UN Security Council

China has told the United States it wants to keep all countries involved in the crisis in Ukraine calm and avoid escalating tensions, while Washington has called for de-escalation and warned of security and economic risks in the event of Russian aggression, Reuters reports.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Russian President Vladimir Putin are to discuss bilateral relations, energy issues, developments in the Eastern Mediterranean and Turkey's provocations in the region, and efforts to solve the Cyprus problem during talks in Sochi, Russia today.

It is the first meeting between the two leaders since Mitsotakis came to power in 2019.

"Our relations with Israel are better than ever," Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in joint statements in Jerusalem today with Israeli PM Naftali Bennett and Cyprus' President Nikos Anastasiades.

The three leaders are holding an Israel-Greece-Cyprus trilateral summit.

Alternate Foreign Minister Miltiadis Varvitsiotis slammed the Spain-Turkey defence agreement with the sale of a large Spanish aircraft carrier to Ankara following talks with Spain's State Secretary for the European Union Juan Gonzalez-Barba Perra in Seville today.

It was the first bilateral ministerial-level meeting since the 17 December agreement was signed.

The president of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) expressed his support for a Turkish Cypriot singer who was criticized for a video clip filmed in the coastal city of Maraş, also known as Varosha.

In an escalation of the migrant crisis being fomented by Belarusian dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko, with the alleged help of his political ally Russian President Vladimir Putin, designed to destabilise EU countries and test their military capabilities, tensions began growing when a large group of migrants on Monday attempted to cross into Poland at an official border-crossing point.

The UN Security Council extended the EUFOR peacekeeping force's mandate in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but Russia defeated Western governments in a diplomatic tug-of-war over the wording of the resolution.

Seven individuals and one company linked to the Islamist terror group Hizballah have been put under sanctions by the Kosovo government following a decision taken by the US administration last month.

The decision, taken by Pristina authorities on Wednesday, was published on the government's website on Thursday.

Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias will meet tomorrow in London with British Foreign Secretary Elizabeth Truss for talks and to sign a bilateral agreement on a series of areas of cooperation that he said will deepen Greece-UK ties.

It will include collaboration on defence and security issues.

One the eve of talks between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Cyprus' Foreign Minister Christodoulides in Moscow, the Russian foreign ministry issued a lengthy statement expressing support for a viable and just solution of the Cyprus problem in the international legal framework shaped by UN Security Council resolutions, which provide for the creation of a bi-zonal, bi-communal federat