Europe

KYIV, Oct 10 (Reuters) - President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia timed its strikes on Ukraine on Monday to inflict the greatest possible losses among people and had also targeted the country's energy infrastructure.

"They want panic and chaos, they want to destroy our energy system," Zelenskiy said in a video post that showed him outside his presidential office.

"The second target is people. Such a time and such targets were specially chosen to cause as much damage as possible."

LONDON, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that Ukraine had carried out "terrorist acts" against Russia and pledged to react forcefully if they continued.

In televised remarks, Putin said Moscow had launched long-range missile attacks against Ukraine's energy, military and communications infrastructure on Monday in retaliation for an attack on a vital bridge linking Russia to the annexed Crimean peninsula over the weekend.

LONDON, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Monday he had ordered troops to deploy with Russian forces near Ukraine in response to what he said was a clear threat to Belarus from Kyiv and its backers in the West.

The remarks from Lukashenko, who has held power in Belarus since 1994, indicate a potential further escalation of the war in Ukraine, possibly with a combined Russian-Belarus joint force in the north of Ukraine.

MOSCOW, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- The explosion on the Crimean Bridge was no doubt a terrorist act aimed at destroying Russia's critical civilian infrastructure, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Sunday.

"Ukraine's special services were the initiators, performers and masterminds," Putin said when meeting with Chairman of the Russian Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin.

Confirming Putin's statement, Bastrykin said that citizens of Russia and foreign countries were also involved in the incident.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Campaigners calling for the decriminalization of assisted suicide in the Netherlands took the Dutch government to court Monday, arguing that its ban on helping a person end their life breaches human rights norms.

The case at The Hague District Court is the latest legal battle in a long-running debate around end-of-life issues in the country that in 2002 became the first in the world to pass a law that decriminalized euthanasia.

PARIS (AP) — A former Liberian rebel is going on trial Monday in Paris on charges of crimes against humanity, torture and acts of barbarism during the West African country’s civil war in the 1990s.

Kunti Kamara, 47, is notably accused of “complicity in massive and systematic torture and inhumane acts” against the civilian population committed in Liberia’s Lofa county in 1993-1994, as one of the leaders of the Ulimo armed group. He was then less than 20 years old.

He was arrested near Paris in 2018 and faces life imprisonment.

GENEVA (AP) — A third cruise ship was hired by World Cup organizers in Qatar on Monday to operate as a soccer fan hotel docked in Doha Port to add much-needed rooms for the tournament.

Geneva-based MSC Cruises announced the agreement only six weeks before the World Cup is scheduled to start on Nov. 20. The 1,075-cabin MSC Opera will be available from Nov. 19 to Dec. 19.

Prices for the Opera were listed Monday on MSC’s website starting from 470 Swiss francs ($470) per person per night during the group stage, with a minimum two-night stay.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — This year’s Nobel Prize in economic sciences has been awarded to the former chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Ben S. Bernanke, and two U.S.-based economists, Douglas W. Diamond and Philip H. Dybvig, “for research on banks and financial crises.”

The prize was announced Monday by the Nobel panel at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.

The committee said their work had shown in their research “why avoiding bank collapses is vital.”

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia unleashed a lethal barrage of strikes against multiple Ukrainian cities Monday, smashing civilian targets including downtown Kyiv where at least eight people were killed amid burnt-out cars and shattered buildings that brought back into focus the grim reality of war after months of easing tensions in the capital.

10 October 2022; MEMO: On Saturday, Russia appointed Sergei Surovikin as the new commander of the war in Ukraine, he has been described by the British Ministry of Defence as "brutal and corrupt."

Surovikin ordered that soldiers shoot protesters in Moscow in the nineties. He has also been accused of leading an offensive on Syria six years ago as part of the Russian backed intervention on the side of Bashar Al-Assad's government.