Europe

BRUSSELS, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Estonia's prime minister said on Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin is enjoying the international attention generated by Russia's massive military drills on Ukraine's borders and is looking for a successful war to lift support at home.

Speaking to Reuters, Kaja Kallas also said the situation was extremely grave and that Moscow must not be given any kind of concessions as long as it maintained more than 100,000 troops near Ukraine. It would be a negotiation at gunpoint, she said.

STOCKHOLM, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Ericsson (ERICb.ST) informed the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) about an internal investigation into payments in Iraq when it signed a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) in 2019 to settle resolve separate corruption probes, sources familiar with the matter said.

The Swedish company's shares fell 14% on Wednesday over concerns that the company might be subject to another fine by the DoJ.

LISBON, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Thousands of Portuguese voters living across Europe will be asked to cast their ballots for a second time in March, the National Electoral Commission (CNE) has announced, delaying the swearing in of a new Socialist government elected on Jan. 30.

The partial rerun comes after the top court ruled on Tuesday that an informal agreement by political parties to scrap a requirement for voters to include a copy of their identity document with their mail-in ballot was "grossly illegal", deeming 157,000 such votes invalid.

AMSTERDAM/BANGKOK, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Myanmar's military junta is to take part in hearings at the top United Nations court in The Hague next week despite a complaint from political opponents that this could give it international recognition without legal standing.

The hearings complicate a jurisdictional dispute arising from Gambia's claim filed in 2019 at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the World Court, accusing Myanmar of genocide against its minority Muslim Rohingya population.

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leader held a short summit meeting Thursday to push the chances of diplomacy to unlock the standoff over Ukraine and reaffirm their joint determination to impose massive sanctions if Russia invades its neighbor.

The hastily called summit preceded a two-day EU-Africa meeting which brought the 27 EU leaders to Brussels. It did not go into deep detail of what sanctions should be used and how those measures would hit the economies of the member states.

PARIS (AP) — Two words, taboo for many in France because they evoke a conspiracy theory embraced by white supremacists, have been haunting the French presidential campaign.

“Great replacement” rolls off the tongue of presidential candidate Eric Zemmour, an outsider with views to the right of the far-right who has made the term the underpinning of his campaign. But when mainstream conservative presidential candidate Valerie Pecresse pronounced them at her first major rally last weekend, politicians and pundits screamed foul, saying she had crossed a red line.

16 Feb 2022; MEMO: A coalition of civilian society, human rights and religious organisation in the UK have stepped up the coordination of opposition activities against a controversial law which is currently being debated in parliament.

The Nationality and Borders Bill which has already passed its third and final reading in the House of commons will give the Home Secretary the right to strip Britons with foreign ancestry of their nationality without notice.

MOSCOW (AP) — Ivan Malyuta, a resident of Donetsk, a city in eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed separatists, applied for Russian citizenship this month and said he, his wife and three children will soon be getting Russian passports.

“I want to be a citizen of the Russian Federation. We are moving towards this, aren’t we?” he said at a Donetsk migration service office.

17 Feb 2022; MEMO: French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said yesterday that a decision on salvaging Iran's 2015 nuclear deal was just days away and that it was now up to Tehran to make the political choice.

Indirect talks between Iran and the United States on reviving the nuclear deal resumed last week, after a ten-day break.

Officials from Britain, France, Germany and Russia have been shuttling between the two sides in an effort to bridge the gaps.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — NATO allies accused Russia of misleading the world by saying it was returning some troops to bases, reporting that Moscow has instead added as many as 7,000 more forces near its tense border with Ukraine. The alliance warned Thursday that the buildup has only strengthened its resolve.