Europe

April 7 (Reuters) - Russia is facing its most difficult situation in three decades due to unprecedented Western sanctions, but foreign attempts to isolate it from the global economy will fail, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said on Thursday.

He also said the situation provided room for new business opportunities as foreign companies leaving Russia would make space for others.

Western countries are progressively tightening a barrage of economic sanctions imposed to try to force Russia to end its military operation in Ukraine and withdraw its forces.

LONDON, April 7 (Xinhua) -- A new report has concluded that while the novel coronavirus did not discriminate between rich and poor, the U.S. society and government did, The Guardian reported on Monday.

Based on an analysis of data from more than 3,000 counties across the United States, the Poor People's Pandemic Report found that people in poorer counties have died overall at almost twice the rate of those in richer counties, The Guardian said.

MOSCOW, April 6 (Xinhua) -- The United States is consistently building up its military biological potential in various regions of the world, taking advantage of gaps in international law, the Russian military said Wednesday.

Washington is creating biological laboratories in different countries and connecting them to a unified system, said Igor Kirillov, chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces of the Russian Armed Forces.

Brussels, Apr 7 (AP) Ukraine on Thursday appealed to NATO for more weapons in its fight against Russia to help prevent further atrocities like those reported in the city of Bucha, and urged Germany to slash red tape so that more supplies can get in.

NATO, as an organisation, refuses to send troops to Ukraine or police any no-fly zone to prevent Russia from completely overwhelming its neighbour. But individual member countries are supplying anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons, as well as equipment and medical supplies.

LONDON (AP) — Shell says its decision to pull out of Russia in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine has already cost the international energy giant as much as $5 billion.

The reduced value of Russian assets, credit losses and “onerous” contract terms will cut earnings for the first three months of the year by between $4 billion and $5 billion, London-based Shell said Thursday. The estimate was part of an update released before publication of complete first-quarter earnings on May 5.

THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — Greek authorities say a man who was seriously injured in a fire that broke out in the COVID-19 ward of a hospital in northern Greece has died of his injuries, bringing the total death toll from the blaze to two.

The 52-year-old man who died Thursday had been a patient in the Papanikolaou Hospital’s coronavirus ward when the fire broke out Wednesday morning due to as yet undetermined causes, police said. Firefighters discovered the body of a 79-year-old coronavirus patient at the scene on Wednesday.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A haunting image of red dresses hung on crosses along a roadside, with a rainbow in the background, commemorating children who died at a residential school created to assimilate Indigenous children in Canada won the prestigious World Press Photo award Thursday.

The image was one of a series of the Kamloops Residential School shot by Canadian photographer Amber Bracken for The New York Times.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine told residents of its industrial heartland to leave while they still can and urged Western nations to send “weapons, weapons, weapons” Thursday after Russian forces withdrew from the shattered outskirts of Kyiv to regroup for an offensive in the country’s east.

Russia’s six-week-old invasion failed to take Ukraine’s capital quickly and achieve what Western countries say was President Vladimir Putin’s initial aim of ousting the Ukrainian government. Russia’s focus is now on the Donbas, a mostly Russian-speaking region in eastern Ukraine.

MOSCOW, April 6. /TASS/: Russia’s COVID-19 case tally rose by 14,661 over the past day to 17,940,765, the anti-coronavirus crisis center reported on Wednesday.

In relative terms, the growth rate reached 0.08%.

As many as 3,713 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Russia over the past day, down 13.4% from a day earlier. The number of hospitalized patients decreased in 56 regions, while in 29 regions the figure increased. A day earlier, 4,288 people were rushed to hospitals.

BUCHAREST, April 6. /TASS/: The Foreign Ministry of Romania urged to wait for the official investigation’s results into the incident, in which a car rammed into the gates of the Russian Embassy in Bucharest, and to refrain from drawing hasty conclusions, according to the statement from the Romanian ministry.

"The Foreign Ministry [of Romania] rejects the stance of the Russian Embassy in Bucharest following a dismal incident, which took place early this morning," the statement from the Romanian Foreign Ministry reads.