Europe

MOSCOW, October 21. /TASS/: Western countries are deliberately destroying any remaining chances for communication by distorting the position of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church, and such steps are suicidal, Vladimir Legoida, head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s public and media relations department and Professor of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s MGIMO University, said on Friday.

MINSK, October 21. /TASS/: Belarus does not plan to go to war with anyone, the country does not need war, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said during an inspection of military-industrial products in the Brest Region.

"We are not going to go anywhere today. No war as of now. We don’t need it," Lukashenko said, according to BelTA.

The Belarusian President once again debunked the information spreading on social media that the republic carries out a hidden mobilization, suggesting not to pay attention to "this wailing."

MOSCOW, October 21. /TASS/: The number of officially registered unemployed in Russia decreased from 602,800 to 590,300 people in a week, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova told reporters on Friday.

The number of unemployed does not exceed 0.8% of the total number of workers in the country, she said as quoted by her secretariat.

MOSCOW, October 21. /TASS/: Indonesia may fully join the BRICS format (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), the country’s ambassador to Russia Jose Tavares said in an interview with TASS.

"I hear my president spoke for it (full membership in the integration - TASS) during the BRICS summit. There is a possibility for Indonesia to fully join BRICS," he said, adding though that the embassy had not yet received any additional information on that.

MOSCOW, October 21. /TASS/: The proportion of Russian citizens' confidence in President Vladimir Putin dropped by 0.3% and stood at 80.6%, according to the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center that published the results of a survey conducted from October 10 to 16 among 1,600 respondents aged over 18.

"When asked about trust in Putin, 80.6% of respondents answered positively (-0.3% over the week), the approval rate of the Russian president's work was 77% (+1.4 % over the week)," the pollsters noted.

DUBLIN, Oct 21 (NNN-XINHUA) – Irish Prime Minister, Micheal Martin, yesterday called on the British government to work together, to support peace and stability in Northern Ireland (NI).

Martin made the remarks, after the announcement of British Prime Minister, Liz Truss’s resignation earlier in the day.

BRUSSELS, Oct 21 (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that the European Union had to re-think its trade dialogue with China, calling for a more even playing field between the two commercial power houses.

"We have made strategic errors in the past with the sale of infrastructures to China," Macron said at the end of two-day EU summit which had EU-China ties on its agenda.

BRUSSELS, Oct 21 (Reuters) - France will join other European countries such as Spain and the Netherlands in pulling out of the Energy Charter Treaty which protected investments in the energy sector, said President Emmanuel Macron on Friday.

"We have decided to pull out of the Energy Charter Treaty," said Macron at the end of a European Union summit in Brussels.

The treaty, which has more than 50 signatories including the European Union, was designed to secure energy supplies and grants protection to companies investing in the energy industry.

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders on Friday gave the green light to a plan to provide Ukraine with 18 billion euros (dollars) in financial support over the next year, after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Russia is trying to spark a refugee exodus by destroying his country’s energy infrastructure.

The plan, endorsed at a summit of EU leaders in Brussels, would see the 27-nation bloc match U.S. financial support for war-ravaged Ukraine in monthly installments.

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders struggled to find immediate practical solutions on how to deal with an energy crisis but avoided an open rift between Germany and France on Friday that would have exposed a divided bloc as it confronts Russian President Vladimir Putin over his war in Ukraine.

After daylong talks in Brussels dragged well into early Friday, the 27 EU leaders papered over divisions between some of the biggest member states and at least agreed to continue working on ways to impose a natural gas price cap in case of volatility.