Europe

MOSCOW, February 21. /TASS/: Russia and China have good possibilities to continue strategic cooperation and contacts to defend their interests, Director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and member of the CCP Politburo Wang Yi said on Tuesday.

"I think that today we have very good possibilities to continue our close strategic dialogue and contacts to defend our common strategic interests," he said at a meeting with Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolay Patrushev.

LONDON, Feb 21 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The British government summoned Iran’s top diplomat in London to condemn “serious threats” to the lives of UK-based journalists after a Persian-language TV network was forced to relocate.

Charge d’Affaires Mehdi Hosseini Matin was hauled in “to make clear the UK will not tolerate threats to life and media freedom”, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said in a statement.

MUNSTER, Germany, Feb 20 (Reuters) - A Ukrainian soldier compared Germany's Leopard 2 tanks to a Mercedes as he underwent training with them ahead of their arrival on the battlefield, saying he hoped they would bring a breakthrough in the war.

He is among dozens of Ukrainian troops Germany is training on Leopard 2 simulators and then the tanks themselves at its largest military training ground, in Munster, before sending them to Ukraine.

MILAN, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Weeks of dry winter weather have raised concerns that Italy could face another drought after last summer's emergency, with the Alps having received less than half of their normal snowfall, according to scientists and environmental groups.

The warning comes as Venice, where flooding is normally the primary concern, faces unusually low tides that are making it impossible for gondolas, water taxis and ambulances to navigate some of its famous canals.

WARSAW, Feb 21 (Reuters) - Fresh from an unannounced visit to Ukraine, President Joe Biden rallied NATO allies in Poland on Tuesday, proclaiming "unwavering" support for Kyiv and a commitment to bolstering the alliance's eastern flank.

"One year ago, the world was bracing for the fall of Kyiv," Biden said at Warsaw's Royal Castle. "I can report: Kyiv stands strong, Kyiv stands proud, it stands tall and, most important, it stands free."

LONDON, Feb 21 (Reuters) - Dozens of British employers trialling a four-day working week have mostly decided to stick with it after a pilot hailed as a breakthrough by campaigners for better work-life balance.

Employees at 61 companies across Britain worked an average of 34 hours across four days between June and December 2022, while earning their existing salary. Of those, 56 companies, or 92%, opted to continue like that, 18 of them permanently.

Feb 21 (Reuters) - Outspoken Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin accused the country's top brass on Tuesday of deliberately starving his Wagner fighters of munitions in what he said was a treasonous attempt to destroy his private military company.

A catering tycoon who has used his wealth to build a private army, Prigozhin has assumed a more public role since the start of the war in Ukraine a year ago, with his Wagner Group spearheading the battle for the town of Bakhmut in Ukraine's Donetsk region.

MOSCOW, Feb 21 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday delivered a warning to the West over Ukraine by suspending a landmark nuclear arms control treaty, announcing that new strategic systems had been put on combat duty, and threatening to resume nuclear tests.

Nearly a year after ordering an invasion that has triggered the biggest confrontation with the West in six decades, Putin said Russia would achieve its aims and accused the West of trying to destroy it.

KIEV, Feb. 20 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Joe Biden made an unannounced visit here on Monday, one day after demonstrators rallied in Washington to protest against the United States' war-mongering foreign policy and its role in various conflicts across the globe.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — President Joe Biden reaffirmed the United States’ dedication to European security as he met with Polish President Andrzej Duda on Tuesday, part of a series of consultations with allies to prepare for an even more complicated stage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We have to have security in Europe,” he said at the presidential palace in Warsaw. “It’s that basic, that simple, that consequential.”