Europe

PARIS, March 26. /TASS/: French President Emmanuel Macron said he planned to hold another conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the coming days to discuss the situation in Ukraine.

"I expect a new conversation with President Putin in the next 48-72 hours," Macron said after the European Council meeting in Brussels on Friday, adding that holding a humanitarian operation in Mariupol will be among the issues to be discussed.

BRUSSELS, March 25. /TASS/: Participants of the European Council’s Friday meeting failed to adopt any concrete measures to address the energy price growth, and could not come up with a unified approach to Russia’s decision to receive payments for its gas only in rubles, according to the final statement.

"Sustained high energy prices have an increasingly negative impact on [European] citizens and businesses," the statement says, adding that this trend is further exacerbated by the Russian special military operation in Ukraine.

MOSCOW, March 26. /TASS/: Houthi rebels revealed their terrorist nature again when they attacked the civilian infrastructure of the Saudi city of Jeddah, Chairman of the Russian State Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee Leonid Slutsky told TASS on Saturday.

MOSCOW, March 26. /TASS/: Azerbaijan’s Armed Forces have entered the zone of responsibility of the Russian peacekeeping mission in Nagorno-Karabakh and launched four strikes on the Nagorno-Karabakh armed formations, using a Bayraktar TB2 drone, near the village of Furukh, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on its website.

MOSCOW, March 26. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law recognizing participants in a special military operation in Ukraine as combat veterans. The document is published on the official website of legal information.

On Wednesday, the law was unanimously adopted by the State Duma and approved by the Federation Council.

MOSCOW, March 26. /TASS/: The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Russia increased by 24,072 over the day to 17,739,462, the federal headquarters against coronavirus told reporters on Saturday.

In relative terms, the growth in the number of coronavirus cases was 0.14%.

Meanwhile, the number of hospitalizations due to coronavirus in Russia increased by 4,275 per day, the headquarters said. The increase in the number of hospitalizations happened in 37 regions, the headquarters said. A day earlier, 4,212 hospitalizations were reported.

MOSCOW, March 26. /TASS/: US President Joe Biden’s personal insults to Russian President Vladimir Putin narrow the window of opportunity for improving relations between Moscow and Washington, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS on Saturday.

"Still, a state leader should keep their temper," Peskov said commenting on another of the US president’s remarks.

"And, of course, each time such personal insults narrow the window of opportunity for our bilateral relations under the current [US] Administration. It is necessary to be aware of this," Peskov stressed.

LVIV, Ukraine, March 26 (Reuters) - The mayor of Ukraine's northern city of Chernihiv said on Saturday 44 severely wounded people, including three children, could not be evacuated to safer areas for treatment since the city had been cut off by Russian forces.

The city near the Belarusian border has been effectively surrounded, local authorities said on Friday, warning that it had become impossible to evacuate civilians or bring in humanitarian aid because a bridge linking the city to Ukraine's capital to the south had been destroyed by bombing.

March 26 (Reuters) - Russia's defence ministry said on Saturday Azeri armed forces had entered a zone that is the responsibility of Russian peacekeepers in the Nagorno-Karabakh region and had set up a surveillance post in violation of an agreement.

It said Azerbaijan had carried out four drone strikes in Nagorno-Karabakh. Moscow had called on Azerbaijan to pull out its troops, and was "applying efforts" to move forces to their initial positions, it added.

Azerbaijan's authorities were not immediately available for comment.

WARSAW, March 26 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with top Ukrainian government officials in Warsaw on Saturday, and branded Russian President Vladimir Putin a "butcher" during a meeting with refugees who have fled the war in Ukraine to the Polish capital.

On the second day of a visit to Poland, Biden dropped in on a meeting between Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.