Europe

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian missiles hit Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa just hours after Moscow and Kyiv signed deals to allow grain exports to resume from there. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry denounced Saturday’s airstrikes as “spit in the face” of Turkey and the United Nations, which brokered the agreements.

23 July 2022; MEMO: The UK government on Friday hailed a landmark grain deal signed by Russia, Ukraine, the United Nations (UN) and Türkiye to resume grain exports through the Black Sea, Anadolu Agency reported.

"[Russian President Vladimir] Putin's barbaric invasion of Ukraine has meant some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world are at risk of having nothing to eat," UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a statement.

23 July 2022; MEMO: Some 38 far-left French MPs have signed a draft resolution condemning Israel's "institutionalisation of an apartheid regime against Palestinian people," news agencies reported on Friday.

The draft resolution was originally submitted on 13 July by Communist MP Jean-Paul Lecocq but stirred a public debate on Friday.

23 July 2022; MEMO: Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, will begin an African tour in Egypt on Sunday, seeking to draw on demand for non-Western alliances as Moscow pushes back against international censure over the war in Ukraine, Reuters reports.

In Egypt, Lavrov will meet officials trying to square deep links to Russia with their close relationship to the United States which, along with other Western powers, sought to isolate Russia with tough sanctions after its 24 February invasion of Ukraine.

MOSCOW, July 22. /TASS/: Any blame directed at Russia due to the delayed return of the turbine for the Nord Stream pipeline from Canada is groundless, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.

Earlier Reuters reported citing sources that the turbine got stuck during transit in Germany, allegedly because of lack of a permit from Russia.

Peskov recalled the statement by President Vladimir Putin, on the night of July 20 in Tehran, that as of that time, Moscow had not received any legal, technological, or any other documentation on this turbine.

MOSCOW, July 22. /TASS/. The agreement on cross spaceflights signed between Roscosmos and NASA earlier provides for three flights of Russian cosmonauts on the US Crew Dragon spacecraft, Roscosmos cosmonaut team commander Oleg Kononenko said Friday.

"The agreement provides for three integrated flights: on fifth, sixth and tenth [Crew] Dragon missions," Kononeko said on the Gagarin cosmonaut training center Telegram channel.

MOSCOW, July 22. /TASS/: The Bank of Russia reduced its key rate by 1.5 percentage points to 8% per annum, noting low rates of consumer price growth, according to a press release published on Friday.

LUGANSK, July 22. /TASS/: A referendum on the accession of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) to Russia will be held at 492 voting stations, Chairman of the republic’s Public Chamber Alexey Karyakin said.

"Work began on forming the group of observers at the polling stations, there will be a total of 492 of them in the LPR," the Luganskinformcenter news agency quoted him as saying.

MADRID, July 22 (Reuters) - Iran's nuclear programme is "galloping ahead" and the International Atomic Energy Agency has very limited visibility on what is happening, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi told Spain's El Pais newspaper in an interview published on Friday.

In June, Iran began removing essentially all the agency's monitoring equipment, installed under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Grossi said at the time this could deal a "fatal blow" to chances of reviving the deal following 2018's pullout by the United States.

BRUSSELS, July 22 (Reuters) - Russian state-owned companies Rosneft and Gazprom will be able to ship oil to third countries under an adjustment of European Union sanctions agreed by member states this week aimed at limiting the risks to global energy security.

Major trading houses such as Vitol, Glencore and Trafigura as well as oil majors such as Shell and Total have stopped trading Russian oil for third parties, citing EU sanctions, including restrictions on insurance.