Europe

Moscow, Jul 12 (AP-PTI) The Kremlin says that Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Iran next week.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Putin will travel to Tehran next Tuesday to attend a trilateral meeting with the leaders of Iran and Turkey, the so-called Astana format of meetings for Syria-related talks.

Peskov told reporters Tuesday that during the visit, Putin will also have a separate meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

MOSCOW, July 11. /TASS/: The presidents of Russia and Belarus, Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko, discussed a possible joint response the blockade of transit to Kaliningrad by Lithuania, the Kremlin said on Monday.

"Emphasis was placed on the situation relating to the illegal restrictions imposed by Lithuania on the transit of goods to the Kaliningrad Region. In this context, some possible joint steps were discussed," the Kremlin said in a statement.

MOSCOW, July 11. /TASS/: The State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications is pursuing a ban on LGBT propaganda in the media, on the net and in movies regardless of the audience’s age, head of the committee Alexander Khinshtein said on Monday.

"I fully support the stance of [State Duma Speaker] Vyacheslav Volodin on prohibiting propaganda for non-traditional values. Earlier, the State Duma committee on information policy has already begun working out corresponding initiatives," he wrote on his Telegram channel.

BRUSSELS, July 11. /TASS/: Canada’s decision to return a turbine for the Nord Stream pipeline does not violate the EU sanctions against Russia, Tim McPhie, spokesperson of the European Commission for Climate actions and energy, told a briefing on Monday.

The return of the turbine does not violate the EU sanctions against Russia because they do not cover the gas transit equipment, he added.

"EU sanctions regime does not affect technologies which are linked to the transport of natural gas," he explained.

MOSCOW, July 11. /TASS/: Buenos Aires is hoping that joining BRICS will help its further multilateral development and is looking forward to membership, the country’s ambassador in Moscow, Eduardo Zuain, told TASS on Monday.

"One of our desires is to finally start working side by side with the big countries [BRICS], and our chancellor (Argentine Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero - TASS) expressed the same point of view. We look forward to the day when we finally join this group and multilateral development will help us to move forward," he said.

MOSCOW, July 11. /TASS/: The option to obtain Russian citizenship via simplified procedure has been expanded to cover all residents of Ukraine, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decree published Monday.

MOSCOW/ISTANBUL, July 11 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish leader Tayyip Erdogan plan to meet in the near future after a phone conversation in which they discussed efforts to facilitate grain exports from Ukraine, the Kremlin said on Monday.

Turkey has been mediating between Moscow and Kyiv since Russia sent its armed forces into Ukraine on Feb. 24. The last talks between representatives of Russia and Ukraine were held in Istanbul in the end of March.

KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday expanding a fast-track procedure to receive Russian citizenship to all Ukrainians, in yet another effort to expand Moscow’s influence in war-torn Ukraine.

Until recently, only residents of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as residents of the southern Zaporizhzhia and the Kherson regions, large parts of which are under Russian control, were eligible for the simplified procedure.

Ukrainian officials haven’t yet reacted to Putin’s announcement.

SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Fifty newly identified victims were honored and reburied Monday in Bosnia as thousands gathered to commemorate the anniversary of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, Europe’s only acknowledged genocide since the Holocaust.

Twenty-seven years after they were brutally murdered, the remains of 47 men and three teenage boys were laid to rest at a memorial cemetery at the entrance to Srebrenica, joining more than 6,600 other massacre victims already reburied there.

KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian shelling of Ukraine’s second-largest city killed at least three people on Monday and injured scores, including children, the local administrator said. The shelling came just hours after three missile strikes on Kharkiv which the official described as “absolute terrorism.”

Kharkiv regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said on Telegram that the shelling came from multiple rocket launchers, and those hospitalized for injuries suffered in the attacks included children aged 4 and 16.