Russia said on Friday it had suggested to the United States resuming direct flights between the two countries during talks in Istanbul this week that addressed "many annoyances" in bilateral ties.

"It was suggested to the American side to examine the possibility of resuming direct air links," the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement.

Imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan called on his militant group Thursday to lay down its arms and dissolve as part of a new bid to end a four-decade long conflict with Turkey's government that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

In a message from his prison on an island off Istanbul, Ocalan said that the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, should hold a congress and decide to disband.

Russian and U.S. diplomats held talks in Istanbul on Thursday to discuss normalizing the operation of their respective embassies after years expelling each others' diplomats.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the talks in Istanbul followed an understanding reached during President Donald Trump's call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and talks between top Russian and U.S. diplomats and other senior officials in Saudi Arabia.

Over the last five years, European Union countries have been forced to adapt to unprecedented circumstances. They pulled together to purchase tens of millions of vaccines and devised an innovative debt financing scheme to resuscitate their COVID-19-ravaged economies.

After President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine three years ago, Russia restricted the flow of natural gas to weaken Western support for Kyiv. In response, the 27 EU nations weaned themselves off a dependency on Russian energy in record time.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will visit the White House on Thursday to try to convince President Donald Trump that a lasting peace in Ukraine will endure only if Kyiv and European leaders are at the table as negotiations move forward with Moscow.

Starmer's trip, coming a few days after French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron's own visit, reflects the mounting concern felt by much of Europe that Trump's aggressive push to find an end to Russia's war in Ukraine signals his willingness to concede too much to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Senior officials from Turkey's pro-Kurdish political party were set to meet with Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, on Thursday, as part of renewed peace efforts between Ankara and the banned Kurdish group.

The officials from the Equality and Democracy Party, DEM, are expected to convey a message from Ocalan, which is widely anticipated to be a call for the PKK to disarm. The call could potentially bring an end to a conflict that has spanned over four decades and claimed tens of thousands of lives.

Iran has accelerated its production of near weapons-grade uranium as tensions between Tehran and Washington rise after the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, a report by the United Nations' nuclear watchdog seen by The Associated Press on Wednesday showed.

The report by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said that as of Feb. 8, Iran has 274.8 kilograms (605.8 pounds) of uranium enriched up to 60%. That's an increase of 92.5 kilograms (203.9 pounds) since the IAEA's last report in November.

The Kremlin on Thursday ruled out any negotiation over the status of five Ukrainian regions it claims to have annexed despite not fully controlling four of them.

"The territories which have become subjects of the Russian Federation, which are inscribed in our country's constitution, are an inseparable part of our country. This is undeniable and non-negotiable," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Ukraine said Wednesday that five people were killed in Russian strikes in the east of the country, while a journalist was among those killed near Kyiv by Russian drones overnight, her employer announced.

"At least five people were killed and eight were wounded in the strikes on Kostyantynivka," the governor of the Donetsk region wrote on social media. In a separate statement, the Ukrinform news agency said journalist Tetyana Kulyk was among two people killed in a Russian attack near Kyiv.

French police said officers killed a man holding a knife in each hand after he "threw himself" at them in the northeastern Paris suburbs on Wednesday.

At around 7:00 am (0600 GMT), police approached "a man sitting at a bus stop with a knife in each hand" in the town of Dugny, Paris police told AFP.