Belgium

BRUSSELS (AP) — The Russian airstrike on a children’s and maternity hospital in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol is the latest in a series of attacks that have gutted apartment blocks and killed people in their homes or simply going about their business.

Allegations of war crimes, impossible yet to prove, are mounting and an investigation is underway at the International Criminal Court. Russia’s willingness to use overwhelming force — aerial bombardment and artillery in civilian areas — is already drawing comparisons with its attacks in Chechnya and Syria.

9 March 2022; MEMO: The European Union placed sanctions on the two widows and three daughters of Syrian businessman, Mohammad Makhlouf, uncle of President Bashar Al Assad.

According to the EU Official Journal, the women are the widows of Mohammed Makhlouf, Hala Tarif Al-Maghout, and Ghada Adib Mhanna, and his three daughters Shalaa, Kinda and Sara.

BRUSSELS, March 9 (Reuters) - European Union leaders will discuss enhancing Kyiv's links to their single market and connecting Ukraine to their energy grid under ideas for enhanced partnership or "association plus plus", an official said, making clear membership was not an option now.

"Membership could take long," said the official, who is involved in preparing talks of the 27 national EU leaders in Versailles on Thursday and Friday.

BRUSSELS (AP) — Even though Russia has lost influence and friends since the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989, the nuclear superpower still holds sway over several of its neighbors in Europe and keeps others in an uneasy neutrality.

The Russian invasion of neighboring Ukraine and the humanitarian tragedy it provoked over the past two weeks have raised a Western outcry of heartfelt support and spawned calls for a fundamental rethink of how the geopolitical map of Europe should be redrawn in the future.

BRUSSELS, March 8 (Reuters) - The European Parliament is set to approve on Wednesday a report urging the EU to ban golden passport schemes by 2025 and immediately stop the issuance of visas and passports to rich Russians in exchange for investments.

The move follows Russia's invasion of Ukraine which has triggered global sanctions of unprecedented severity against Moscow, with targets including a number of powerful and wealthy Russians seen as close to President Vladimir Putin.

BRUSSELS, March 8 (Reuters) - As Patricia Espinosa prepares to step down as U.N. climate chief, she has a warning for the world: Russia's invasion of Ukraine must not distract leaders from the escalating climate crisis.

Even as the war is causing "so much suffering", global warming remains the "most rapidly growing threat to human species on the planet", Espinosa told Reuters.

Espinosa said she planned to step down as executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) when her second, three-year term ends in July.

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union officials on Tuesday defended the 27-nation bloc’s decision to ban Russian state-controlled media outlets from broadcasting in the region as decisive steps to check a Kremlin-led “information war.”

Speaking at the European Parliament during a debate on foreign interference and disinformation, the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell brushed off critics who say the EU is threatening freedom of information with the ban on Sputnik and RT/Russia Today.

BRUSSELS, March 7 (Reuters) - Belgium should keep an open mind about extending the life-span of its remaining nuclear power plants, the country's Green energy minister said on Monday, in a shift of position prompted by the conflict in Ukraine.

After months of debate, Belgium's seven-party coalition government agreed a compromise in December that the country's last nuclear power plant would close in 2025 provided it did not lead to energy supply shortages.

BRUSSELS, March 7 (Reuters) - The European Union has asked the U.N. nuclear watchdog to safeguard Ukraine's nuclear plants, two of which are now under Russian control, and mobilise international help in case of an emergency, according to a letter seen by Reuters.

Russian forces have seized Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe' biggest, and the spent-fuel and radioactive waste facilities at Chernobyl, next to the now defunct power plant where the world's worst nuclear accident happened in 1986.

BRUSSELS, March 4 (Reuters) - NATO allies rejected Ukraine's demand for no-fly zones on Friday, saying they were increasing support but that stepping in directly would lead to a broader, even more brutal European war so far limited to Russia's assault on its neighbour.

Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, wants to join the European Union and Western military alliance NATO, whose members are bound in its founding treaty to defend each other from invasion.

"We are not part of this conflict," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a news conference.