Europe

MOSCOW, August 24. /TASS/: Russian authorities provided all permissions to transfer blogger Alexey Navalny from Omsk to Berlin very fast, this matter did not require President Vladimir Putin’s intervention, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists Monday.

"No, this is entirely not a president’s prerogative," Peskov said, answering a question whether Putin took part in negotiations or decision-making on Navalny’s transfer to Germany for treatment. According to the spokesman, "it was an entirely medical decision, tied to the patient’s health condition."

MINSK, August 24. /TASS/: Two members of Belarus’ opposition coordination council, Olga Kovalkova and Sergei Dylevsky, were detained on Monday on charges of organizing an unauthorized rally, as follows from a post on Kovalkova’s Facebook account.

"Riot police accused them of organizing an unauthorized rally and took away in a prison van," the post reads. The two were detained on Monday morning near the Minsk Tractor Plant where they had arrived "to speak with the workers on strike and a deputy director in charge of ideological work."

KUBINKA /Moscow Region/, August 24. /TASS/: The Samara-based Progress Space Rocket Center is carrying out work jointly with the Energia Space Rocket Corporation on the conceptual design of a new Soyuz-6 carrier rocket, the Progress Space Rocket Center’s press office told TASS at the Army-2020 international military and technical forum on Monday.

MOSCOW, August 24. /TASS/: Moscow notes that the Belarusian protesters’ actions do not lead to clashes with the law enforcement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday, expressing hope that clashes will also be avoided in the future.

"So far, we note that no provocation from the protesters took place. We note that the law enforcement agencies perform their duties correctly. […] We hope that any provocations in this regard will be successfully avoided and prevented in the future," Peskov told journalists.

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin called on European Trade Commissioner Phil Hogan to give the public absolute assurances he did not break COVID-19 when he travelled to a golf dinner that has caused outrage in his native Ireland.

Marin said Hogan was adamant he did not breach a local lockdown while he was staying in County Kildare but given there was a discrepancy between the commissioner’s public statements on the issue, he needed to provide a full public account.

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas is planning to discuss the natural gas dispute in the eastern Mediterranean Sea in Athens and Ankara on Tuesday, a ministry spokesman said on Monday.

Germany regrets Turkey’s decision to extend the activities of an exploration ship, the spokesman added at the regular government news conference.

Tensions between NATO members Greece and Turkey have risen after Turkey sent the Oruc Reis survey vessel, escorted by warships, to map out possible oil and gas drilling in territory over which both countries claim jurisdiction.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Doctors at the Siberian hospital that first treated Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny said on Monday that they had saved his life but that they had not found traces of poison in his system.

Navalny, a long-time opponent of President Vladimir Putin, fell gravely ill on Thursday after what his allies believe was a poisoning and was airlifted to Germany for treatment on Saturday.

“We saved his life with great effort and work,” head doctor Alexander Murakhovsky told reporters at a news conference in the Siberian city of Omsk.

WARSAW (Reuters) - Belarusian opposition presidential candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who has led the biggest challenge to Alexander Lukashenko’s 26-year rule, hopes a dialogue with the authorities will start soon, she told Polish Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

Belarus is facing its biggest political crisis since the breakup of the Soviet Union, with tens of thousands of demonstrators rejecting Lukashenko’s victory in an Aug. 9 vote his opponents say was rigged.

MOSCOW, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- Russia is interested in cooperation with China on 5G technology, TASS news agency reported on Sunday, citing Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

"We will definitely not follow the example of the Americans, who simply demand that everyone not cooperate on 5G with China, in particular with Huawei," Lavrov said at the All-Russian Youth Educational Forum "Territory of Meanings."

"On the contrary, we are interested in interacting with countries in order to jointly create modern technologies and implement them into practical life," he added.

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s prime minister is asking parents to set aside their fears and send their children back to school next month when schools in Britain fully reopen for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic shut then down more than five months ago.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was the government’s “moral duty” to reopen the schools as he stressed that authorities now know more about COVID-19 than they did when the country went into lockdown on March 23.