Europe

03 October 2023; MEMO: Turkiye has supplied Ukraine with heavy machine guns in its ongoing war against Russia, in a revelation which sheds further light on Ankara’s quiet support for Kyiv.

According to the London-based news outlet, Middle East Eye, which cited two anonymous sources familiar with the sale, Turkiye recently began supplying Canik M2 heavy machine gun models – from the private Turkish arms manufacturer, Canik – for apparent use by ground troops along with armoured vehicles.

MOSCOW, October 3. /TASS/: Russian air defenses have detected and destroyed a Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missile over the northwestern part of the Black Sea near Crimea, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

"At about 8:30 p.m. Moscow time on October 3, success was accomplished in stopping an attempt by the Kiev regime to perpetrate a terrorist attack with a Neptune anti-ship missile on facilities on the territory of the Russian Federation," the ministry said.

MOSCOW, October 3. /TASS/: Russia views Armenia’s ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as an ill-considered move in terms of bilateral relations, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"We doubt - and we have harbored doubts about this from the very start - that Armenia’s move to join the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court is a sound decision in terms of bilateral relations. We still believe that it was an ill-considered decision," he noted.

CHISINAU, October 3. /TASS/: Moldova is ready to purchase gas from Gazprom, but at a favorable price and without political conditions for Chisinau, the country’s Energy Minister Viktor Parlikov said.

YEREVAN, October 3. /TASS/: The ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) by Armenia’s parliament is not an unfriendly act against Russia or the Russian president, Hakob Arshakyan, the Vice-Speaker of the Armenian Parliament and Co-Chairman of the Armenian-Russian Inter-Parliamentary Commission, has said.

MINSK, October 3. /TASS/: President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said he had tasked the government to prepare papers on the project of a railway branch line to St. Petersburg before his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in October.

"I requested Deputy Prime Minister [Anatoly] Sivak and Prime Minister [Roman Golovchenko] to have prepared, so to say, presentation materials on all the bottlenecks in the direction of St. Petersburg - the railway, by my meeting with the President of Russia in the near time," Lukashenko said, cited by the BelTA news agency.

LONDON, Oct 3 (NNN-XINHUA) – Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak’s announcement of a delay to the phasing out of petrol-driven vehicles has been criticised by a committee of lawmakers in the House of Commons in the United Kingdom (UK), who called the move “disappointing.”

Philip Dunne, chair of the Parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee, fired a lengthy letter at Sunak yesterday.

BRUSSELS, Oct 3 (Reuters) - The European Union is considering unlocking billions of euros for Hungary that were frozen over rule-of-law concerns as it seeks to win Budapest's approval for aid to Ukraine including a start to membership talks for Kyiv, senior officials said.

Hungary cultivates closer ties with Russia than other EU states, and is seen as the key potential opponent to a decision due in December on whether to open accession talks with Kyiv, which would require unanimous backing of the union's 27 members.

MOSCOW, Oct 3 (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Tuesday that Russia had not abandoned a moratorium on nuclear testing, and dismissed a suggestion by the editor of a state television channel that Moscow should detonate a thermonuclear device in Siberia as a warning to the West.

President Vladimir Putin, who rules the world's biggest nuclear power, has repeatedly cautioned the West that any attack on Russia could provoke a nuclear response.

YEREVAN, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Armenian parliament approved on Tuesday the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) with 60 votes in favor and 22 against.

Following the ratification, the document is to be signed by the country's president and go into effect in 60 days after the completion of internal state procedures, Armenia's state-run news agency Armenpress reported.

Armenia is taking all steps to ensure its security in various ways, the country's MP Sargis Khandanyan, chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs, said after the ratification.