MOSCOW (Reuters) -- Russia’s foreign minister accused Ukrainian leaders on Monday of trying to drag Moscow into the conflict in eastern Ukraine, following an escalation in fighting between government forces and rebels in the breakaway region. “We observe attempts to carry out provocations, elicit some reaction from the militia and drag Russia into some kind of combat action,” Sergei Lavrov told Russia’s state television. Russia accused Ukraine of destabilizing the situation after government forces used a Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drone to strike a position controlled by Russian-backed separatists last week. Rebels supported by Moscow have been fighting government troops in Ukraine’s Donbass region since 2014, soon after Russia seized and annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine. Kyiv says at least 14,000 people have been killed.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Sunday she has contracted COVID-19 and is experiencing mild symptoms. Psaki, 42, said she was last in contact with President Joe Biden on Tuesday, when she met him in the White House, where they were more than 6 feet apart and wearing masks. Biden, who is tested frequently, last tested negative on Saturday, according to the White House. Psaki did not accompany Biden on his trip abroad to Rome this weekend for the Group of 20 summit and Glasgow, Scotland, on Monday for a UN climate summit. Psaki had planned to travel with the president but scrapped the trip just as he was set to depart for Europe after learning that members of her household had tested positive for COVID-19. “Since then, I have quarantined and tested negative (via PCR) for COVID on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday,” Psaki said in a statement. “However, today, I tested positive for COVID.”

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LONDON (AP) — British authorities on Monday were investigating the crash of two passenger trains that left more than a dozen people injured. The rear carriage of a train derailed Sunday after “striking an object” as it approached the station in Salisbury in southern England. Network Rail said the derailment knocked out all the signaling in the area, and a second train from London then crashed into the derailed train. About 50 firefighters rushed to the scene and 13 people were taken to the hospital, including the driver of one of the trains who had been trapped in his cab after the crash. His injuries were not believed to be serious. Three people remained in the hospital Monday in a stable condition. There was “a massive impact, I fell across a table, and the table came off the wall,” Lucy Gregory told Sky News. “They smashed the windows, and we got out ... we’re safe now, but it was really scary.”

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PARIS (AFP) -- Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida declared victory on Monday after leading his ruling coalition to a strong majority in national elections. Kishida, a soft-spoken centrist who has been in office for a month, vowed to boost the world’s third-biggest economy with a fresh pandemic spending package which he said he would draft this month. He also said Japan would “take a leading role in working towards zero emissions in Asia”, a day before he heads to Glasgow for the COP26 summit. The long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior coalition partner Komeito won 293 of the 465 seats in parliament’s lower house, local media reported while the official result was finalized. Kishida took office a month ago after his predecessor Yoshihide Suga resigned just a year into the job, partly due to public discontent over his response to the Covid-19 crisis.

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KHARTOUM (Middle East Eye) -- Ibrahim Ghandour, head of Sudan’s disbanded former ruling National Congress Party and a former foreign minister under deposed President Omar al-Bashir, was re-arrested on Monday less than a day after being released from jail, a source from his family told Reuters. The release of Ghandour and several other Bashir allies in recent days, following a military coup last Monday, had come under criticism from opponents of military rule. Ghandour had previously been detained under orders of a taskforce intended to dismantle and prevent the return of Bashir’s three-decade rule, which ended in 2019. Speaking to Middle East Eye in Khartoum on Sunday, the day he was released, Ghandour called on “the whole nation to start a process of national reconciliation. This country will not achieve prosperity for its people unless we all join hands to go through the interim period until we reach fair, free elections.

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NAIROBI (AFP) -- Ethiopian forces and Tigrayan rebels fought a pitched battle for control of Kombolcha on Monday, terrified residents reported, after the rebels claimed to have taken over a second town in two days. Reports of rebels capturing Kombolcha came a day after they claimed control of Dessie and, if confirmed, would mark a major advance by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in the nearly year-long war. Much of northern Ethiopia is under a communications blackout, and access for journalists is restricted, making battlefield claims difficult to verify independently. Kombolcha residents described non-stop gunfire overnight and into the early hours on Monday, with some saying they heard what sounded like an air strike on the town’s outskirts around midnight.