Europe news

Europe news

Fighting Russian forces launched multiple attacks on Ukraine's Zaporizhia region, killing one person and injuring seven others over the past day, the region's military administration said on the Telegram messaging platform. The attacks involved 448 drones as well as 163 artillery strikes, causing damage to 136 homes, cars and other structures, the military administration said. Russian forces also continued shelling Ukraine's Donetsk region, forcing 173 people, including 135 children, to evacuate front-line areas over the past day, regional governor Vadym Filashkin said on Telegram.

Every time Nikita Filippov races, it's an uphill struggle. At the Olympics, even more so. The 23-year-old from Russia's far eastern Kamchatka peninsula is a medal contender in the rugged new Olympic sport of ski mountaineering sprinting up a slope and then skiing back down. At the Milan Cortina Olympics, he'll be one of the few Russians competing as Individual Neutral Athletes. They cannot wear any Russian symbols and won't hear the Russian national anthem if they win a gold medal.

Dozens are dead, and more than 100 are injured after a deadly fire at a ski resort in the Swiss Alps. Many of the dead are believed to be young men and women. They were celebrating the new year at a bar that caught fire. Switzerland's President Guy Parmelin has called the incident one of the worst tragedies in the country's history.

Investigators said Friday that they believe sparkling candles atop Champagne bottles ignited a fatal fire at a Swiss ski resort when they came too close to the ceiling of a bar crowded with New Year's Eve revelers. Authorities planned to look into whether sound-dampening material on the ceiling conformed with regulations and whether the candles, which give off a stream of upward-shooting sparks, were permitted for use in the bar.

POBUZKE, Ukraine In the middle of vast farm fields in southern Ukraine, you'll find what was once a secret Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile launch site. Today it's the Museum of Strategic Missile Forces. Aside from chronicling the Cold War arms race between the Soviet Union and United States, the museum tells the story of how Ukraine dismantled its nuclear weapons arsenal with assurances from the U.S., Britain and Russia that its sovereignty would be respected shortly after becoming an independent country in 1991.

Reuters noted that erlier this month, the two agencies unveiled a sweeping investigation into an alleged $100m kickback scheme at the stage atomic energy company, involving Zelenskyy's ex-business partner. While Yermak has not been named a suspect in the investigation, but opposition lawmakers and some members of Zelenskyy's own party had called for his dismissal as part of Ukraine's worst wartime political crisis, the agency said.