Europe

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has not funded its election campaign with Russian money, security minister Brandon Lewis told the BBC on Sunday.

Asked whether Russian money had been funding the party, Lewis said: “No, the funding for the Conservative Party comes from people who are declared through the Electoral Commission and are British citizens.”

Foreign nationals are not allowed to make donations to UK political parties.

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised lower immigration if he wins power in an election on Thursday, but said he was not hostile to allowing foreigners to work and live in Britain overall.

Britain votes on Dec. 12 in an election which will decide the fate of Brexit and the world’s fifth largest economy with a stark choice between Johnson’s pro-market Conservatives and the socialist-led opposition Labour Party.

PARIS (Reuters) - French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said he is determined to see through his government’s planned pensions reform, but the leader of hardline union CGT said he will fight until the plan is withdrawn, the two men said in interviews published on Sunday.

French transport systems were paralyzed for a fourth day on Sunday as unions at state railway SNCF and Paris public transport system RATP maintained their strike against the reform.

PARIS (AP) — Paris police skirmished Saturday with yellow vest activists who joined a wave of protests against the government’s overhaul of France’s retirement system, as highway blockades and train stoppages by other protesters disrupted weekend travel around the country.

ROME, December 6. /TASS/: The current unstable situation in Iran is to a large extent the result of Washington’s policy of economic pressure on that country, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday.

MOSCOW, December 7. /TASS/: The Russian Embassy in Ankara has extended an official invitation to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to attend the Victory Day Parade in Moscow on 9 May 2020, the Izvestiya newspaper reported on Saturday.

The administration of the Turkish president and the Turkish Embassy in Moscow have not yet responded to Izvestiya's request for comment at the moment of publication.

MOSCOW, December 6. /TASS/: Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin has met with Executive Director of the World Food Program (WFP) David Beasley to discuss the humanitarian situation in the Middle East, Venezuela and North Korea, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported on Friday.

KIEV, December 6. /TASS/: Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is scheduled to hold a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Normandy Four summit in Paris on December 9, Zelensky confirmed in a televised interview on the Ukraine channel on Friday.

"Yes, all the presidents will have bilateral meetings," he said when asked if the Russian and Ukrainian presidents would hold bilateral talks.

MOSCOW, December 7. /TASS/: Russia will implement the project on the modernization of Iran’s nuclear facility at Fordow, which has been suspended as of now, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Friday.

"We are taking a break now. We don’t abandon the project. It will be fully implemented," he said.

He noted however that Russia will need time to react to the new circumstances, i.e. Iran’s injecting gas to the centrifuges at Fordow and the United States’ imposing new sanctions against this facility from December 15.

MOSCOW, December 6. /TASS/: Participants in the NATO summit in London have confirmed the concept of a dual approach to Russia, Russia's Ambassador to the United Kingdom Andrey Kelin told Rossiya-24 TV channel on Friday.

"When it comes to Russia, here we saw, just like before, a confirmation of the policy of a dual approach," Kelin said. "This policy is actually many years old, and it includes military pressure and maintaining dialogue. There is little dialogue, but a lot of military pressure," he added.