Europe

MOSCOW, September 19. /TASS/: Russia sees an opportunity for a peace settlement between Baku and Yerevan in the implementation of the existing trilateral agreements, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has told the media.

"There is such an opportunity (for a peace settlement - TASS). The way we see it, it is the agreements that we rely on. We continue our contacts both with Baku and Yerevan," Peskov said.

MOSCOW, Sept 19 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin will meet China's Xi Jinping for talks in Beijing in October, Russia said on Tuesday, Putin's first known trip abroad since an arrest warrant was issued against him over the deportation of children from Ukraine.

Nikolai Patrushev, a close Putin ally and the secretary of Russia's Security Council, said Russia and China should deepen cooperation in the face of the West's attempt to contain them both.

KYIV, Sept 19 (Reuters) - Six people were killed in Russian attacks on Ukraine on Tuesday, including a drone strike that set ablaze industrial warehouses and destroyed humanitarian aid supplies in the western city of Lviv, officials said.

They said one person was killed in Lviv, three were killed in an attack on the northeastern town of Kupiansk, and two people, including a policeman, were killed in shelling of the southern city of Kherson.

KYIV, Sept 19 (Reuters) - Evidence suggests a deadly explosion at a busy market in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostiantynivka this month was caused by an errant missile fired by Ukraine, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.

Ukraine has said the Sept. 6 blast, which killed at least 16 people, was caused by a Russian missile.

VIENNA/KYIV, Sept 19 (Reuters) - In his years as the chief executive of one of Ukraine's biggest construction firms, Oleh Maiboroda kept rolls of dollar bills in a safe behind his desk.

The money, Maiboroda told Reuters, was intended to bribe public officials to approve building projects. The task of handing over the cash, he said, was entrusted to a lawyer named Oleh Tatarov, now a senior adviser to Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

LONDON, Sept. 19 (Xinhua) -- More than 1,000 officers of the Metropolitan Police (Met) have been dismissed, suspended, or placed on restricted duties amid what the force referred to as "the strongest doubling down on standards in 50 years."

According to the Met, 100 police officers have been dismissed for gross misconduct in the last 12 months.

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — Azerbaijan on Tuesday began what it called an “anti-terrorist operation” targeting Armenian military positions in the Nagorno-Karabakh region and officials in the area reported heavy artillery firing around its capital.

The Azerbaijani defense ministry announced the start of the operation hours after four soldiers and two civilians died in landmine explosions in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. The reports raised concerns that a full-scale war over the region could resume between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which fought heavily for six weeks in 2020.

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany (AP) — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin urged allied defense leaders Tuesday to “dig deep” and provide more air defense systems for Ukraine, to help the country block increasing barrages of Russian missiles.

But while the allies said they will discuss how they can best help Ukraine’s counteroffensive, they appeared no closer to commitments on the longer-range missiles that Kyiv’s leaders insist they need.

BERLIN (AP) — The German government on Tuesday banned the neo-Nazi group Hammerskins Germany and raided homes of dozens of its members. The group is an offshoot of an American ring-wing extremist group and plays a prominent role across Europe.

The Hammerskins Germany is an offshoot of the Hammerskins Nation founded in the United States in 1988, according to the interior ministry.

MOSCOW, September 18. /TASS/: There can be no losers where peace is concerned in Ukraine, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a dinner hosted by the Turkish American National Steering Committee in New York.

"We have achieved many diplomatic successes <…>. Believing that ‘there is no winner of a war, and a loser of a peace", we continue our efforts in a multifaceted manner," Erdogan said in a speech posted on the Turkish presidential office’s website.