Europe

MOSCOW, July 29. /TASS/: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov informed US Secretary of State Antony Blinken about Russia’s position on the situation around Ukraine, the global food security and prisoner swap, the Russian foreign ministry said on Friday after their telephone conversation.

LONDON, July 29 (Reuters) - Britain's defence minister Ben Wallace said on Friday that Russia was failing in "many areas" in its war in Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin might seek to change strategy again.

"The Russians are failing at the moment on the ground in many areas ... Putin's plan A, B, and C has failed and he may look to plan D," Wallace told Sky News television.

LONDON, July 29 (Reuters) - London's High Court has rejected President Nicolas Maduro's latest efforts to gain control of more than $1 billion of Venezuela's gold reserves stored in the Bank of England's underground vaults in London.

The court ruled on Friday that previous decisions by the Maduro-backed Venezuelan Supreme Court aimed at reducing opposition leader Juan Guaido's say over the gold, should be disregarded.

VIENNA, July 28 (Xinhua) -- Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said on Thursday that an embargo on Russian gas in the European Union (EU) is "impossible" due to EU countries' heavy dependence on Russian energy.

Nehammer's comments came after a meeting with visiting Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Vienna.

According to Austrian news agency APA, Nehammer said at a press conference that Germany and Austria's dependence on Russian gas makes an EU embargo "impossible," as the decline of the German economy would also impact Austria and lead to mass unemployment.

ODESA, Ukraine (AP) — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited one of Ukraine’s main Black Sea ports Friday, a week after a deal was struck with Russia, Turkey and the United Nations to create safe corridors for ships to export grains that have been trapped in the country since the war began five months ago.

His visit to a port in the Odesa region comes as workers were seen preparing terminals for grain exports, which are relied on by millions of impoverished people worldwide facing hunger.

VIENNA (AP) — Former Austrian Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache was acquitted Friday in a corruption trial, the second he has faced since a scandal surrounding him brought down the country’s government in 2019.

Strache was accused of procuring a post on the supervisory board of Asfinag, a government-owned company that manages Austria’s highway system, for businessman Siegfried Stieglitz in exchange for donations to an organization close to the politician’s far-right Freedom Party.

LONDON (AP) — Inflation in the European countries using the euro currency shot up to another record in July, pushed by higher energy prices fueled by Russia’s war in Ukraine, but the economy still managed better-than-expected, if meager, growth in the second quarter.

Annual inflation in the eurozone’s 19 countries rose to 8.9% in July, an increase from 8.6% in June, according to numbers published Friday by the European Union statistics agency.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia and Ukraine on Friday accused each other of shelling a prison in a separatist eastern region that reportedly killed dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war who were captured after the fall of Mariupol in May.

Russia said that Ukraine used U.S.-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launchers in the attack on the prison in Olenivka, in the Russian-controlled Donetsk region. Officials from Russia and the separatist authorities in Donetsk said the attack killed 53 Ukrainian POWs and wounded 75.

29 July 2022; MEMO: Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler announced on Tuesday that the kingdom will provide Europe with "much cheaper renewable energy" using a power cable that will link Riyadh with Greece.

Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman arrived in Greece on Tuesday on his first visit to a European Union member state since the gruesome 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

29 July 2022; MEMO: Palestine's Prime Minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, met Germany's Minister of State at the Federal Foreign Office Tobias Lindner in Ramallah on Thursday, Anadolu News Agency reports.

Shtayyeh urged Germany to recognise the State of Palestine in line with Berlin's "belief in the option of the two-state solution and the importance of preserving it," according to a statement by the Premier's office.