Europe

VIENNA, July 6 (NNN-XINHUA) — Energy and oil ministers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on Wednesday expressed support for the latest production cuts by Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Algeria.

   Saudi Arabia and Algeria are among OPEC’s 13 member states, and Russia is one of the organization’s 10 allies. The 23 countries form an oil-producer alliance called the “OPEC+.”

BUCHAREST, July 6 (Reuters) - Ukraine's on-off Black Sea grain deal has made the nearest port of Constanta in neighbouring Romania a key alternative that is set for volumes doubling its record years and months of delays with a domestic crop looming, industry experts and traders said.

Ukraine, one of the world's leading grain and oilseed exporters, saw its Black Sea ports blocked after Russia's invasion in February 2022.

MINSK, July 6 (Reuters) - Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko dismissed on Thursday a description that he was "Europe's last dictator", saying that he was not a dictator but that if he were, he would certainly not be the last.

Lukashenko, 68, has ruled Belarus with an iron fist since 1994 and in an interview with Reuters in 2012 had relished his notoriety as Europe’s last dictator.

MINSK, July 6 (Reuters) - Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday that the mutinous chief of Russia's Wagner group was still in Russia with thousands of fighters, but dismissed speculation that President Vladimir Putin would have Yevgeny Prigozhin killed.

Lukashenko helped broker a deal to end last month's mutiny, the gravest challenge to Putin in his 23 years in power, under which Prigozhin was supposed to stand down his mercenaries and move to Belarus in exchange for Putin dropping charges.

BRUSSELS (AP) — Senior officials from Sweden and Turkey arrived at NATO headquarters Thursday to examine Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s objections to the Nordic country joining the military alliance and to see what more, if anything, could be done to break the deadlock.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is leading the talks, which will involve the countries’ foreign ministers, intelligence chiefs and national security advisers. Top officials from Finland, which joined NATO in April after addressing Turkey’s concerns, planned to take part.

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia fired cruise missiles Thursday at a western Ukraine city far from the front line of the war, killing at least four people in an apartment building in what officials said was the heaviest attack on civilian areas of Lviv since the Kremlin’s forces invaded the country last year.

The nighttime attack destroyed the roof and the top two floors of a residential building, injuring 34 people. Emergency crews with search dogs went through the rubble.

MINSK, Belarus (AP) — The mercenary leader who led a short-lived mutiny against the Kremlin is in Russia and his Wagner troops are in their field camps, the president of Belarus said Thursday, raising new questions about the deal that ended the extraordinary challenge to President Vladimir Putin’s rule.

MOSCOW, July 5. /TASS/: Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has signed a decree relieving Sergey Mikhaylov of his post as director general of Russia’s TASS news agency, the Russian government’s press service announced.

Andrey Kondrashov has been appointed as the agency’s new head. Previously, he served as first deputy director general of the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK).

Mikhaylov has led Russia’s oldest news agency since 2012. He told a TASS correspondent that he would disclose his future professional plans in the near future.

MOSCOW, July 5. /TASS/: The special military operation would end in several days if the US and its vassals stop sending weapons to Ukraine, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday, answering a question from TASS.

"In NATO, primarily the US and its vassals, stop shipping weapons and munitions to Ukraine, the special military operation would end in several months; and if they stop shipping their weapons now, then the special op will end in mere days," Medvedev said.

MOSCOW, July 5. /TASS/: Ukraine is planning to conduct a terrorist attack on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), with potential consequences affecting the entire globe, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Sputnik radio on Wednesday.

"[Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky is going to conduct a terror attack on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant," the diplomat said.