List of All Articles with Tag 'europe'

TENERIFE, Canary Islands, Spain More people were evacuated from their homes on the Spanish island of Tenerife on

The newfound presence of Wagner mercenaries in Belarus, exiled from Russia after their mutinous march on Moscow, has fuelled fresh anxieties in Ukraine and on Nato’s eastern flank. Belarus’s neighbours have moved to a heightened state of alert since dictator Alexander Lukashenko appeared to broker a last-minute deal with the Kremlin to defuse the shortlived mutiny on 23 June and host Wagner troops on Belarusian soil. During a recent meeting at the strategically important Suwalki Gap, a sparsely populated land corridor near their countries’ borders with Belarus and Russia’s enclave of Kaliningrad, Lithuania’s president Gitanas Nauseda warned that north of 4,000 mercenaries were believed to be in Belarus, while Poland’s premier Mateusz Morawiecki branded them “extremely dangerous”. Poland is sending 10,000 troops to its eastern border, and this week held its largest military parade in decades, as it warned that Wagner mercenaries had moved towards Grodno and set up camp in the Brest region, some six miles from Poland’s border. A group associated with Ukraine’s military has also warned that the construction of a “tent city” capable of housing 1,000 mercenaries some 15 miles from its border could be used to simulate a threat there, in a bid to detract from Kyiv’s efforts to make painstaking gains along the heavily mined frontline of Russia’s invasion in the south, and defend a push by Moscow’s forces near Kupiansk in the north. The true extent to which Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s guns for hire are now operating in Belarus – and their aims there – remains hard to determine. “We are dealing with layer upon layer of disinformation,” said Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House. “Not only the repeated information campaign trying to convince Ukraine that there is a renewed threat from the north, but also confusion over exactly what Wagner is doing, who they are reporting to, who they are following orders from, and where they might be.” These factors make it hard to distinguish how much of the threat is “manufactured” to pile pressure on Belarus’s neighbours, Mr Giles said, adding: “The simple answer is that we don’t know. We should watch what is actually being done rather than what is being said.” However, Mark Galeotti, director of the Mayak Intelligence consultancy, said he believed Ukraine’s military was not “in the slightest bit worried” about the threat of Wagner attempting to cross its northern border. Speaking of claims the mercenaries could try to cross into Poland or Ukraine, he said: “In some ways, Wagner is a victim of its brand name, and people are suggesting it’s going to do all types of crazy things that are totally beyond their capabilities, but also which frankly no one would even try.” Wagner has “lost all of its heavy equipment”, he added, with Russia’s defence ministry making “damn sure” to reclaim tanks and artillery handed to the mercenaries while in Ukraine, meaning “we’re talking about a bunch of guys with Kalashnikovs, rather than a sort of fully coherent mechanised force”. Citing reports that funding disputes have already seen some mercenaries bussed back to Russia, Mr Galeotti said Ukraine has “ample forces to stop 2,000 guys with guns wandering over” a border “carefully watched” due to its proximity to Kyiv, most likely including by Nato. While he believes Wagner would not pose much of a direct threat even if better equipped, Nick Reynolds, the Royal United Services Institute’s research fellow for land warfare, said the possibility of disruption “can’t be discounted”. Read more: Wagner tracker: Charting Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mercenary group through the Ukraine war Wagner’s presence – along with that of Belarusian and Russian forces – means Ukraine does have to devote some troops to guard the border, which already comes under “a lot of artillery and drone strikes”, albeit not as heavily as troops along frontlines in the Donbas and further south, he said. While Poland’s concerns have been stoked by Mr Lukashenko’s jibes that the country should thank him for constraining Wagner mercenaries he claimed wish to “[smash] up Rzeszow and Warsaw”, the Belarusian leader vowed in February that Minsk would only enter the war if attacked by Ukraine – despite reports of pressure from Vladimir Putin to do so. Mr Reynolds said he did not foresee any real threat from Belarus this year due to the weakness of Minsk’s military and Russia’s presence there being “just not strong enough to credibly pose a threat of opening a second front” – although Moscow’s mobilisation efforts mean “that might change in time”. “Something I’d watch much more closely in the short-term is Wagner’s international footprint,” he said, adding that the group’s compromised position within Russia itself could see it lean more heavily on its activities in Africa and the Middle East, which are of “enormous value diplomatically” to the Kremlin. Mr Giles also warned that “forces taking orders from Russia or Belarus do not need to be large or well-equipped to cause disruption”. He pointed to the “migrant dumping campaign” initiated by Belarus in 2021, with its Baltic neighbours in Warsaw, Vilnius and Riga once again accusing Minsk in recent days of sending asylum-seekers en masse to the border to in a bid to pile pressure on them. And he highlighted the power of Wagner “as an information weapon”, whether to distract Ukraine or “throw some kind of provocation with Poland to try to back the fiction that Lukashenko presents to his people of Poland being an aggressive and threatening neighbour.” Dr Marina Miron, of King’s College London’s war studies department, agreed that an attempted incursion doesn’t make “any kind of sense” logistically, saying: “I think it’s more of a kind of psychological operation than anything else. At least for now.” While the risk is currently low, “at some point, they will be returning to Ukraine”, said Dr Miron. “That’s when there will be a definite threat.” Read More Wagner mercenaries issue a chilling message on Poland’s doorstep: ‘We are here’ Ukraine’s intelligence service claims responsibility for Crimean Bridge drone attack Lithuania to temporarily close two checkpoints with Belarus amid tensions on border Wagner tracker: Charting Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mercenary group through the Ukraine war

