LONDON — The U.K. will end a tax exemption for private schools Wednesday, the center-left Labour government has announced, in a move set to raise over £1.5 billion ($1.9 billion) for…

TALLINN, ESTONIA — Belarus’ authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko pardoned 20 more people that rights activists describe as political prisoners, a statement on the president’s website said Saturday.  The announcement came amid…

LONDON — Olivia Hussey, the actor who starred as a teenage Juliet in the 1968 film “Romeo and Juliet,” has died, her family said on social media Saturday. She was 73. …

As Russia’s war against Ukraine enters its third year, centers focused on soldiers’ rehabilitation and mental health are appearing across Ukraine. An active serviceman started one such place in his…

MOSCOW / CHISINAU, MOLDOVA — Russian energy giant Gazprom said Saturday it would suspend gas exports to Moldova from 0500 GMT on Jan. 1 due to unpaid debt by Moldova, which…

ISTANBUL — A delegation from Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish DEM party is due on Saturday to visit jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving a life sentence on a prison island…

Ukraine said on Saturday it had struck a storage and maintenance depot for long-range Shahed drones in Russia’s Oryol region, adding that this had “significantly reduced” Russia’s ability to launch…

VOA Russian spoke with U.S. officials, politicians and experts to see how U.S. relations with China and Russia could change under the incoming Donald Trump administration. Experts say Beijing may…

VOA Russian speaks to aviation expert Konstantin Kryvolap, who takes apart Moscow’s official versions of the crash of the Russia-bound Azerbaijan Airlines plane in Kazakhstan and says a Russian missile…

DAKAR, SENEGAL — Senegal has announced the closure of all foreign military bases, without setting a timeline for the exit of foreign troops. Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko made the announcement Friday…

Nearly 31,000 Syrians have returned home since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad earlier this month, Turkey’s interior minister said Friday. Turkey is home to nearly 3 million…

FRANKFURT, Germany — German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Friday ordered parliament dissolved and set new elections for Feb. 23 in the wake of the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s governing coalition.  …

STOCKHOLM — Estonia’s armed forces have launched a naval operation to protect the Estlink 1 undersea power cable in the Baltic Sea in response to the damage this week of a…

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — South Korea’s spy agency said Friday it had confirmed that a North Korean soldier sent to back Russia’s war against Ukraine had been captured by Ukrainian forces.…

CHISINAU, MOLDOVA — The parliament in ex-Soviet Moldova, controlled by pro-Western lawmakers, approved a 10-year defense strategy on Thursday calling for increased military spending as part of a plan to join…

The Kremlin completed preparations to isolate the Russian segment of the internet from the rest of the World Wide Web, experts told VOA Russian. The Kremlin may implement severe internet…

Both Russia and Ukraine expanded the use of drones in 2024 as a relatively cheap means of warfare that requires an opponent to use a much more expensive air defense…

FRANKFURT, GERMANY — Finnish authorities have detained a Russia-linked ship as they investigate whether it damaged a Baltic Sea power cable and several data cables, according to police and news media…

Azerbaijan on Thursday observed a nationwide day of mourning for the victims of the plane crash that killed 38 people and left all 29 survivors injured as speculation mounted about…

Moscow — A “terrorist act” sank the cargo ship that went down in international waters in the Mediterranean this week, the Russian state-owned company that owns the vessel said Wednesday. The…

LILLE, FRANCE — French authorities said they rescued 107 migrants trying to cross the Channel from France to England on Wednesday. Over the course of Christmas Day, 12 rescue operations were…

ISTANBUL — In a dim one-room apartment in one of Istanbul’s poorest neighborhoods, 11-year-old Atakan Sahin curls up on a threadbare sofa with his siblings to watch TV while their mother…

HELSINKI — An undersea power cable linking Finland and Estonia suffered an outage Wednesday, Finland’s prime minister said, the latest in a series of incidents involving telecom cables and energy pipelines…

PRISTINA, Kosovo — Kosovo’s election appeals authority on Wednesday canceled a ban on the main party of the ethnic Serb minority, allowing it to field candidates in the upcoming parliamentary election. …