Europe

MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that some 244,000 Russian troops who were called up to fight in Ukraine are on the battlefield.

Putin said during his year-end press conference that the Kremlin doesn’t need a second wave of mobilization of reservists, with 1,500 men recruited into the army every day across the country.

As of Wednesday evening, a total of 486,000 soldiers have signed a contract with the Russian military, Putin said.

He did not give a total number of troops fighting in Ukraine.

LONDON (AP) — Yemen’s Houthi rebels have escalated attacks on ships passing through the Red Sea during the Israel-Hamas war, raising concerns about the impact on the flow of oil, grain and consumer goods through a major global trade artery.

Israeli-linked vessels have been targeted, but the threat to trade has grown this week as a Norwegian-flagged oil tanker was struck and missiles were fired at a vessel carrying jet fuel toward the Suez Canal, where about 10% of the world’s trade passes through.

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s governing coalition reached a deal Wednesday to resolve a budget crisis triggered by a court ruling last month, agreeing to cut some subsidies and spending while stressing that Berlin will stick to plans to step up support for Ukraine.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s capital came under another missile attack early Wednesday, resulting in at least 45 injuries and several damaged buildings, the city’s mayor said.

A series of loud explosions could be heard in Kyiv at 3 a.m. as the city’s air defenses were activated for the second time this week.

KRALJEVO, Serbia (AP) — When Serbia began talks to join the European Union in 2014, pro-Western Serbs were hopeful the process would set their troubled country on an irreversible path to democratization. A decade later, that optimism is gone, replaced by feelings of betrayal — both toward their government, which has slid toward autocracy, and the EU, which has done little to stop it.

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis says he wants to be buried in the Rome basilica of St. Mary Major, not in the grottoes of the Vatican like other popes, so he can be near his favorite icon of the Madonna.

Francis, who turns 87 on Sunday, also said he never thought about resigning this year despite a series of health scares. He said he has a trip confirmed to Belgium next year and visits under consideration to Polynesia and his native Argentina.

GENEVA, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Tuesday that Israel and the United States will never be able to wipe out Hamas and that Israel could only secure the release of hostages held in Gaza with a political solution to the conflict.

In a speech at the United Nations in Geneva in which he described the Islamist group as a freedom movement, Amirabdollahian said: "Israel and the United States will never be able to eliminate Hamas."

MOSCOW, Dec. 12 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Monday that two new nuclear submarines -- Emperor Alexander III and Krasnoyarsk -- will join the country's Pacific Fleet soon.

"Very soon, the underwater missile carriers Emperor Alexander III and Krasnoyarsk will start their duty on the Pacific Fleet," Putin said at the flag-raising ceremony for the two submarines.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — New Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Tuesday that his government will mobilize to keep the world committed to helping Ukraine.

Tusk said it hurts him to hear that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has to keep trying to persuade world leaders about the need to continue supporting Kyiv’s struggle against Russian aggression.

He said it will be a priority for his coalition government to persuade leaders that they need to continue to help Ukraine defend itself, and that is also in the interests of the free world.

MOSCOW, December 11. /TASS/: The puppet regime in Kiev will inevitably be abandoned by its overseas masters in the end, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergey Naryshkin said.

"The puppet regime in Kiev, which is alien to the majority of Ukrainians, and which has perpetrated bloody massacres in Donbass, in Odessa and in many other towns and villages of Ukraine, will eventually and inevitably be abandoned by its overseas masters," he said at a roundtable discussion devoted to the study of Ukrainian propaganda and efforts to fight against it.