Europe

KYIV, April 25 (Reuters) - The United States will reopen its embassy in Ukraine soon, its top diplomat said on Monday after he and the U.S. defense secretary visited Kyiv, promising more military aid and hailing its success in pushing back Russia's invasion.

Both Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the fact they were able to come to Ukraine's capital was proof of its tenacity in forcing Moscow to abandon an assault on Kyiv last month.

MOSCOW, April 25 (Xinhua) -- Russia's Defense Ministry on Monday announced a ceasefire near the Azovstal plant in Mariupol for the safe evacuation of civilians.

Russia's armed forces and the formations of the Donetsk People's Republic "from 14:00 Moscow time (1100 GMT) on April 25 will unilaterally cease all hostilities" to ensure the safe evacuation of the specified category of civilians (workers, women and children), the ministry said in a statement.

It said the civilians will be taken "in any direction they choose."

KIEV, April 25 (Xinhua) -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and visiting U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met in Kiev to discuss Washington's assistance for Ukraine, the presidential press service said Monday.

The parties discussed defense assistance, strengthening sanctions on Russia, financial support for Ukraine and security guarantees, according to a statement on the Ukrainian presidential website.

STOCKHOLM, April 25 (Xinhua) -- The funding for military research and development (R&D) of the United States, the world's largest military spender, rose by 24 percent over the past decade, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said on Monday.

The U.S. funding for military R&D rose by 24 percent between 2012 and 2021, while arms procurement funding fell by 6.4 percent over the same period, the SIPRI said in a report.

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP) — Only a few months ago, Robert Golob was virtually unknown in politics, didn’t belong to any party, but had a clear goal: to remove Slovenian right-wing populist Prime Minister Janez Jansa from power and stop a democratic backslide in the tiny Alpine state.

On Sunday, the Freedom Movement, a liberal green party formed by Golob only in January, won Slovenia’s general election, more than 10 percentage points ahead of Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic party as people turned out massively to vote for change.

PARIS (AP) — French far-right leader Marine Le Pen gathered her party’s troops on Monday, not to mourn her loss a day earlier in the French presidential election but to plot out how to orchestrate a victory in June’s parliamentary vote and capture a majority of seats in the National Assembly.

LONDON (AP) — Four people were found stabbed to death Monday at a home in south London, British police said. A man has been arrested.

The Metropolitan Police force said officers were called by neighbors to reports of a disturbance at around 1:40 a.m. and forced their way into a home in the Bermondsey area. Inside they found three women — in their 30s, 40s and 60s — and a man in his 60s “suffering what are believed to be stab injuries.”

All four were pronounced dead at the scene.

BERLIN (AP) — The co-leader of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party said Monday that former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, whose ties to the Russian energy industry have left him increasingly isolated at home, should leave the party.

Saskia Esken, one of two co-leaders of Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats, said in an interview with Deutschlandfunk radio that “Gerhard Schroeder has been acting for many years now only as a businessman, and we should stop seeing him as an elder statesman, as a former chancellor. He earns his money with work for Russian state companies.”

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia unleashed a string of attacks against Ukrainian rail and fuel facilities Monday, striking crucial infrastructure far from the front line of its eastern offensive.

Meanwhile, two fires were reported at oil facilities in western Russia, not far from the Ukrainian border. It was not clear what caused the blazes.

As both sides in the 2-month-old war brace for what could be a grinding battle of attrition in the country’s eastern industrial heartland, top U.S. officials pledged more help to ensure Ukraine prevails.

MOSCOW, April 24. /TASS/: Russian missile and artillery troops hit 423 targets in Ukraine overnight as part of the special military operation, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said on Sunday.

"The missile and artillery troops performed 423 fire tasks during the night," Konashenkov said, adding that particularly, 26 command posts, 367 strongpoints and places of the amassment of manpower and military equipment, as well as 25 gun lines were hit.