealistic in the immediate post-cold war years is now again a real possibility. Questions about our collective safety and security have returned, along with memories of a traumatic and not so remote past.

Karolina Wigura is a historian of ideas, board member of the Kultura Liberalna Foundation in Warsaw and a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin

Jarosław Kuisz is a political analyst and essayist, editor-in-chief of the Polish weekly Kultura Liberalna and a policy fellow at the University of Cambridge

Guardian Newsroom: Will Russia invade Ukraine? Join Mark Rice-Oxley, Andrew Roth, Luke Harding, Nataliya Gumenyuk and Orysia Lutsevych discussing the developments with Russia and Ukraine on Tuesday 8 February, 8pm GMT | 9pm CET | midday PDT | 3pm EDT. Book tickets here

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Swedish firm deploys crows to pick up cigarette butts

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Clever corvids become newest weapon in Södertälje’s war against street litter

Crows are being recruited to pick up discarded cigarette butts from the streets and squares of a Swedish city as part of a cost-cutting drive.

The wild birds carry out the task as they receive a little food for every butt that they deposit in a bespoke machine designed by a startup in Södertälje, near Stockholm.

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Cypriot police urged to reinvestigate gang rape of British woman

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Student found to not have had a fair trial two years after being wrongly convicted for making up allegation

Authorities in Cyprus are being urged to launch a fresh inquiry into a gang rape complaint by a British woman after the country’s supreme court acquitted her of fabricating the claim that she had been sexually assaulted at a holiday resort.

The 21-year-old’s legal team said it was incumbent on the island’s police force to reopen the investigation in the wake of the landmark ruling. “It’s our next big battle,” said the human rights lawyer Nicoletta Charalambidou.

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US to target Putin’s inner circle with sanctions in event of Ukraine invasion

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Washington official says sanctions list will comprise oligarchs and their family members

Washington and its allies have prepared a list of Russian elites in or near Vladimir Putin’s inner circle who would be hit with economic sanctions if the Kremlin were to order an invasion of Ukraine, according to a US briefing.

The language in the briefing by a US official to Reuters is notably similar to that used on Sunday by the UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss, who said Britain would introduce legislation to allow banks, energy companies and “oligarchs close to the Kremlin” to be targeted by London, and makes clear the targeting is coordinated internationally.

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Ukraine crisis live: face-off expected at UN security council meeting; US makes list of Russian elites to face sanctions

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Washington to address ‘Russian aggression’, which Moscow dismisses as ‘PR stunt’; US prepares list of Russians linked to Vladimir Putin’s inner circle

The US and the UK, home to leading financial centres, are clearly gearing up to announce a coordinated effort to target members of the Russian elite with economic sanctions if the Kremlin orders an invasion of Ukraine.

The language from today’s US briefing – that economic sanctions will target Russian elite members “in or near the inner circles of the Kremlin” – is almost identical to that used by British foreign secretary Liz Truss on Sunday.

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Norway’s wolves ‘saved for this year’ as animal rights groups fight cull

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Government halts planned slaughter of animals in ‘wolf zone’, after campaigners secure injunction

Norway has halted a major hunt of wolves after campaigners secured a court injunction.

Twenty-five animals, within four packs, are in the “wolf zone”, an area of nature set aside to protect the predators, and these have been given a stay of execution by the courts after campaigners argued wolves in a conservation area should not be shot.

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