Europe

MOSCOW, December 9. /TASS/: Minsk has information that the West planned to launch a military offensive against Russia in case of the successful outcome of an attempted coup in Belarus in 2020, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Friday.

"You [the West] were preparing for it. We know it for sure," Lukashenko said speaking in an interview with Russia’s Rossiya-24 television channel.

MOSCOW, December 9. /TASS/: Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov on Friday said US statements that sanctions on Russia could be lifted are too vague and can’t be taken seriously.

MOSCOW, Dec 9 (NNN-PRENSA LATINA) — Russia once again reached the maximum daily gas supply to China through the Siberian Force gas pipeline, exceeding its obligations by 16 percent, Gazprom informed on Thursday.    

According to a communiqué from the Russian company, Gazprom met the Chinese side’s request to increase daily gas supplies in December to the previously approved calendar for 2022.

The company recalled that the supplies are part of the long-term bilateral sale and purchase agreement between Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).

MOSCOW, Dec 9 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Russian firefighters on Friday battled a massive blaze the size of a football pitch which broke out overnight in a shopping centre in a Moscow suburb, emergency services said.

“In the Moscow region, firefighters are putting out a fire the size of 7,000 square metres,” Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations said on Telegram.

The fire broke out at the Mega Khimki shopping centre in Moscow’s northern suburb of Khimki.

OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb., Dec 9 (Reuters) - Russia is expanding and modernizing its nuclear arsenal, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Friday at a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin, faced with setbacks in Ukraine, has repeatedly suggested he could use nuclear weapons.

Austin's comments are in line with a recent Pentagon policy document on nuclear arms.

KYIV, Dec 9 (Reuters) - Russian forces shelled the entire front line in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, officials in Kyiv said on Friday, as Russia's President Vladimir Putin accused the West of using Ukrainians as "cannon fodder" in its quest for global dominance.

Putin also said, without elaborating, that Russia would probably have to do a deal over Ukraine some day, while accusing France and Germany of betrayal over past efforts to bring peace to eastern Ukraine.

Dec 9 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia would likely have to reach agreements regarding Ukraine in the future, but felt betrayed by the breakdown of the Minsk agreements.

Putin said Germany and France - which brokered ceasefire agreements in the Belarusian capital Minsk between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and 2015 - had betrayed Russia and were now pumping Ukraine with weapons.

LISBON, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Portuguese parliament on Friday approved the legalization of "medically assisted death."

A draft law that received the support of a large majority of deputies establishes that euthanasia can be requested "by decision of the person himself," provided they are over 18 years old, and their will is "current, repeated, serious, free and clear."

COLOGNE, Germany (AP) — An unprecedented crisis of confidence is shaking a historic center of Catholicism in Germany — the Archdiocese of Cologne. Catholic believers have protested their deeply divisive archbishop and are leaving in droves over allegations that he may have covered up clergy sexual abuse reports.

THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — A Greek police officer accused of shooting and seriously wounding a Roma teenager during a police chase over an allegedly unpaid gas station bill will remain under house arrest, after a prosecutor and an investigating judge disagreed Friday on whether he should be jailed until his trial.

About 200 protesters from the Roma community were gathered outside the courthouse in Greece’s second-largest city of Thessaloniki Friday, where the 34-year-old officer appeared amid tight security.