Europe

MOSCOW, March 23. /TASS/: Russian publishing house AST, which has a contract with American writer Stephen King for the release of his books in Russian, has received official notification from the author’s agent about the temporary suspension of cooperation on new contracts, the press service of the publisher told TASS on Wednesday.

NOVO-OGAREVO, March 23. /TASS/: Russia will refuse to accept payment for natural gas supplies in ‘compromised’ currencies, including the dollar and the euro, and will move to payments in rubles, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday at the meeting with the Cabinet.

"I made the decision to implement within the shortest possible time the package of measures to transfer payments - we will start with that - for our natural gas supplied to the so-called ‘unfriendly’ states to Russian rubles," the President said.

BERLIN, March 23 (Reuters) - Nearly 239,000 refugees from Ukraine have been recorded in Germany so far, the German Interior Ministry said.

Federal police said 238,932 people - mostly women, children and the elderly - have arrived from Ukraine as of Wednesday, according to the ministry.

STOCKHOLM, March 23 (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will address the Swedish Parliament via video link on Thursday, the Swedish Parliament said in a statement.

The speech will start at 0955 GMT on Thursday.

LVIV, March 23 (Reuters) - The war in Ukraine has killed 121 children so far, the office of the prosecutor general said on Wednesday in a message on the Telegram app, adding that the number of wounded children stood at 167.

Reuters could not immediately verify the details.

MOSCOW, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday held a phone conversation with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, during which they discussed the situation in Ukraine.

"A thorough exchange of views on the situation in Ukraine, including on the ongoing negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian representatives, continued," the Kremlin said in a statement.

The phone conversation was held at the initiative of the French side, it added.

LONDON, March 23 (Xinhua) -- "The West, and especially America, is principally responsible" for the Ukraine crisis, John J. Mearsheimer, a U.S. political scientist, wrote in a recent opinion piece published in The Economist.

American and European policymakers provoked the Ukraine crisis by trying to integrate Ukraine into the West and asserting that Russian President Vladimir Putin bears full responsibility for the crisis, said Mearsheimer, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, "But that story is wrong."

LONDON (AP) — The Dubai government-owned ferry operator at the center of a bitter labor dispute in Britain says it didn’t break the law when it fired 786 crew members without advance notice because they all worked on ships registered outside the U.K.

P&O Ferries also acknowledged in a letter dated Wednesday that the way the dismissals were carried out caused distress for workers and said it had offered “generous compensation” to those involved.

(AP) --- The humanitarian needs of more than 10 million displaced Ukrainians have quickly become staggering. Yet Mark Malloch-Brown, president of the Open Society Foundations, warns that longer-term problems resulting from Russia’s invasion will grow ever larger if they aren’t sufficiently addressed now.

Experts report an “unprecedented” outpouring of aid for food, medicine and other essential needs of Ukrainians. Comparatively few donations, though, have been earmarked for maintaining Ukraine’s culture or democratic foundations.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian leaders accused Russia of seizing 15 rescue workers and drivers from a humanitarian convoy trying to get desperately needed food and other supplies into the bloodied port city of Mariupol, which also came under naval attack after weeks of air and land strikes.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy estimated that 100,000 civilians remained in Mariupol, scene of some of the war’s worst devastation, as Russia presses a nearly month-old offensive by bombarding cities and towns. Those made it out described a shattered city.