Europe

LONDON, April 18. /TASS/: UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed that he did not violate Covid-related restrictions in 2020 despite the fine he paid, the Times reported Sunday citing its source.

According to the report, Johnson will try to minimize the consequences of the scandal around the parties at Downing Street held at the peak of the first waves of the pandemic in his speech at the House Monday. He also plans to touch upon the new fines that the police imposed on him, his spouse Carrie and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak over the 2020 parties, the source said.

MOSCOW, April 18. /TASS/: Russia’s COVID-19 case tally rose by 9,434 over the past day to 18,084,151, the anti-coronavirus crisis center reported on Monday.

The country reports less than 10,000 daily cases for the first time since June 8, 2021. In relative terms, the growth rate reached 0.05%.

KIEV, April 18. /TASS/: Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk has called on Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine, to swap him for servicemen and Mariupol residents.

KIEV, April 18. /TASS/: Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky gave the head of the EU delegation in Kiev a completed questionnaire, which is a step for Ukraine to get the status of a candidate for EU membership, the Ukrainian presidential office said on Monday.

"President Vladimir Zelensky handed to Head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine Matti Maasikas a completed questionnaire for our country to obtain the status of a candidate for EU membership," according to a statement on the Ukrainian presidential website.

NOVO-OGARYOVO, April 18. /TASS/: The situation in the Russian economy is stabilizing, while the ruble’s exchange rate is returning to the levels of early February, President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting on economic issues on Monday.

"Russia has withstood this unprecedented pressure. The situation is stabilizing, the ruble’s exchange rate has returned to the levels of the first half of February and is being defined by the objectively strong payment balance," he said.

ROME, April 18 (Reuters) - A Ukrainian mayor described hours of "hard" interrogations when held for almost a week by Russian forces last month and said he had appealed to the pope for help to stop a war that had wrecked swathes of his city in southern Ukraine.

"It was a dangerous six days because I understood that for Russians my life and the lives of civilians were worth zero," Ivan Fedorov, mayor of Melitopol which is now under Russian control, said in Rome on Sunday, a month after his release.

KIEV, April 18 (Xinhua) -- Ukraine on Monday sent to the European Commission (EC) the first part of a questionnaire aimed at achieving candidate status for European Union (EU) membership, the Ukrinform news agency reported.

The 1,156-page document contains the answers to 374 questions regarding Ukraine's compliance with the criteria for EU membership in the political and economic spheres, it reported, citing the country's Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Olha Stefanishyna.

BRUSSELS, April 17 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) is allocating a further 50 million euros (about 54.03 U.S. dollars) of humanitarian aid to people affected by the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, according to a EU statement issued on Sunday.

Some 45 million euros (about 48.63 dollars) of the funding is allocated for humanitarian projects in Ukraine, and 5 million euros (about 5.4 dollars) to projects in neighboring Moldova, which has taken in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees since the start of the conflict.

ROME, April 18 (Xinhua) -- Italy's Prime Minister Mario Draghi has tested positive for COVID-19, the government said in a statement on Monday.

Draghi, 74, who is fully vaccinated, "is asymptomatic," according to the statement.

His schedule has been curtailed, including a planned trip to Angola and the Republic of the Congo scheduled for April 20-21. The statement said Draghi will be replaced by Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio and Ecological Transition Minister Roberto Cingolani for the trip.

PARIS (AP) — Paris prosecutors are studying a report by the European Union’s fraud agency accusing French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen and other members of her nationalist party of misusing public funds while serving in the European Parliament.

The report was disclosed by French investigative news site Mediapart days before Le Pen faces incumbent Emmanuel Macron in a runoff election Sunday that could determine Europe’s future direction. Le Pen’s party National Rally seeks to diminish the EU’s powers.