Europe

    President Vladimir Putin said ties between Russia and the United States appear to have worsened under Donald Trump in an interview released Wednesday as the countries' top diplomats met in Moscow. You can say that the level of trust on a working level, especially on the military side, has not improved but most likely worsened, Putin said in a transcript from an interview with Mir television posted by the Kremlin. The comments came out as U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov held tense talks following an alleged Syrian chemical attack and subsequent missile strike by Washington. Moscow and Washington are trying to figure each other out during the first visit by a senior member of Donald Trump's administration to Russia. The U.S. has bl...

    The European Parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt is calling on Theresa May to be “open” to a plan helping British people who want to retain EU citizenship after the UK leaves. Writing exclusively for The Independent, Mr Verhofstadt sends a clear and direct message to the Prime Minister that he wants the European Union to make a generous offer to people in the UK angry at losing EU privileges. In response to his article a government spokesman has now said that Ms May and Brexit Secretary David Davis are actually ready to discuss any proposals that are put forward. The European Parliament has already cemented into its formal negotiating guidelines its intention to explore what a potential offer to Brits might look like, with ideas including allowing them to ...

    Norwegian police said on Sunday they had destroyed a suspect ‘bomb-like’ device in the capital Oslo and made one arrest, on the heels of a deadly truck attack in neighbouring Sweden killed four people. Bomb disposal officers carried out a controlled explosion overnight Saturday, a Norwegian police statement said. Police cordoned off part of the busy Gronland district and evacuated local bars and restaurants after the crude device—described as having the capacity to cause only limited damage—was discovered Saturday evening. Norway’s PST police security agency is investigating. There were no immediate further details. The device was discovered a day after four people were killed and 15 injured after a truck rammed into shoppers in Stockholm. Swedish police have detained a 39...

    Policemen are seen guarding an area after several people were killed and injured after a truck crashed into a department store Ahlens, in central Stockholm, Sweden, April 7, 2017. A suspected terrorist targeted young children deliberately as he drove a hijacked lorry into a crowded shopping street in Stockholm, witnesses claimed last night. Infants’ buggies were sent flying through the air, one Swedish broadcaster reported, as the vehicle zigzagged along the pedestrianised Queen Street shopping district and embedded itself in the window of a department store. It swerved from side to side. It didn’t look out of control, it was trying to hit people, a second witness, Glen Foran, an Australian tourist, told Reuters. It hit people, it was terrible. It hit a pram with a kid in ...

    The Kremlin has condemned US Tomahawk strikes on a Syrian air base as an act of aggression and a violation of international law. Russian state news agencies on Friday said President Vladimir Putin regarded the military action against the base the US believes launched a deadly gas attack as an aggression against a sovereign state . . . under a far-fetched pretext. Earlier this week, Russia hit out at Washington after it accused Bashar al-Assad’s regime of perpetrating Tuesday’s chemical attack on civilians. Moscow insists the Syrian air force had hit a depot of chemical weapons produced by rebels fighting against government forces a claim rejected by the US. Dmitry Peskov, Mr Putin’s press secretary, said the Russian president viewed Washington’s action as an attempt to div...

    A van drove into a crowd of people outside a busy department store in central Stockholm on Friday, causing injuries, police said. Police received a call from SOS Alarm that a person in a vehicle has injured other people on Drottninggatan, police wrote on Twitter. The incident occurred just before 1300 GMT at the corner of the Ahlens department store and Drottninggatan, the city’s biggest pedestrian street, above-ground from Stockholm’s central subway station. Thick smoke was rising from the scene, while video images showed an area blocked off by police and crowds gathering around the police cordon. Helicopters could be heard hovering in the sky over central Stockholm, and a large number of police cars and ambulances were dispatched to the scene, witnesses said. While it wa...

    Russia's President Vladimir Putin is a popular figure who has dominated Russian politics for more than a decade. Recent Russian actions suggest a new stage of the Russian threat to Ukraine and potentially to the Caucasus, Belarus or the Baltic states as well that could presage a new large-scale military operation. First, in 2016, Russia created 25 division formations and 15 brigades, while raising manpower by only 10,000 men. This suggests the possibility that Russia may aim to wage protracted large-scale war using the Soviet model, with a Soviet-type army composed of “skeleton units” that existed solely on paper until they were called up as part of the process of mass mobilization. That such mobilization may be under consideration is apparent from the Kavkaz-2016 and othe...

    Two traffic police were killed in an attack by radical Islamists in the southern Russian city of Astrakhan, the regional governor said Tuesday, the day after a suicide bomber allegedly hit the Saint Petersburg metro. Last night, a group of radical Islamists... carried out a brazen attack on employees of the traffic police,’Alexander Zhilkin said in a statement. The culprits opened fire on them with firearms and fled. Unfortunately, two traffic police officers died on the spot. Astrakhan regional police said the incident occurred at about 1:00am local time (2200 GMT) after traffic police were dispatched to the scene of an accident. The attackers were in one of the cars involved in the accident. The police statement made no mention of the attackers’ motives or identity. The ...

    Germany’s Foreign Minister has cast doubt on Theresa May’s insistence that both a Brexit divorce deal and new free trade agreement with the EU can be completed by 2019. In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Sigmar Gabriel said new trade relations would be a laborious endeavour, suggesting the UK may have to settle for simply getting as far as we can in the two years allowed for talks. Mr Gabriel, also Angela Merkel’s Vice Chancellor, then said Ms May must give "certainty" that the UK will settle its Brexit divorce bill before talks begin on any future trade deal between Britain and Europe. As Mr Gabriel prepares to meet Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, he also dealt a further blow to the Prime Minister’s attempts to tie security to trade talks, saying the fight a...

    With the world's collective gaze and most certainly U.S. surveillance satellites fixed on North Korea's next potential nuclear test, it is past time to consider the horror that the so-called hermit kingdom could inflict on its neighbors if it actually went to war. Thanks to one of the largest standing armies on the planet with over 1.2 million men under arms and another 7.7 million in reserve and with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons carried by over 1,000 missiles, Pyongyang has the capability to kill millions of people and start a conflict that could quickly escalate into the next global catastrophe. How might such a war begin? The likely spark would involve some sort of unexpected crisis. For example, let's say in the not-too-distant future a North Korean missil...