Europe

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Concerns around civilian safety spiked in Ukraine on Saturday, as officials announced that an inspection had found nearly a quarter of the country’s air-raid shelters locked or unusable, just days after a woman in Kyiv allegedly died waiting outside a shuttered shelter during a Russian missile barrage.

The Ukrainian interior ministry said through its press service Saturday that of the “over 4,800” shelters it had inspected, 252 were locked and a further 893 “unfit for use.”

BERLIN (AP) — A senior United Arab Emirates official says the Gulf nation wants the U.N. climate summit it’s hosting later this year to deliver “game-changing results” for international efforts to curb global warming, but doing so will require having the fossil fuel industry at the table.

BUDAPEST, June 2. /TASS/: Hungary's policy will be determined on the basis of its geographical position within the triangle of three countries - Russia, Germany and Turkey, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on the radio station Kossuth.

He believes that the attention of Budapest, as the capital of a European country, should be focused on the three centers of political and economic power - Moscow, Berlin and Ankara.

"Russia, Germany, Turkey - our life is within this triangle - and it is in this triangle that the lives of Hungarians must be governed well," Orban said.

BELGRADE, June 2. /TASS/: The West made a mistake by recognizing the independence of self-declared Kosovo and providing unilateral support to the Pristina authorities, Petr Bystron, a Bundestag member for the Alternative for Germany party said.

BERLIN, June 2. /TASS/: The German Cabinet is aware of the reports about a possible Ukrainian suspect in the blowups of Nord Stream gas pipelines but will not comment on them until the end of the investigation, Cabinet spokesperson Christiane Hoffman told reporters on Friday.

"We certainly have taken note of this publication. I request patience until the actual completion of the investigation," Hoffman said. "We have no position [on this matter] at the moment," she noted.

WARSAW, June 2 (Reuters) - Poland's President Andrzej Duda said on Friday he would propose amendments to a law on undue Russian influence he signed this week, reacting to criticism that it could result in banning opposition politicians from public office.

Duda on Monday signed into law the bill proposed by the ruling party to let a panel investigate whether opposition parties allowed Poland to be unduly influenced by Russia. He said he would send it to the Constitutional Tribunal for review only after it comes into force.

MOSCOW, June 2 (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Friday that if Ukraine joined NATO then it would cause problems for many years to come, an issue he said many European Union countries understood though the United States ultimately called the tunes at the military alliance.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy pressed his case on Thursday for Ukraine to be part of the NATO military alliance and urged the alliance to provide security guarantees if membership were not possible for now.

KYIV, June 2 (Reuters) - Ukrainian forces in Kyiv said on Friday they shot down 36 Russian missiles and drones in and around the capital overnight, with two people injured by falling debris before authorities lifted air raid alerts across most of the country.

Russia has launched about 20 missile and drone attacks on Kyiv since the beginning of May, a surge in strikes that the government says appears aimed at derailing Ukraine's preparations for a major counter-offensive.

MOSCOW, June 1 (Reuters) - One of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov's close allies on Thursday publicly criticised Russia's most prominent mercenary, casting Yevgeny Prigozhin as a blogger who yells all the time about problems, drawing a stern rebuke from a top Wagner fighter.

Addressing Prigozhin in a video message using the diminutive of "Zhenya" and the familiar Russian form of you ("ty"), Adam Delimkhanov, a close ally of Kadyrov, told Prigozhin:

01 June 2023; MEMO: NATO Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Thursday he would soon travel to Turkiye to discuss Sweden's NATO membership, in a bid to close a process that has been delayed due to objections from member countries, Turkiye and Hungary, Reuters reports.

Speaking during a two-day meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Oslo, Stoltenberg said he had spoken earlier this week to Tayyip Erdogan, who was re-elected as Turkiye's President on Sunday.