Europe

KYIV, June 18 (Reuters) - With a blessing for its European Union ambitions and a pledge of unwavering support from Britain, Ukraine vowed on Saturday to prevail against Moscow as its troops battled the Russian assault near a pivotal eastern city and communities were pounded by more heavy shelling.

EU leaders are expected at a summit next week to grant Ukraine candidate status following Friday's recommendation from the bloc's executive, putting Kyiv on course to realise an aspiration seen as out of reach before the invasion, even if actual membership could take years. 

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — A celebrated Ukrainian medic whose footage was smuggled out of the besieged city of Mariupol by an Associated Press team was freed by Russian forces on Friday, three months after she was taken captive on the streets of the city.

Yuliia Paievska is known in Ukraine as Taira, a nickname she chose in the World of Warcraft video game. Using a body camera, she recorded 256 gigabytes of her team’s efforts over two weeks to save the wounded, including both Russian and Ukrainian soldiers.

LONDON (AP) — The price of bitcoin fell below $20,000 for the first time since late 2020 on Saturday, in a fresh sign that the selloff in cryptocurrencies is deepening.

Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, fell below the psychologically important threshold, dropping as much as 9% to less than $19,000, according to CoinDesk.

The last time bitcoin was at this level was November 2020, when it was on its way up to its all-time high of nearly $69,000.

Bitcoin has now lost more than 70 percent of its value since reaching that peak.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Poppies, the blood-red flowers that cover the battlefields of Europe’s two world wars, were lain in mourning Saturday on the coffin of yet another dead soldier, this one killed in yet another European war, in Ukraine.

The hundreds of mourners for Roman Ratushnyi, 24, included friends who had protested with him during months of demonstrations that toppled Ukraine’s pro-Russia leader in 2014 and who, like him, took up arms when Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbor this February.

17 June 2022; MEMO: British Home Secretary, Priti Patel, signed an order to extradite WikiLeaks co-founder, Julian Assange, to the US on Friday, Anadolu News Agency reports.

Assange's extradition order was passed to the Secretary by the UK courts last month, confirming that the US assurances on how Assange would be treated were sufficient for extradition.

ST. PETERSBURG, June 17. /TASS/: President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on Friday called for a new trade strategy for the Eurasian Economic Union.

"It would be appropriate and useful to engage in the development of a new trade strategy within the EAEU, given the new reality," he said at a session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. "Instead of countersanctions, which are unlikely to be productive, it would be advisable to exercise a more active and flexible trade policy targeting a wide range of markets in Asia and the Middle East."

BRUSSELS, June 17. /TASS/: The European Commission recommended that an EU candidate status be given to Ukraine and Moldova and be put off for Georgia, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement on Friday.

"The Commission recommends to the Council: First, that Ukraine is given a European perspective. Second, that Ukraine is given candidate status," she said.

MINSK, June 17. /TASS/: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has cautioned the Ukrainian authorities against possible attacks on Russian cities, the BelTA news agency said on Friday.

"Ukrainians, Zelensky are asking for long-range weapons to hit Russian cities such as Kursk, Rostov, Orel, Belgorod and neighboring cities. But I once said in public that under no circumstances must it be done," Lukashenko said at a meeting with employees of the Belshina tire plant in Bobruisk on Friday, as BelTA reported.

ST. PETERSBURG, June 17. /TASS/: Taking the podium at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the era of a unipolar world order has come to an end despite attempts to preserve it at all costs.

"A year and a half ago, when speaking at the Davos Forum, it was stressed again that the era of the unipolar world order was over," the Russian head of state said, noting that now he also would like to begin his address with this, "there is no getting around this."

GENEVA, June 17 (Reuters) - The World Trade Organization agreed on the first change to global trading rules in years on Friday as well as a deal to boost the supply of COVID-19 vaccines in a series of pledges that were heavy on compromise.

The deals were forged in the early hours of the sixth day of a conference of more than 100 trade ministers that was seen as a test of the ability of nations to strike multilateral trade deals amid geopolitical tensions heightened by the Ukraine war.