Europe

MOSCOW, December 2. /TASS/: Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Premier of the Chinese State Council Li Keqiang will hold the 27th regular meeting of the two countries' heads of government on Monday, December 5, in a video conference format, the press service of the Russian Cabinet of Ministers announced on Friday.

MOSCOW, December 2. /TASS/: Flooding Ukraine with weapons is a destructive policy, Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed out in a phone call with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday, according to the Kremlin press service.

"Attention was drawn to the destructive policy that is being pursued by Western countries, including Germany, who are flooding the Kiev regime with weapons and training Ukrainian troops," the Kremlin press service said in a statement.

BERLIN, Dec 2 (Reuters) - Germany is preparing to deliver seven Gepard tanks to Ukraine, adding to the 30 air-defence tanks that are already being used to fight against the Russian army, according to a German government website.

According to Spiegel magazine, which first reported the number of additional tanks, the seven Gepards, which were initially destined for the scrap pile, should arrive in Ukraine in Spring 2023 and are currently being repaired by Munich-based arms manufacturer Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW).

HELSINKI, Dec 2 (Reuters) - Russia's invasion of Ukraine has shown that Europe is too reliant on the United States for its own security, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said on Friday.

Speaking at a think tank in Sydney, Australia, Marin advocated boosting Europe's defence capabilities, including arms production.

"I must be brutally honest with you, Europe isn't strong enough right now. We would be in trouble without the United States," Marin told an audience at the Lowy Institute.

Dec 2 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin is "open to negotiations" on Ukraine but the West must accept Moscow's demands, the Kremlin said on Friday, a day after U.S. President Joe Biden said he was willing to talk if Putin were looking for a way to end the war.

MOSCOW, Dec 2 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin is open to talks on a possible settlement to the conflict in Ukraine and believes in a diplomatic solution, the Kremlin said on Friday after Joe Biden suggested he was prepared to speak to the Russian leader.

Biden, speaking beside French President Emmanuel Macron, said the only way to end the war in Ukraine was for Putin to pull troops out and that if Putin was looking to end the conflict then Biden would be prepared to speak to him.

MOSCOW (AP) — The family of Paul Whelan, an American imprisoned in Russia for espionage, said Friday that he has resumed contact after unexpectedly becoming unreachable in November.

Along with WNBA star Brittney Griner, Whelan is the focus of efforts by the United States to arrange a prisoner swap with Russia.

The Associated Press and other news organizations have reported that Washington has offered to exchange Griner and Whelan for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer who is serving a 25-year sentence in the U.S. and once earned the nickname the “merchant of death.”

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian embassies and consulates in six European countries have received packages containing animals’ eyes in recent days, a Ukrainian official said Friday.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleh Nikolenko wrote on Facebook that the “bloody parcels” were received by the Ukrainian embassies in Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Croatia and Italy, as well as by consulates in Naples, Italy; Krakow, Poland and the Czech city of Brno. He said that “we are studying the meaning of this message.”

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia said Friday that Western demands it should pull out completely from Ukraine as part of any future talks to end the war effectively rule out any such negotiations, as Russian strikes continued and a Ukrainian official set his country’s battle losses at up to 13,000 troops.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated that Russian President Vladimir Putin remains open to talks but the Western demand that Moscow first withdraws its troops from Ukraine is unacceptable.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — With Ukraine scrambling to keep communication lines open during the war, an army of engineers from the country’s phone companies has mobilized to help the public and policymakers stay in touch during repeated Russian missile and drone strikes.

The engineers, who typically go unseen and unsung in peacetime, often work around the clock to maintain or restore phone service, sometimes braving minefields to do so. After Russian strikes took out the electricity that cellphone towers usually run on, they revved up generators to keep the towers on.