Europe

Washington, Mar 2 (AP) Moscow's war on Ukraine and the ferocious financial backlash it's unleashed are not only inflicting an economic catastrophe on President Vladimir Putin's Russia.

The repercussions are also menacing the global economy, shaking financial markets and making life more perilous for everyone from Uzbek migrant workers to European consumers to hungry Yemeni families.

Even before Putin's troops invaded Ukraine, the global economy was straining under a range of burdens: Surging inflation. Tangled supply chains. Tumbling stock prices.

ROME, February 26. /TASS/: The active anti-Russian sanctions, imposed in 2014, reduced European exports to Russia by over 22%, according to information, provided by the Confartigianato association of Italian small and medium businesses.

"Economic sanctions against caused European exports to this country to shrink by 22.2%; Italy was affected the most (minus 28.5%)," the association noted. "In eight years, our losses on the Russian market amount to €24.7 billion, or about €3 billion per year."

MOSCOW, March 1. /TASS/: Russia has not yet imposed its response measures to the Western sanction but people in the West already see what their countries’ anti-Russian sanctions are entailing, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday.

MINSK, March 1. /TASS/: Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko has said that signs of the West’s preparations for an aggression against Belarus and Russia have been in sight for a long time.

MOSCOW, March 1. /TASS/: The issue of using the International Space Station (ISS) after 2024 under sanctions causes skepticism, Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos told TASS on Tuesday.

"Roscosmos currently has a government permission for operating the ISS only until 2024. The issue of extending the agreement in the current conditions causes our skepticism," the Roscosmos press office said.

MOSCOW, March 1. /TASS/: Russia cannot but react to the real risk of Ukraine obtaining nuclear weapons, and it has been taking every measure to prevent this, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a video address to the Disarmament Conference.

He stressed that the Ukrainian side’s "irresponsible statements" regarding plans for obtaining nuclear weapons were not a "bravado".

LESBOS ISLAND (Greece), March 1 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Greek authorities said Tuesday the bodies of six people believed to be possible migrants have been found off the island of Lesbos, at a time when Athens stands accused of
rights abuses against irregular arrivals.

   The Greek coastguard said four bodies were found on the coast near the port of Mytilene and two others were taken from the water.

DUBLIN, March 1 (Reuters) - Ireland is likely to reconsider its tradition of military neutrality in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and may get more involved in common European Union defence policy, Deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Tuesday.

"This does require us to think about our security policy," Varadkar told RTE radio. "I don't see us applying to join NATO, but I do see us getting more involved in European defence."

VATICAN CITY, March 1 (Reuters) - The defence at a Vatican corruption trial failed definitively on Tuesday to have charges against their clients dropped and the judge ordered it to begin in earnest with the questioning of a cardinal.

Court President Giuseppe Pignatone issued a slew of rejections of defence motions and objections that had built up during the previous eight hearings of the trial, which began in July.

VIENNA, March 1 (Reuters) - A draft resolution being prepared for Wednesday's emergency meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog's board condemns Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a move that might anger Moscow while it works with the West to clinch a nuclear agreement on Iran.

Canada and Poland called the emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation Board of Governors, the agency's main decision-making body that convenes more than once a year, at Ukraine's request.