Europe

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg reaffirmed the military alliance’s commitment to Ukraine on Tuesday, saying that the war-torn nation will one day become a member of the world’s largest security organization.

Stoltenberg’s remarks came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his NATO counterparts gathered in Romania to drum up urgently needed support for Ukraine aimed at ensuring that Moscow fails to defeat the country as it bombards energy infrastructure.

KHERSON, Ukraine (AP) — When a dozen Russian soldiers stormed into Dmytro Bilyi’s home in August, the 24-year-old police officer said they gave him a chilling choice: Hand in his pistol or his mother and brother would disappear.

28 Nov 2022; MEMO: Deputy Director-General of the Russian State Nuclear Energy Corporation (Rosatom), Kirill Komarov, announced that the EU's sanctions against Moscow will not pose a problem for financing the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant in Mersin, southern Turkiye.

This came in statements at the International Nuclear Energy Conference Atomexpo 2022 held in the Russian city of Sochi on Monday, in which Komarov explained that Akkuyu is the current largest nuclear power plant construction site in the world.

MINSK, November 28. /TASS/: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko plans to meet with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in the near future, as he himself said on Monday.

MOSCOW, November 28. /TASS/: Russia is redirecting its exports and imports to new markets against the backdrop of an international trade crisis, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a forum of interregional cooperation with Kazakhstan on Monday.

MOSCOW, November 28. /TASS/: Moscow calls on the Norwegian authorities to stop persecuting Russian citizens on ethnic grounds, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement issued on Monday in connection with the summoning of the kingdom's envoy to Moscow Robert Kvile over the arrest of Russian citizens in Norway.

"We called on the Norwegian authorities to abandon such Russophobic actions and persecution of Russian citizens on the grounds of nationality," the ministry pointed out.

MOSCOW, November. 28 /TASS/: Moscow and Astana consider it important that the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea enter into force as soon as possible. This is stated in the declaration adopted by the Presidents of the two countries, Vladimir Putin and Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations.

STOCKHOLM, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- More than 700 shootings have occurred in the vicinity of Swedish schools in the last three years, Swedish Television (SVT) reported on Monday.

In that period, 196,000 children aged between 7 and 16 attend a school where one or several shootings have been recorded within 500 meters of the school premises, SVT said citing an analysis published by statistics company Infostat.

BRUSSELS (AP) — Law enforcement authorities in six different countries have joined forces to take down a “super cartel” of drugs traffickers controlling about one third of the cocaine trade in Europe, the European Union crime agency said on Monday.

Europol said 49 suspects have been arrested during the investigation, with the latest series of raids across Europe and the United Arab Emirates taking place between Nov. 8-19.

MOSCOW (AP) — Kazakhstan’s leader met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, a week after winning a new seven-year term by a landslide in a snap election.

Kazakhstan is a significant Russian ally, sharing a 7,600-kilometer (4,750-mile) border. But President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has kept his distance from Moscow amid the conflict in Ukraine, notably declining this summer to recognize the Kremlin’s declaration of separatist Ukraine regions as sovereign states.