Europe

MOSCOW, February 11. /TASS/: The proportion of Russian citizens' confidence in President Vladimir Putin stood at 78%, according to the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center that published the results of a survey conducted from January 30 to February 5 among 1,600 respondents aged over 18.

"When asked about trust in Putin, 78% of respondents answered positively (-1.2% over the week), the approval rate of the Russian president's work dropped by 0.7% and stood at 75%," the pollsters noted.

MOSCOW, February 11. /TASS/: Russia is ready to engage with Ukraine, but there should not be any preconditions for talks that should be based on the existing reality, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin said in an interview with Zvezda television.

MOSCOW, February 11. /TASS/: Russia’s COVID-19 case tally rose by 12,845 over the past day to 22,060,370, the anti-coronavirus crisis center reported on Saturday.

As many as 1,391 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Russia over the past day, a 2.4% increase from the previous day. The number of hospitalized patients rose in 41 regions, while in 35 other regions the figure increased. A day earlier, 1,358 people were rushed to hospitals.

MOSCOW, February 11. /TASS/: The North Atlantic Alliance is increasingly interfering in economic cooperation of other countries in the Arctic, Nikolay Korchunov, Ambassador-at-Large for the Russian Foreign Ministry and Russia’s Senior Arctic Official to the Arctic Council, told TASS on Saturday.

PARIS/TOURS, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated across France on Saturday seeking to keep up pressure on the government over its pension reform plans, including a move to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62.

After three days of nationwide strikes since the start of the year, unions are hoping to match a mass turnout from Jan. 19 when more than a million people marched in opposition to the plans.

LONDON, Feb 11 (Reuters) - (Note: Language that readers may find offensive in paragraph 13)

The head of Russia's Wagner mercenary group has said in a rare interview that it could take two years for Moscow to control the whole of two eastern Ukrainian regions whose capture it has stated as a key goal of the war.

Yevgeny Prigozhin said his understanding of Russia's plan was that it needed to fully control the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that Moscow last year claimed as "republics" of Russia, in a move condemned by most countries of the United Nations as illegal.

MOSCOW (AP) — An uncrewed Russian supply ship docked at the International Space Station has lost cabin pressure, the Russian space corporation reported Saturday, saying the incident doesn’t pose any danger to the station’s crew.

Roscosmos said the hatch between the station and the Progress MS-21 had been locked so the loss of pressure didn’t affect the orbiting outpost.

“The temperature and pressure on board the station are within norms and there is no danger to health and safety of the crew,” it said in a statement.

BERLIN (AP) — Hans Modrow, who served as East Germany’s last communist leader during a turbulent tenure that ended in the country’s first and only free election, has died. He was 95.

Modrow died early Saturday, the Left party parliamentary group tweeted.

Modrow, a reform-minded communist, took over East Germany shortly after the Berlin Wall fell and later invited opposition forces into the government, but could not slow the gathering momentum for German reunification.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The owner of the Russian Wagner Group private military contractor actively involved in the fighting in Ukraine has predicted that the war could drag on for years.

Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video interview released late Friday that it could take 18 months to two years for Russia to fully secure control of Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland of Donbas. He added that the war could go on for three years if Moscow decides to capture broader territories east of the Dnieper River.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — In a small coal-mining town on Ukraine’s eastern front line, a fight for strategic superiority is being waged in a battlefield steeped with symbolism as the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion nears.

The town of Vuhledar — meaning “gift of coal” — has emerged as a critical hot spot in the fight for Donetsk province that would give both sides, the Ukrainian forces who hold the urban center, and the Russians positioned in the suburbs, a tactical upper hand in the greater battle for the Donbas region.