Europe

18 Jan 2023; MEMO: Denmark said it is optimistic that the United Arab Emirates, which hosts this year's UN climate talks, will push for ambitious action to curb climate change at the conference, following criticism from activists over the oil-producing nation's role, Reuters reports.

MOSCOW, January 18. /TASS/: The Bank of Russia starts setting official rates of the ruble against nine more foreign currencies from January 18, the regulator said on Wednesday.

"The UEA dirham, the Thai bath, the Vietnamese dong, the Serbian dinar, the New Zealand dollar, the Georgian lari, the Indonesian rupiah, the Egyptian pound, and the Qatari rial were additionally included in the list of foreign currencies, with their official rates against the ruble set by the Bank of Russia," the Central Bank said.

MOSCOW, January 18. /TASS/: Turkey supports normalizing relations with Syria and has asked for Russia’s assistance on the issue with a trilateral meeting of foreign ministers being in the works, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a press conference on Russian diplomacy in 2022 on Wednesday.

MOSCOW, January 18. /TASS/: Western borders of the Union State and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) are reliably protected, and a barrier for NATO forces have has been created thanks to the joint forces group, deployed in Belarus, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement ahead of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s working visit to Belarus.

GENEVA, January 18. /TASS/: Budapest is not supplying weapons to Kiev because it is concerned about the safety of ethnic Hungarians in western Ukraine, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told the CNBC TV channel on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

ST. PETERSBURG, January 18. /TASS/: Russia’s victory is unavoidable, it is based on the unity of the Russian people, the heroism of special operation fighters and the operation of the military-industrial complex (MIC), Russian President Vladimir Putin said during his visit to the Obukhov State Plant (an Almaz-Antey subsidiary) Wednesday.

The head of state noted that the Russian military-industrial complex produces as many air defense missiles as all world producers combined. In addition, Putin noted a number of other components that assure him of Russia’s victory.

LUETZERATH, Germany, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Environmental activist Greta Thunberg swiftly resumed campaigning on Wednesday after she was briefly detained in Germany during a protest against a coal mine expansion, tweeting that protecting the climate was not a crime.

"Yesterday I was part of a group that peacefully protested the expansion of a coal mine in Germany. We were kettled by police and then detained but were let go later that evening," tweeted Thunberg, whose whereabouts are unclear.

"Climate protection is not a crime."

MOSCOW, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that the United States was attempting to "contain" both Russia and China with the help of other countries, but they were alert to its "games".

Lavrov told a news conference that the West saw both countries as a threat - Russia right now, and China in the longer term as a systemic rival.

He said Washington was not powerful enough to keep in check both countries at once, so was mobilising Europe, Japan and others to join it.

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Ukraine needs a "significant increase" in weapons at a pivotal moment in Russia's invasion and such support is the only way to a negotiated peaceful solution, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday.

Defence leaders from around 50 countries and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will hold talks at Germany's Ramstein Air Base on Friday, the latest in a series of meetings since Russian forces swept into Ukraine nearly 11 months ago.

Jan 18 (Reuters) - The increasingly prominent head of the Russian private military group Wagner on Wednesday took aim at the Kremlin administration for failing to block the U.S.-owned video sharing platform YouTube.

"YouTube is the information plague of our time," Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a statement posted on his Telegram channel, alleging, without evidence, that 40% of the videos on the platform were "politicised and directed against Russia".