Europe

17 May 2019; DW: A group of lawmakers has quit Ukraine's ruling coalition allied with the outgoing President Petro Poroshenko. This could pose an obstacle to incoming leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his efforts to call for new elections.

The People's Front party in Ukraine announced it was exiting the ruling coalition on Friday and looking to form "a new coalition with a new agenda."

17 May 2019; DW: Russia said it had no desire to leave the Council of Europe and was ready to pay its dues following an apparent breakthrough between Moscow and Western nations. Russia's delegation had faced sanctions over Crimea.

France and Germany pushed through a compromise which would allow Russia's Council of Europe (CoE) to return to the body, as foreign ministers from the 47 member states resumed their two day summit in Helsinki.

17 May 2019; DW: Germany, France and the Netherlands have said they will not block Huawei from participating in the expansion of national 5G networks. The US fears that China could use Huawei equipment for spying.

The leaders of Germany, France and the Netherlands said Thursday that their governments do not plan to follow the lead of the US and ban Chinese telecommunications company Huawei from involvement in their national 5G high-speed mobile networks.

BERLIN, May 16. /TASS/: Russia’s Energy Ministry opposes the idea of selling Russian gas to Ukraine on the eastern border, so that later the Ukrainian side itself could sell it to the EU countries, Deputy Energy Minister Anatoly Yanovsky, told reporters on the sidelines of the international conference Prospects for Russia-EU Energy Cooperation: Gas Aspects."

HELSINKI, May 17. /TASS/: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has met with his German counterpart Heiko Maas on the sidelines of a meeting of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers in the Finnish capital of Helsinki on Friday.

The meeting between the Russian and German top diplomats took place behind closed doors.

The German Foreign Ministry said earlier that the parties would discuss bilateral relations, the situation in the Middle East, the Ukrainian issue and Russia’s Council of Europe membership.

YEKATERINBURG, May 17. /TASS/: Yekaterinburg’s Verkh-Isetsky District Court has arrested another participant in the May 15 authorized protest that took place in the city center, where St. Catherine’s Cathedral is planned to be rebuilt, the court’s spokesperson told TASS on Friday.

"The court’s magistrate ruled to arrest another one of those detained on May 15 for five days under Article 20.21 of the Russian Administrative Violations Code (public drunkenness)," the spokesperson said.

GROZNY, May 16. /TASS/: US sanctions against Chechnya's Terek Special Rapid Response Team mean that the United States is afraid of Chechnya, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said on Thursday.

The US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) earlier added Chechnya's Terek Special Rapid Response Team and five Russian nationals, including Terek's commander Abuzayed Vismuradov, to the Magnitsky Act.

MOSCOW, May 17. /TASS/: The first anti-doping case based on analytical data retrieved from the Moscow Laboratory is likely to be opened in the next few weeks, Inside the Games portal reported on Thursday citing director of intelligence and investigations at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Gunter Younger.

MOSCOW, May 17. /TASS/: Small anti-submarine ships have located and attacked an 'enemy' submarine at the military drills in the Sea of Okhotsk, spokesman for the Russian Pacific Fleet Nikolay Voskresensky said on Friday.

"Small anti-submarine ships MPR-107 and MPK-82, with the support of two Il-38 anti-submarine aircraft, have located an 'enemy' submarine in the assigned area. A Russian Pacific Fleet's nuclear-powered submarine was designated as an 'enemy' submarine during the drills," Voskresensky said.

UNITED NATIONS, May 17 (APP): A senior United Nations humanitarian official has condemned attacks on civilians and health facilities in Syria’s Idlib de-escalation zone.

Speaking at a news conference in Geneva on Thursday after a meeting of an international Humanitarian Task Force (HTF) for Syria, UN Senior Humanitarian Advisor Najat Rochdi said at least 100 civilians lost their lives or were injured in recent attacks in the northwestern Idlib province.