Europe

MOSCOW, December 27. /TASS/: The next year will be fairly challenging from Russia from the standpoint of finance and the deficit budget, First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov said on the air with the Rossiya-24 TV Channel.

MOSCOW, December 27. /TASS/: Ukraine is still not ready for negotiations with Russia, including on the UN platform, says head of the Russian State Duma Committee on international affairs, member of the Russian delegation to talks with Ukraine Leonid Slutsky.

"Ukraine is still not ready to hold peace negotiations; all the statements made by [Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry] Kuleba are a smoke screen," Slutsky said, commenting on the statement by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres regarding his readiness to mediate at a "peace summit," proposed by Kuleba earlier.

LONDON, Dec 27 (NNN-PRENSA LATINA) — Sites in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay experienced record temperatures during two consecutive heat waves in late November and early December 2022, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported on Monday.    

The areas in particular are north-central Argentina, southern Bolivia, central Chile and most of Paraguay and Uruguay, WMO detailed.

Yet 2022 did not break global temperature records, it surpassed many national heat records worldwide.

KYIV/BAKHMUT, Ukraine, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Russian forces shelled and bombed towns and cities in eastern and southern Ukraine on Tuesday, a day after Russia's foreign minister said Kyiv must accept Moscow's demands for ending the war or else suffer defeat on the battlefield.

Those demands include Ukraine recognising Russia's conquest of a fifth of its territory. Kyiv, armed and supported by the United States and its NATO allies, has vowed to recover all occupied territory and to drive out all Russian soldiers.

Dec 27 (Reuters) - Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, an arch loyalist of Vladimir Putin given a new job this week, predicted war between Germany and France next year and a civil war in the United States that would lead to Elon Musk becoming president.

Medvedev, deputy head of Putin's advisory security council, served as president during a four-year spell when Putin held the office of prime minister. He appears to have seen his fortune rise in the Kremlin, which said on Monday he would now serve as Putin's deputy on a body overseeing the military industry.

Dec 27 (Reuters) - Moscow's proposals for settlement in Ukraine are well known to Kyiv and either Ukraine fulfils them for their own good or the Russian army will decide the issue, TASS agency quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying.

"Our proposals for the demilitarization and denazification of the territories controlled by the regime, the elimination of threats to Russia's security emanating from there, including our new lands, are well known to the enemy," the state news agency quoted Lavrov as saying late on Monday.

PRISTINA, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Protesting Serbs in the ethnically divided city of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo erected new barricades on Tuesday, hours after Serbia said it had put its army on the highest combat alert following weeks of escalating tensions between Belgrade and Pristina.

Serbia's defence ministry said that given the latest events in the region and Belgrade's belief that Kosovo was preparing to attack Serbs and forcefully remove the barricades, President Aleksandar Vucic had ordered Serbia's army and police to be put on the highest alert.

MOSCOW, Dec. 27 (Xinhua) -- The Western policy of containing Russia is extremely dangerous and fraught with risk of a direct armed clash between nuclear powers, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.

"Irresponsible speculation" that Russia is about to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine is unceasingly unfolding in the West, Lavrov said in an interview with TASS news agency published on Tuesday.

KIEV, Dec. 26 (Xinhua) -- Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Kiev is counting on holding a summit to discuss the peace plan for Ukraine by the end of February, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported Monday.

"The UN could be the best platform for holding this summit," Kuleba said, suggesting that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres could be a possible mediator for the peace negotiations.

MADRID (AP) — Spain on Tuesday announced a new series of measures including scrapping valued-added tax on staple food, such as bread and milk, and is extending rent and eviction controls to help ease the economic crisis caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced the measures in an end-of-year speech. The government said it would also cut VAT on cooking oil and pasta from 10% to 5%. Fish and meat products were excluded from the tax reductions.