Europe

VOSTOCHNY SPACEPORT /Amur Region/, April 12. /TASS/: Russia is not going to seal itself off from the rest of the world and it is ready to cooperate with all its partners who wish to do so, Russian President Vladimir Putin maintained.

BRUSSELS, April 12 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Russia’s war in Ukraine, and not the sanctions imposed on Moscow, is what is causing an escalating global food crisis, the EU’s top diplomat said.

“They are causing scarcity. They are bombing Ukrainian cities and provoking hunger in the world,” Josep Borrell told a media conference after chairing a Monday meeting of EU foreign ministers.

He said the Russian military was “sowing bombs on Ukraine’s fields, and Russian warships have blockaded tens of ships full of wheat”.

BERLIN, April 12 (Reuters) - A planned visit to Kyiv by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was not welcomed by Ukraine, he said on Tuesday, following a report that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was critical of Steinmeier's historic advocacy of Western rapprochement with Russia.

Steinmeier had planned to visit Kyiv with his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda and the presidents of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia "to send a strong signal of European solidarity with Ukraine there," he told journalists during a visit to Warsaw.

LONDON, April 12 (Reuters) - All options would be on the table in how the West responds to any use of chemical weapons in Ukraine by Russia, British armed forces minister James Heappey said on Tuesday.

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said on Monday Britain was working with its partners to verify the details of reports that Russian forces may have used chemical agents in an attack on the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, where thousands are believed to have died during a near-seven week siege.

April 12 (Reuters) - A Moscow court declined on Tuesday to rule on an appeal from a jailed former U.S. marine, who is seeking to overturn a nine-year sentence for an attack on two Russian police officers which he denies.

Trevor Reed, 30, from Texas, is serving out his term after being convicted in 2019 of endangering the lives of two police officers while drunk on a visit to Moscow. The United States has called his trial a "theatre of the absurd".

LVIV, Ukraine, April 12 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had largely vanished from public view since his forces were driven from the approaches to Kyiv this month, resurfaced on Tuesday to defend his "noble" invasion of Ukraine, saying peace talks had come to a dead end.

In a press event inside a hangar at a far eastern space base six time zones from Moscow, Putin rattled off talking points: that Moscow had "no choice" but to intervene to protect separatists, defeat neo-Nazis and "help people".

GENEVA, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The outlook for the global economy has darkened since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the World Trade Organization (WTO) said in its annual trade statistics and outlook report published on Tuesday.

Global gross domestic product (GDP) at market exchange rates is projected by the WTO to grow by 2.8 percent in 2022, down 1.3 percentage points from the previous forecast of 4.1 percent. Growth is expected to pick up to 3.2 percent in 2023, close to the average rate of 3.0 percent between 2010 and 2019.

MULHOUSE, France (AP) — The thought of an extreme-right leader standing at the helm of the European Union would be abhorrent to most in the 27-nation bloc. But if Emmanuel Macron falters in the April 24 French presidential elections, it might be two weeks away.

GENEVA (AP) — Former FIFA officials Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini will go on trial for fraud and other offenses in June, Switzerland’s federal criminal court said Tuesday.

The trial will be before a panel of three judges on 11 days from June 8-22.

The trial will begin more than 6 1/2 years after criminal proceedings were opened, first against Blatter for a 2011 payment of 2 million Swiss francs (then $2 million) he authorized FIFA to make to Platini.

LONDON (AP) — U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office said Tuesday that he and Treasury Chief Rishi Sunak will be fined by police for breaching COVID-19 regulations following allegations of lockdown parties at government offices.

The news came after London’s Metropolitan Police force said earlier Tuesday that they were issuing 30 more fixed penalty notices in relation to the “partygate” scandal, which has angered many in Britain and seen dozens of politicians and officials investigated over allegations that the government flouted its own pandemic restrictions.