The press service of the Sevastopol Government, controlled by Russia, reported after a meeting of the Operational Headquarters on Emergency Situations that power outages continue in annexed Sevastopol. The local authorities, controlled by Moscow, explained that these outages are the result of the ongoing work installing the energy bridge from neighboring Russia.

“In this regard, the emergency services of Sevastopol work on heightened alert. The limit (162 MW.) was set for the city at 10 p.m. …

The President of Finland, Sauli Niinistö, who is in favor of maintaining the present non-aligned policy, noted that the issue on the country entering NATO should be put to a national referendum.

Commenting on the report of the international expert group about the consequences of NATO entry for the country, published on Friday, he stated in an interview with Yle that Russia sees NATO as a threat, which was also outlined in the report.

“They don’t want this threat to reach their borders,” the …

According to unnamed sources in a Der Spiegel report, the current format of the G7 is unlikely to be re-expanded to the G8 to include Russia, the Office of the Federal Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, stated, as reported by Deutsche Welle.

"The G8 format is dead," the source in the agency said. Merkel's staff is skeptical that Moscow will be able to fulfill the conditions for their return to the Group of Eight.

According to the journal's information, the US authorities are against the …

The State Department's Deputy Spokesperson, Mark Toner, stated that pro-Russian separatists are responsible high number of ceasefire violations in the Donbas.

“We are certainly concerned at the level of violence in eastern Ukraine which has reached its highest level since the ceasefire agreements in September,” Toner said.

He emphasized that about 30,000 ceasefire violations were registered in April; which he described as “a huge number.” At the same time, as Toner noted, “The OSCE reports …

Norway intends to build a fence at the checkpoint "Borisoglebsk - Storskog" on the border with Russia, as reported by the Norwegian government-owned radio and television public broadcasting company, NRK, with reference to the local police chief, Katrina Ellen Hetta.

Norwegian authorities have already notified Russia of its intention.

The Nordic state has insisted that the fence will not impact traffic across the border, but will help with the increasing flow of migrants.