Europe

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s top executive said Friday that the bloc’s electricity market “is no longer operating” amid the Ukraine war, and proposed a price cap on Russian pipeline gas.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine for the energy crisis and the dramatic rise in gas and electricity prices.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The heavy rubber gas masks placed atop small wooden desks are nothing strange to these children as they file past the bomb shelter’s heavy iron door to attend classes in weapons theory.

Nearby, children giggle, trying to keep up with their English teacher as she sings and gestures “Head and shoulders, knees and toes. Knees and toes!” each repetition getting a little faster.

Unique in Ukraine, the children at Volodymyr the Great school Number 23 on the outskirts of Kyiv are training to become military cadets, starting at the age of 7.

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — Heavy fighting continued Friday near Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in a Russian-controlled area of eastern Ukraine, a day after experts from the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency voiced concerns about structural damage to the sprawling Zaporizhzhia site.

MINSK, September 1. /TASS/: Belarus expects to receive about $2 billion from Russia for joint import substitution projects, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday.

He said this while hosting an open lecture, which was broadcast live in all schools and universities of the country.

"[As for our] joint import substitution projects. Now Russia is allocating us about $2 billion for these joint projects," he said.

On the whole, Lukashenko said, in the near future Belarus and Russia will have "countless projects" in all areas.

MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/: The collective West unleashed a hybrid war against Russia in a shameless, rude and aggressive way, when it realized that the plans for turning Ukraine into "anti-Russia" had failed, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a meeting with students and teachers at the MGIMO University on Thursday, the first day of the new academic year.

MINSK, September 1. /TASS/: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday that a conflict is brewing in Ukraine between the military and the country’s president and that its peak should be expected in the near future.

"There is a conflict mounting between the president and military. Only military servicemen can say boldly: ‘We must reach an agreement otherwise Ukraine could be wiped off the face of the earth," Lukashenko revealed during an open discussion aired live on Thursday.

MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/: German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock's statement about the need for German citizens to suffer in order to support Ukraine was a ‘fantastic confession’, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday at a meeting with students and professors at Moscow State Institute of International Relations.

MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/: Russia will suspend supplies of oil and petroleum products to states, which will decide to restrict the price of oil from the country, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak told reporters on Thursday.

"As far as price restrictions are concerned, if they impose restrictions on prices, we will simply not supply oil and petroleum products to such companies or states that impose restrictions as we will not work non-competitively," he said.

MOSCOW, Sept 1 (NNN-TASS) – The Russian Foreign Ministry, announced yesterday that, an additional 55 Canadian citizens have been indefinitely barred from entering the country, in response to Ottawa’s anti-Russian sanctions.

In addition to the travel ban on these “high-ranking military, politicians and public figures,” the activities of three non-governmental organisations from Canada, are now recognised as undesirable in Russia, the ministry said.

Sept 1 (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned Moldova on Thursday that threatening the security of Russian troops in the breakaway region of Transdniestria risked triggering military confrontation with Moscow.

Russia has stationed peacekeeping troops in Transdniestria since the early 1990s, when an armed conflict saw pro-Russian separatists wrest most of the region from Moldovan control.