Europe

MOSCOW, May 26 (Reuters) - A senior ally of President Vladimir Putin said on Friday the conflict in Ukraine could last for decades and that negotiations with Ukraine were impossible as long as Ukraine's Western-backed President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was in power.

Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine has triggered the deadliest European conflict since World War Two and the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

LONDON, May 26 (Reuters) - British actor Hugh Grant's claims that journalists at the Sun used private investigators to tap his phone and burgle his house can proceed to trial, but his allegations about voicemail interception were made too late, London’s High Court ruled on Friday.

Grant, alongside King Charles' son Prince Harry, is suing Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers (NGN) for widespread alleged unlawful information gathering that he says was committed on behalf of its tabloid, the Sun.

BELGRADE, May 26 (Reuters) - Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic placed the country's army on full combat alert and ordered its units to move closer to the border with Kosovo, the Tanjug news agency reported on Friday.

Vucic's orders came as Serbs in the northern Kosovo's municipality of Zvecan clashed with Kosovo police who were trying to help the newly elected ethnic Albanian mayor enter his office.

The local vote had been boycotted by Serbs who represent a majority in the area.

BRUSSELS, May 26 (Reuters) - The race to be the next NATO boss is heating up. But it is a race run largely in the dark, with no sign of a winner yet.

Jens Stoltenberg, the transatlantic military alliance's Norwegian secretary-general, is due to step down at the end of September after nine years in post.

Many alliance members would like his succession settled at, or even before, a NATO summit in Lithuania in mid-July.

ZVECAN, Kosovo, May 26 (Reuters) - Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic placed the country's army on full combat alert and ordered army units to move closer to the border with Kosovo on Friday, after protesters and police clashed in a majority Serb town in the neighbouring country.

"An urgent movement (of troops) to the Kosovo border has been ordered," defence minister Milos Vucevic said in a live TV broadcast. "It is clear that the terror against the Serb community in Kosovo is happening," he said.

KYIV, May 26 (Reuters) - Ukraine shot down 10 missiles and over 20 drones launched by Russia in overnight attacks on the capital Kyiv, the city of Dnipro and eastern regions, Ukrainian officials said on Friday.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's office said in a statement that a fire had broken out on the outskirts of the northeastern city of Kharkiv after an oil depot was hit twice, and that equipment for pumping oil products had been damaged.

MADRID (AP) — Spain goes to the polls on Sunday for local and regional elections seen as a bellwether for a national vote in December, with the conservative Popular Party steadily gaining ground on the ruling Socialists in key regions.

Spain’s 17 regional governments, plus two autonomous cities, have enormous power and budgetary discretion over education, health, housing and policing. Twelve of them and the two cities will be contested on Sunday. Other key battles include the selection of mayors for the country’s two largest cities, Madrid and Barcelona.

LONDON (AP) — British Airways canceled dozens of flights on Friday due to computer problems, disrupting the plans of thousands of travelers at the start of a busy holiday weekend.

Most of the 42 affected flights were on short-haul routes to and from Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport. Computer issues on Thursday caused planes and crew to be out of position Friday, which was expected to be the busiest day for U.K. air travel since before the coronavirus pandemic.

Other flights were delayed, as some passengers were unable to check in online.

DEBRECEN, Hungary (AP) — Just beyond the pastoral gardens and traditional homes of an eastern Hungarian village, a gigaproject of Chinese industry is taking shape.

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — The two children squinted to see through the thick smoke that hung in the air after a deafening blast shook their small home in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

The pair, ages 9 and 10, called out for their father. Only eerie silence followed.

Then Olha Hinkina and her brother, Andrii, rushed to the bomb shelter, as they had been taught. When the booms stopped and the smoke cleared, they found their father on the porch — motionless and covered in blood after being struck by a Russian projectile.