Europe

KYIV, July 11 (Reuters) - Russia launched attacks on Ukraine's capital Kyiv, the Black Sea port of Odesa and the southern region of Kherson on Tuesday before the start of a NATO summit in Lithuania where security threats from Moscow were on the agenda.

July 11 (Reuters) - As rebellious Wagner forces drove north toward Moscow on June 24, a contingent of military vehicles diverted east on a highway in the direction of a fortified Russian army base that holds nuclear weapons, according to videos posted online and interviews with local residents.

VILNIUS, July 10 (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Monday agreed to forward to parliament Sweden's bid to join the NATO military alliance, appearing to end months of drama over an issue that had strained the bloc as war has raged in Ukraine.

Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership last year, abandoning their policies of military non-alignment that had lasted through the decades of the Cold War in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

July 11 (Reuters) - A Russian military official who had commanded a submarine in the Black Sea and appeared on a Ukrainian blacklist of alleged war criminals has been shot dead by an unknown assassin while on his morning run.

Russia's top investigative body said Stanislav Rzhitsky, 42, was gunned down early on Monday in the southern city of Krasnodar.

Rzhitsky's address and personal details appeared on the Ukrainian website Myrotvorets (Peacemaker), a vast unofficial database of people considered to be enemies of Ukraine.

BRUSSELS (AP) — Protesters and legislators converged on the European Union parliament Tuesday as the bloc prepared a cliffhanger vote on protecting its threatened nature and shielding it from disruptive environmental change, in a test of the EU’s global climate credentials.

REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) — Authorities in Iceland on Tuesday warned tourists and other spectators to stay away from a newly erupting volcano that is spewing lava and noxious gases from a fissure in the country’s southwest.

The eruption began Monday afternoon after thousands of earthquakes in the area, meteorological authorities said. This one comes 11 months after its last eruption officially ended. The eruption is in an uninhabited valley near the Litli-Hrútur mountain, some 30 kilometers (19 miles) southwest of the capital, Reykjavik.

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday hailed an agreement for Sweden to join NATO as more work remained to determine a path forward for Ukraine’s future with the alliance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticized as “absurd” the absence of a timetable for his country’s entry.

Biden described the summit as a “historic moment” and said the United States agreed with a proposal, yet to be released publicly, to outline a path for Ukraine’s eventual membership.

10 July 2023; MEMO: Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has returned home from a visit to Turkiye, with five commanders of Ukraine's former garrison in Mariupol, a move Russia said violated the terms of a prisoner exchange deal engineered last year, Reuters reports.

According to the report, Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on Saturday that Ankara had promised under the exchange agreement to keep the men in Turkiye and complained that Moscow had not been informed of the move.

MOSCOW, July 10. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin had a nearly three-hour-long meeting with Yevgeny Prigozhin and PMC Wagner commanding officers in the Kremlin on June 29, Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.

Commenting on a piece by the Liberation newspaper about Putin’s meeting with Prigozhin after what happened on June 24, the Kremlin spokesman said, "The president did hold such a meeting."

YEKATERINBURG, July 10. /TASS/: Foreign partners remain interested in cooperating with Russia, despite all the attempts to cut it from global supply and payment chains, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said at the plenary session of the Innoprom international industrial exhibition.

"We see the interest in the Russian economy is not merely keeping but is growing, despite all the attempts of opponents to cut us from global manufacturing chains, logistical routes and systems of financial payments," the Prime Minister said.