President Vladimir Putin traveled to the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District for the first time since June’s

The Kremlin’s efforts to paralyze Ukrainian food shipments are succeeding, with a third of the country’s crop exports

The number of troops killed or wounded in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion is approaching 500,000, according to US officials, in a harrowing estimate not accounting for civilian deaths. Russia’s military casualties are approaching 300,000, including as many as 120,000 deaths, while may Ukraine have lost 70,000 troops, with between 100,000 and 120,000 injured, officials in Washington were reported as saying on Friday by the New York Times. More follows...

Poland’s central bankers postponed next month’s interest-rate meeting, an unexpected move that shifts a potentially landmark decision to

Henry Gabay, founder of now defunct London-based asset manager Duet Group, told a German court that he’s innocent

Firefighters are battling to try to bring the worst wildfire in decades on Tenerife under control. Fernando Clavijo, regional leader of the Canary Islands, said: "The fire and the weather have behaved in a more normal fashion after showing very unusual behaviour earlier. We've managed to work more intensely during the night... preparing containment lines on the ground," he told a news conference. The fire in the north of the Spanish Canary Island, which started late on Tuesday, has forced the evacuation or confinement of nearly 8,000 people in eight municipalities. "The good news is that there have been no new evacuations," added Mr Clavijo. He has called the wildfire the most complex the Atlantic Ocean archipelago has faced in 40 years, due to a combination of hot, dry and windy weather, as well as difficult terrain. Images and videos posted on social media showed the flames coming down the hill close to houses in small neighbourhoods and a massive cloud of smoke rising from the area. The fire is located up in a pine wooded mountain area with several municipalities on its flanks, including Arafo and Candelaria to the east, and La Orotava to the west. Army captain Rafael San Jose told Spanish National Television that some progress had been made overnight into Friday stopping the fire's spread but that rising temperatures during the day was increasing the difficulty for those fighting the blaze. The Canary Islands have been in drought for most of the past few years, just like most of mainland Spain. The islands have recorded below-average rainfall in recent years because of changing weather patterns impacted by the climate crisis. Mr Clavijo said the blaze, which has scorched 3,200 hectares (7,900 acres), was still very virulent but that fortunately there had been no injuries so far. He said Friday's efforts would be crucial to containing the fire. He said the combination of extreme temperatures and the fire had turned the area into a virtual oven. The north of the island was forecast to have a maximum temperature of 30C (84F) on Friday with light winds but temperatures were set to rise further over the weekend. The flames cover a perimetre of 40 kilometres (25 miles) encircling some 4,000 hectares (10,000 acres) of land. Nearly 300 firefighters and Spanish army soldiers are in the area, which is around 20 kilometres (12 miles) away from its main town, Santa Cruz. Tenerife is one of Europe's main tourist destinations. Its tourism office has stressed that the most popular tourist areas are far from the fire. Business continues as usual in hotels, beaches and other tourist sites near the coast and in the midlands, the office said. But access to the Teide National Park, one of the biggest tourist attractions in Tenerife after the beaches, was closed on Thursday evening and all tourist facilities around the Teide volcano area, including accommodation, were to be evacuated. The seven-island archipelago is located off the north-west coast of Africa and south-west of mainland Spain. More than 2,000 people were evacuated in a wildfire on the nearby La Palma island last month that affected some 4,500 hectares (11,000 acres). Wildfires have burned almost 64,000 hectares (158,000 acres) in Spain in the first seven months of the year, according to Spanish government data. That's the third highest figure in the last decade. Spain accounted for almost 40 per cent of the nearly 800,00 hectares (2 million acres) burned in the European Union in 2022, according to the European Forest Fire Information System. Associated Press Read More Mapped: Where are the wildfires in Tenerife?

The European Union warned that China’s actions in Hong Kong and Macao are eroding the autonomy of those

European stocks fell on Friday to their lowest level in more than five weeks, as concerns over higher

Barclays Plc named new executives to its top management in India, a major overseas market for the lender,

A building in central Moscow has been damaged in a drone attack in the early hours today, causing a “powerful explosion” heard across the business district of the Russian capital. Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the drone was shot down by Russian air defence systems but that debris from the exploded drone fell on the city’s Expo Center, less than 5km (3.1 miles) from the Kremlin. A video published by Russian media outlets showed thick smoke rising next to skyscrapers. The Russian defence ministry blamed the “Kyiv regime” for carrying out the “terrorist attack” but added that there were no casualties in the strike. “The UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), after being targeted by air defence weapons, changed its flight path and fell on a non-residential building in the Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment area of Moscow,” the ministry said. It comes as the United States approved sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine from Denmark and the Netherlands to defend against Russia’s invading forces, as soon as pilot training is completed. Read More Ukraine’s intelligence service claims responsibility for Crimean Bridge drone attack Wagner mercenaries issue a chilling message on Poland’s doorstep: ‘We are here’ What are cluster bombs and why are they banned in some countries?