Europe

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko have agreed to meet in Moscow in coming weeks, the Kremlin said on Sunday.

The two leaders have not met since anti-government protests over a disputed presidential election that handed victory to Lukashenko gripped Belarus.

In a phone call on Sunday, the two men agreed they should strengthen bilateral relations and expand cooperation.

“It was agreed to hold a meeting in Moscow in coming weeks,” the Kremlin said in a statement.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Several thousand women marched in the capital of Belarus on Saturday waving flags, flowers and balloons in the latest in a series of anti-government protests that have gripped the country since a disputed presidential election this month.

President Alexander Lukashenko denies opposition accusations that he rigged the Aug. 9 election to prolong his 26-year rule. He says the protesters are funded by the West, and accuses NATO of massing forces on Belarusian frontiers, which the alliance denies.

BERLIN (AP) — Far-right extremists tried to storm the German parliament building Saturday following a protest against the country’s pandemic restrictions, but were intercepted by police and forcibly removed.

PODGORICA, Montenegro (AP) — Voters in Montenegro on Sunday cast ballots in a tense election that is pitting the long-ruling pro-Western party against the opposition seeking closer ties with Serbia and Russia.

The parliamentary vote is marked by a dispute over a law on religious rights that is staunchly opposed by the influential Serbian Orthodox Church.

The issue has fueled divisions in the nation of 620,000 people that has defied traditional Slavic allies Belgrade and Moscow to become independent in 2006 and join NATO in 2017.

29 Aug 2020; MEMO: EasyJet is facing a lawsuit filed by a British-Israeli woman after she was asked on two separate flights to move seats because of her gender, the Guardian reports.

29 Aug 2020; MEMO: The UK Home Office has come under sharp criticism over the release of a video attacking lawyers representing migrants. The short clip, posted on the Home Office Twitter account on Wednesday, has since been taken down following condemnation from legal bodies, politicians and academics, amidst the ongoing row over the British government’s policy towards migrants.

MINSK, August 29. /TASS/: The Belarusian opposition is ready to consider Russia as a mediator if efforts to resolve the political crisis in the country without international assistance fail, former Belarusian presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya told Euronews.

"If we need foreign mediation in talks, we will definitely see Russia as one of the participants in the process. Russia is a country we have friendly and close relations with," she said.

BRUSSELS/LONDON, August 29. /TASS/: EU, US, UK, and Switzerland urge Belarusian authorities to observe their international obligations, particularly those in the sphere of human rights, the joint statement by the missions of the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and the European Union on behalf of the EU Member States published on the British government website said.

MOSCOW, August 28. /TASS/: Russian nationals travelling overseas may face the threat of persecution from US intelligence agencies, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement following the arrest in the United States of Russian citizen Yegor Kryuchkov.

"Following the August 22 arrest of Russian national Yegor Kryuchkov, 27, in the United States… we would like to draw the attention of our fellow citizens travelling overseas to the threat of becoming the subject of persecution from US law enforcement and intelligence agencies," the statement reads.

MOSCOW, August 29. /TASS/: The refusal of the representatives of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to observe the election in Belarus gives grounds to suspect that the position of the West regarding this process was prepared in advance. This opinion Russian President Vladimir Putin voiced in an interview with Sergey Brilev on the Russia-1 TV channel aired on Saturday.