Europe

KIEV, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said his country may receive F-16 fighter jets in the first half of 2024, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported Thursday.

"Under the optimistic scenario, I think, it will be the first half of next year," Kuleba said.

The F-16 jets will be delivered to Ukraine after Ukrainian pilots complete the training courses and appropriate infrastructure is arranged, Kuleba said.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A court in Amsterdam sentenced a Polish-Canadian national to two months in prison on Thursday for projecting a message alluding to an antisemitic conspiracy theory onto the Anne Frank House museum.

Robert Wilson was charged with insulting a group and inciting discrimination for using a laser projector in February to display the words “Ann (sic) Frank invented the ballpoint pen” on the side of the canal house where the Jewish teenager hid with her family during the Holocaust.

MOSCOW, October 16. /TASS/: The State Duma has adopted a law on the withdrawal of Russia’s ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

The document cancels Article 1 of the law On the Ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which contains a provision on the ratification of the treaty signed on behalf of Russia in New York on September 24, 1996. The title of the federal law On the Ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is changed to On the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

TBILISI, October 18. /TASS/: The parliament of Georgia failed to impeach President Salome Zourabichvili as the proposal didn’t collect enough votes, according to a live broadcast of the voting.

The 86-1 vote meant the impeachment failed as it required the support of at least 100 lawmakers of the total of 150.

The parliamentary opposition did not participate in the vote to rule out the possibility for some of its members to collude with the ruling Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia party, which came up with the impeachment bid.

MOSCOW, October 18. /TASS/: Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has instructed the relevant agencies to coordinate with Belarusian law enforcement bodies to initiate a formal request to Interpol and Canada for the extradition of war criminal Yaroslav Hunka, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.

MOSCOW, October 18. /TASS/: Russian forces have destroyed over 8,000 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles since the start of the special military operation in Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Wednesday.

MOSCOW, Oct 18 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Russia and the United Arab Emirates called Tuesday for an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting following the deadly strike on a hospital in the Gaza Strip that left at least 200 dead.
 
“Russia and the United Arab Emirates have called for an urgent public meeting of the United Nations Security Council in the morning of October 18 over the strike on a Gaza hospital,” the Russian ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyanski, said on Telegram.
 

Oct 18 (Reuters) - Washington's decision to send long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine was a grave mistake that will have serious consequences, Russia's ambassador to the U.S. said on Wednesday, after Kyiv said it used the weapons for the first time.

"The consequences of this step, which was deliberately hidden from the public, will be of the most serious nature," , Ambassador Anatoly Antonov said on the Telegram messaging app.

MOSCOW, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Rare footage was shown on Wednesday of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing accompanied by officers carrying the so-called nuclear briefcase which can be used to order a nuclear strike.

Putin, after a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, was filmed walking to another meeting surrounded by security and followed by two Russian naval officers in uniform each carrying a briefcase. The camera zooms in on one of the briefcases.

MOSCOW, Oct. 18 (Xinhua) -- Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday denounced the strike on a hospital in the Gaza Strip a "monstrous" war crime, for which the United States bears responsibility.

"The monstrous strike on a hospital in the Gaza Strip is undoubtedly a war crime," Medvedev wrote on his social media channel.