Europe

SIRET, Romania (AP) — One man was detained in Poland suspected of raping a 19-year-old refugee he’d lured with offers of shelter after she fled war-torn Ukraine. Another was overheard promising work and a room to a 16-year-old girl before authorities intervened.

Another case inside a refugee camp at Poland’s Medyka border, raised suspicions when a man was offering help only to women and children. When questioned by police, he changed his story.

12 March 2022; MEMO: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday ordered the transport of volunteer fighters from the Middle East to fight alongside the Russian army in Ukraine.

Putin held an online meeting with Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu as part of the Security Council meeting, where he received a briefing on the latest situation in Ukraine.

12 March 2022; MEMO: Palestinian-French activist Hussam Kamal has said that the dissolution of pro-Palestine NGOs in France is likely related to Zionist lobbying, Quds Press reported on Friday.

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin announced on Wednesday that Palestine Vaincra and Comité Action Palestine "incite violence and provoke terrorist attacks" and would be dissolved in "accordance with the president of the republic".

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia’s airplanes and artillery widened their assault on Ukraine on Friday, striking airfields in the west and a major industrial hub in the east, as Moscow’s forces tried to regroup from recent losses and their onslaught fast reduced crowded cities to rubble.

11 March 2022; MEMO: Some 86 Turkish citizens are sheltering in a mosque in the besieged southern Ukrainian port of Mairupol, as Russian forces continue shelling the city, the Ukrainian Embassy in Ankara said today according to Reuters.

Citing local authorities, the embassy said Russian forces had been shelling the city, including the mosque, since the early morning hours. It said 34 of the Turkish citizens hiding there were children.

12 March 2022; MEMO: High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell announced on Friday that Iran and world powers would suspend talks to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement in the Austrian capital, Vienna. According to Borrell, the talks have been suspended due to "external factors" after Russian demands threatened to ruin the talks at the last minute.

LVIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian officials accused Russia damaging a cancer hospital and several residential buildings in the southern city of Mykolaiv with shelling from heavy artillery.

The hospital’s head doctor, Maksim Beznosenko, said several hundred patients were in the hospital during the attack but that no one was killed. The assault damaged the building and blew out windows.

Russian forces have stepped up their attacks on Mykolaiv, located 470 kilometers (292 miles) south of Kyiv, in an attempt to encircle the city.

LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces appeared to make progress from northeast Ukraine in their slow fight to reach the capital, Kyiv, while tanks and artillery pounded places already under siege with shelling so heavy it prevented residents of one city from burying the growing number of dead.

MOSCOW, March 11. /TASS/: The Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Information Technologies and Mass Communications decided to restrict access to Instagram in view of calls spread for violence against Russians, including servicemen, the watchdog said on its website on Friday.

"By virtue of the requirement of the Russian Office of General Prosecutor, access to Instagram social media (owned by Meta Platforms, Inc.) will be limited on the territory of the Russian Federation," the regulator said.

MOSCOW, March 11. /TASS/: Russia in the near future should launch official procedures of leaving the Council of Europe this year, the chairman of the State Duma’s international affairs committee, Leonid Slutsky, said on Friday.