Europe

KYIV/NEAR BAKHMUT, Ukraine, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Britain said on Tuesday Russia had probably captured a mining town in eastern Ukraine where Kyiv accused Moscow of sacrificing wave upon wave of mercenaries and soldiers in a horrific and senseless battle over wasteland.

The British Defence Ministry said Russian troops and fighters of Wagner, a mercenary company run by an ally of President Vladimir Putin, were probably now in control of the salt mining town of Soledar after four days of advances.

KIEV, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Ukraine's foodstuff exports reached 17 million metric tons since August under a deal on the export of grain and fertilizers from Black Sea ports, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported Tuesday.

In the past three days, five vessels loaded with 158,500 metric tons of agricultural products departed from Ukraine's ports for Egypt, Sri Lanka and other countries, the agency said, citing the Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority.

Currently, 98 ships are waiting for inspection in the Bosphorus, with 21 of them already loaded and 77 heading for loading.

LUETZERATH, Germany (AP) — Several hundred climate activists tried Tuesday to prevent heavy machinery from reaching an abandoned village in Germany that is due to be cleared for the expansion of a coal mine, even as police pushed back protesters and removed road blocks ahead of a possible clearance this week.

The standoff between police and protesters followed a regional court’s decision Monday rejecting a last-ditch attempt by the activists to stay in the hamlet of Luetzerath, west of Cologne, which has become a battleground between the government and environmentalists.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces are escalating their onslaught against Ukrainian positions around the wrecked city of Bakhmut, Ukrainian officials said, bringing new levels of death and devastation in the grinding, monthslong battle for control of eastern Ukraine that is part of Moscow’s wider war.

“Everything is completely destroyed. There is almost no life left,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late Monday of the scene around Bakhmut and the nearby Donetsk province city of Soledar.

MOSCOW, January 9. /TASS/: Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev has said in an interview with aif.ru that Moscow isn’t at war with Kiev, but instead, the confrontation is an attempt by the West to use Ukrainians in its standoff with Russia.

"The events in Ukraine aren’t a clash between Moscow and Kiev. It’s a military confrontation of NATO, first of all the US and Britain, with Russia. Fearing a direct engagement, NATO instructors push Ukrainian men to certain death," he said.

MOSCOW, January 9. /TASS/: Russian forces have destroyed 200 Ukrainian combat helicopters since the beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine, Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov reported on Monday.

MOSCOW, January 9. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin has submitted a bill denouncing the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption to the State Duma (the lower house of parliament).

The document appeared in the State Duma’s digital database on Monday.

"The Criminal Law Convention on Corruption, signed on behalf of the Russian Federation in the city of Strasbourg on January 27, 1999, is to be denounced," the document reads.

MOSCOW, January 9. /TASS/: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his newly appointed Chinese counterpart Qin Gang agreed in a telephone conversation on Monday that the US policy of igniting a confrontation between Beijing and Moscow was unacceptable, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Monday.

ROME, Jan 9 (NNN-XINHUA) – Helped by mild winter weather and high storage, prices for natural gas in the European Union (EU) have now settled back to levels seen before the start of the Ukraine crisis, but analysts believe, challenges for the energy sector are far from over.

STOCKHOLM, Jan 9 (NNN-XINHUA) – Sweden will be part of the European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI) and participate in air policing over the Baltics, Prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson said.

The Scandinavian country, which last year decided to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), is also prepared to participate in air policing above the Black Sea and Iceland, Swedish Television (SVT) quoted Kristersson as saying, at an annual defence and security policy conference in Salen, some 430 km north-west of Stockholm.