Europe

MOSCOW, December 26. /TASS/: Dmitry Rogozin, former chief of Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos and now the leader of the Tsar’s Wolves team of military advisers in Donbass, is recovering after successful surgery, his aide said on Monday.

"Dmitry Olegovich underwent major surgery to extract a fragment of a Ukrainian projectile from a bone in his neck. The surgery was successful and now he is recovering," the aide said.

MOSCOW, December 26. /TASS/: The era of the unipolar world, when the United States dictated conditions to other countries and even "broke" their political systems, is coming to an end, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin told TASS in an interview.

Dec 26 (Reuters) - Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny said on Monday he was suffering worsening back pain from long spells in solitary confinement that he said were part of a deliberate strategy by the authorities to undermine his health.

In a post on Twitter, he also complained of being injected with unknown drugs.

"See how the system works when you are not allowed to beat up a person, but your leadership ordered you to hurt them badly," the Twitter post said.

KYIV, Dec 26 (Reuters) - Moscow said on Monday its forces had shot down a Ukrainian drone close to a long-range bomber base deep inside Russia, while Ukraine said the Russians had unleashed heavy artillery barrages on its cities in the past 24 hours.

The drone was allegedly flying near Russia's Engels air base, where long-range strategic bombers that may have been used to target Ukrainian cities and infrastructure are based.

The Russian defence ministry said in a statement three air force personnel had been killed in the incident but no planes were damaged.

MADRID (AP) — Spanish authorities announced Monday that they had recovered another body after a bus plunged 30 meters (100 feet) from a bridge into a river on Christmas Eve, raising the toll of the fatal crash to seven dead and two injured.

The search was resumed when a surviving passenger said that the middle-aged woman she was traveling with was still missing, according to the Galician government’s delegate José Miñones.

The initial search for eight instead of nine people was based on the statement of the driver — the other survivor.

PARIS (AP) — Members of France’s Kurdish community and others are holding a silent march Monday to honor three people killed in a shooting at a Kurdish cultural center in Paris.

A 69-year-old Frenchman is facing preliminary charges of racially motivated murder, attempted murder and weapons violations over Friday’s shooting, prosecutors said. The suspect told investigators that he had aimed to kill migrants or foreigners and then had planned to kill himself, and said he had a ’’pathological” hatred of non-European foreigners, according to prosecutors.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Russian military reported on Monday that it shot down a Ukrainian drone approaching an airbase deep inside Russia, the second time the airbase has been targeted this month, raising questions about the effectiveness of Russia’s air defenses if drones can fly that far into the country.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the incident took place in the early hours of Monday, and three servicemen were killed by debris at the Engels airbase that houses the Tu-95 and Tu-160 nuclear-capable strategic bombers that have been involved in launching strikes on Ukraine.

MOSCOW, December 25. /TASS/: Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has said Russia will prefer to cutting oil production over supplies under a Western price cap, the Asharq News television channel reported.

"What is the Russian Federation saying? We won’t supply oil under contracts that will indicate a price cap that’s proposed by Western countries. That’s ruled out. That’s what the Russian president said - that Russia won’t supply oil under deals that will indicate caps," he said.

MOSCOW, December 25. /TASS/: Russia will destroy the Patriot air defense systems if the US provides them to Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Rossiya-1 television on Sunday.

"Of course, we’ll take them out, 100%!" he said in interview with journalist Pavel Zarubin on the Moscow. Kremlin. Putin program.

The president said Ukraine so far doesn't have these systems.

Putin told reporters on Thursday that "the Patriot is a fairly outdated system" and an "antidote" to these systems will be found.

MOSCOW, December 25. /TASS/: The Russian side will wait until the final parameters of the EU embargo are clear, as it doesn’t understand what can substitute for Russian oil products in Europe, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said in an interview with TASS.

"Europe used to be a key market for the sale of our oil products. Let us wait and see which decisions they will make in the long run. So far, we don’t know what may substitute for our fuel," he said.