Europe

PRAGUE (AP) — The Czech government approved a Defense Ministry plan on Wednesday to acquire 246 CV90 armoured combat vehicles as part of a massive modernisation of the military amid the Russian war against Ukraine.

Defense Minister Jana Cernochova said the deal to get the infantry fighting vehicles made by Sweden’s BAE Systems Hägglunds AB is worth 59.7 billion Czech crowns ($2.7 billion).

The ministry signed the deal with the Swedish side on Wednesday.

Cernochova said the first CV90s should be delivered in 2026 and all of them by 2030.

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Senior judge Ioannis Sarmas was named caretaker prime minister in Greece Wednesday after a general election failed to produce a new government.

Sarmas, 66, will be sworn in Thursday and lead a caretaker government until a new election next month, according to government officials. The vote is widely expected to be held on June 25 but has not been formally confirmed.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The Polish ruling party is pushing for the creation of a commission which it says would investigate Russian influence in Poland. Critics view it as an attempt to create a powerful and unconstitutional tool that would help the party continue to wield power even if it loses elections this fall.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Two environmental activists told the Vatican’s criminal court on Wednesday they never intended to damage an ancient statue in the Vatican Museums when they glued their hands to its marble base, in one of a series of flash protests across Europe to draw attention to climate change.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The head of the Russian private army Wagner says his force lost more than 20,000 men in the drawn-out battle for Bakhmut, with about half of those who died in the eastern Ukrainian city being Russian convicts recruited to fight in the 15-month-old war.

The figure stood in stark contrast to the widely disputed claims from Moscow that just over 6,000 of its troops were killed throughout the war as of January. By comparison, official Soviet troop losses in the 1979-89 Afghanistan war were 15,000.

MOSCOW, May 23. /TASS/: Russia is coming together as a country at this important moment in history, and national pride is on the rise, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday.

BUDAPEST, May 23. /TASS/: Ukraine will not be able to prevail in the conflict with Russia, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Tuesday, noting an unwillingness by NATO to deploy alliance troops to Ukraine and urging that a peaceful settlement be reached as soon as possible.

GENEVA, May 23 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A new pandemic accord under negotiation must be a “historic agreement” marking a dramatic shift in the approach to global health security after the Covid crisis, the WHO chief said.

“We cannot simply carry on as we did before,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said as he opened the World Health Organization’s annual assembly in Geneva.

WHO’s member states have begun negotiations towards an international agreement aimed to ensure the world is better equipped to prevent or more effectively respond the next time a pandemic hits.

GENEVA, May 23 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The World Health Organization won basic approval for a $6.83-billion budget over the next two years, including a 20-percent hike in mandatory membership fees.

As the UN health agency kicked off its annual decision-making assembly, member states in a key committee approved the budget without objection.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus hailed the move as “historic and a big milestone”.

The budget still needs to be approved by all the member states at the end of the 10-day event, but this is basically a formality.

KYIV, May 23 (Reuters) - Ukraine's foreign minister began a tour of African countries this week, stepping up wartime Kyiv's diplomatic push to challenge Russian influence in the "Global South" and cement the vision laid out by Ukraine as the only path to peace.

Top diplomat Dmytro Kuleba said his main priority was to get African countries to endorse President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's peace plan as he travelled to Morocco on his second tour of Africa since Russia invaded in February last year.