Category: Europe

Between 20,000 and 30,000 Russian troops have been killed and wounded in the battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut since it began last summer, Western officials say. The epic nature of the battle is out of all proportion to Bakhmut’s strategic significance, they add. But after more than six months of grinding, horrific fighting, […]

TALLINN: Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kal­las’s centre-right Reform Party won the general election by a large margin Sunday, scoring 31.6 percent against 16 percent for the far-right EKRE, ac­cording to near complete results. In order to stay in power, Reform will again have to form a coalition with one or more of the parties that […]

Belarus on Monday sentenced exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya to 15 years in prison for spearheading historic protests against the former Soviet country’s authoritarian leader. Tikhanovskaya — who was forced to flee to neighbouring EU-member Lithuania after the protests sparked by a disputed presidential election in 2020, was sentenced in absentia on charges of high […]

French trade unions are heading for what is expected to be a decisive showdown with President Emmanuel Macron over pension reform, with massive strikes from March 7 aiming to bring the country “to a standstill.” After five separate days of protests so far this year, this week’s stoppages herald a new phase in the battle […]

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said asylum seekers arriving in Britain on small boats through the English Channel will be prevented from staying. Under pressure from his own lawmakers to find stop the arrival of asylum seekers in Britain, Sunak has made stopping small boats one of his five key priorities. “Make no mistake, […]

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has asked for forgiveness from the families of the 57 victims of this week’s train crash. In a Facebook message, Mr Mitsotakis said that “in the Greece of 2023… two trains heading in different directions cannot run on the same line and no-one notice”. Protests have continued for days. Clashes […]

Ukraine’s top prosecutor says the country is moving towards opening an office of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as Kyiv seeks to establish a special tribunal to prosecute Russian officials responsible for the war. The ICC is currently probing possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the war in Ukraine but it has […]

Thousands of people demonstrated across Greece on March 3 to demand justice for at least 57 people killed in the country’s worst rail disaster, with some protesters condemning the tragedy as “a crime”. Police clashed with some of the demonstrators at a handful of protests, as public anger grew over the role that government mismanagement […]

Russia’s defense minister visited Russian soldiers in Ukraine on Saturday. The ministry said in a statement on the messaging app Telegram that Sergei Shoigu “inspected the forward command post of one of the formations of the Eastern Military District in the South Donetsk direction.” Shoigu has been criticized for Russia’s poor performance in its war […]

A Belgian woman who murdered her five children has been euthanised at her own request, 16 years after the killings. Genevieve Lhermitte killed her son and four daughters, aged three to 14, in the town of Nivelles on 28 February 2007, while their father was away. She then tried to take her own life but […]