Europe

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — Flak jackets are piled up at Ukraine’s Zaporizhstal steel plant, and anti-tank traps guard the entrance. Whenever air raid sirens sound — and they go off every day — most workers head to one of the 16 bomb shelters scattered across the sprawling grounds.

But some keep working — braving not only the intense heat and sparks flying from blast furnaces forging steel used in everything from railway cars to household appliances, but the threat of shelling — to keep the molten metal moving.

PARIS (AP) — A big day has come for French high school student Elisa Fares. At age 17, she is taking part in her first protest.

In a country that taught the world about people power with its revolution of 1789 — and a country again seething with anger against its leaders — graduating from bystander to demonstrator is a generations-old rite of passage. Fares looks both excited and nervous as she prepares to march down Paris streets where people for centuries have similarly defied authority and declared: “Non!”

MOSCOW, March 26. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin sees Western countries as "initiators and instigators" of the conflict in Ukraine.

"An armed coup - that's where it all started. We were forced to protect the population of Crimea, and this way or another we ended up supporting Donbass. They pretend they had nothing to do with it. They are the initiators of this conflict and the instigators. And today they are handing over millions more munitions, hardware and so on," the president said, answering questions from host Pavel Zarubin.

MELITOPOL, March 26. /TASS/: A visit by Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi to the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (ZNPP) and the rotation of the agency’s inspectors are expected to take place on March 29, Renat Karchaa, an adviser to the director general of Russia’s Rosenergoatom nuclear power engineering company, said on Sunday.

"We are meeting an IAEA delegation of 18 led by Grossi at the Zaporozhye NPP on Wednesday. Concurrently, the IAEA inspectors will be rotated," he told TASS.

MOSCOW, March 26./TASS/: Russia’s COVID-19 case tally rose by 10,940 over the past day versus 12,382 a day earlier, bringing the total since the pandemic began to 22,586,210, the anti-coronavirus crisis center reported on Sunday.

As many as 778 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Russia over the past day, down from 1,373 a day earlier (43.3-percent decline). The number of hospitalized patients grew in nine regions and declined in 69, while in seven regions the figure remained the same.

MOSCOW, March 26. /TASS/:  An unscheduled long informal communication of the Russian and Chinese presidents, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, speak of the leaders' attitude, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov opined in an interview with the ‘Moscow. Kremlin. Putin’ program on the Rossiya-1 TV channel.

MOSCOW, March 26. /TASS/: The blast in the city of Kireyevsk in the Tula region was caused by an unmanned aerial vehicle, a spokesman for the local law enforcement agencies told TASS on Sunday.

"The blast in the Tula region was caused by a tactical reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicle," he said.

"The explosion in the city of Kireyevsk in the Tula region was caused by a Ukrainian Tu-141 Strizh unmanned aerial vehicle. The drone was stuffed with explosive substances," the spokesman specified.

BRUSSELS, March 26 (Reuters) - NATO on Sunday criticised Russia for its "dangerous and irresponsible" nuclear rhetoric, a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia would station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

"NATO is vigilant, and we are closely monitoring the situation. We have not seen any changes in Russia's nuclear posture that would lead us to adjust our own," a NATO spokesperson said.

MOSCOW, March 26 (Reuters) - Russia and China are not creating a military alliance and the cooperation between their armed forces is "transparent", President Vladimir Putin said in comments broadcast on Sunday, days after hosting Chinese leader Xi Jinping in the Kremlin.

Putin and Xi professed friendship and pledged closer ties, including in the military sphere, during their March 20-21 summit, as Russia struggles to make battlefield gains in what it calls a "special military operation" in Ukraine.

March 25 (Reuters) - Russia will station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday, sending a warning to NATO over its military support for Ukraine and escalating a standoff with the West.

Although not unexpected and while Putin said the move would not violate nuclear non-proliferation promises, it is one of the Russia's most pronounced nuclear signals since the beginning of its invasion of Ukraine 13 months ago.