Europe

MOSCOW, April 10. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin has not yet received the second shot of the coronavirus vaccine, Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov told TASS on Saturday.

"Not yet," he said when asked whether the president had received the second shot. He did not say however when Putin would be inoculated with the second component of the vaccine.

VIENNA, April 10. /TASS/: Negotiations between Austria and Russia on the purchase of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine have come to an end, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Saturday. According to him, now Austria can purchase this drug.

Accoridng to him, Sputnik V would be an additional booster for the vaccination campaign in Austria with a volume of 1 mln doses. The de facto contract negotiations have come to an end, which means that a purchase for Austria is possible, he added.

PARIS (Reuters) - The European Union’s COVID-19 recovery response is robust and does not fall short when compared with the United States’ $1.9 trillion recovery plan, European Council President Charles Michel told Les Echos newspaper.

EU member states agreed last summer on a 750 billion euro ($892.2 billion) recovery fund, but with governments still submitting detailed spending plans, frustration is growing in some capitals at the slow speed of disbursing the money.

BERLIN (Reuters) - European Council President Charles Michel is suffering from bad nights due to his embarrassment over a seating arrangement incident at a meeting in Ankara this week, he told German newspaper Handelsblatt.

Ursula Von der Leyen, the first female president of the European Commission, expressed surprise and raised a hand in disbelief when she found Michel had taken the only chair available next to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan at the talks.

In the episode, caught on camera, she ended up being relegated to a sofa, further away.

BERLIN, April 9 (Xinhua) -- Germany would amend its infection protection act to "regulate on a nationwide basis" what restrictions would apply when local seven-day COVID-19 incidence exceeded 100 per 100,000 citizens, deputy government spokesperson Ulrike Demmer said Friday.

Demmer told a press conference that it was not yet clear how quickly the change in the law would be implemented, but it would be done "as quickly as possible."

MOSCOW (AP) — The Kremlin said Friday it fears a resumption of full-scale fighting in eastern Ukraine and could take steps to protect Russian civilians there, a stark warning that comes amid a Russian troop build-up along the border.

The statement by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, reflected the Kremlin’s determination to prevent Ukraine from using force to try to retake control over separatist-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Hospitals in Turkey and Poland are filling up. Pakistan is restricting domestic travel. The U.S. government will send more help to the state with the country’s worst infection increase.

The worldwide surge in coronavirus cases and deaths includes even Thailand, which has weathered the pandemic far better than many nations but now struggles to contain COVID-19.

SEVASTOPOL, April 9. /TASS/: The small missile ships Graivoron and Vyshny Volochyok held artillery firings against a surface target in the Black Sea, the Black Sea Fleet’s press office reported on Friday.

"In the course of the exercise, the corvettes’ crews received a command to employ weapons against an adversary ship. Under the drills’ scenario, a notional enemy’s ship made an attempt to lay minefields along the route of the Black Sea Fleet ships’ passage," the press office said in a statement.

MOSCOW, April 9. /TASS/: Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has branded the latest proposal by the Ukrainian authorities to hold the Contact Group’s meetings on the Donbass conflict in another city instead of Minsk as "hypothetical stupidity."

"This is the same hypothetical stupidity that we hear from Kiev’s representatives in different areas over and over again," she told reporters at a press briefing on Friday. "This is about the same as the statement by the Ukrainian president’s press secretary about a certain Ukrainian Russian language."

MOSCOW, April 9. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin is concerned about provocative actions on the part of Kiev, as he conveyed to his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a phone conversation on Friday.

According to the Kremlin press service, Putin at Erdogan’s request "outlined Russian approaches to the resolution of the internal Ukrainian crisis." It was "emphasized that the 2015 Minsk Package of Measures is the only possible foundation for the settlement."