A populist party that wants to stop military aid to Ukraine and is critical of the EU and NATO has won Slovakia's election, results showed on Sunday.

The Smer-SD party led by former prime minister Robert Fico scored 23.3 percent, beating the centrist Progressive Slovakia on 17 percent, with almost all votes counted.

The United States has urged Belgrade to pull its forces back from the border with Kosovo after detecting what it called an "unprecedented" Serbian military build-up.

Serbia deployed sophisticated tanks and artillery on the frontier after deadly clashes erupted at a monastery in northern Kosovo last week, the White House warned.

The U.S. government on Saturday was hours from shutting down after the far right of the Republican Party scuppered final attempts at a temporary budget agreement, throwing into doubt everything from access to national parks to Washington's massive support for Ukraine.

Voters in Slovakia cast ballots Saturday in an early parliamentary election that pits a populist former prime minister who campaigned on a pro-Russia and anti-American message against a liberal, pro-West newcomer.

Depending on which of them prevails, the election could reverse the small eastern European country's support for neighboring Ukraine in the war with Russia, threatening to break a fragile unity in the European Union and NATO.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered one of the top commanders of the Wagner military contractor to take charge of "volunteer units" fighting in Ukraine, signaling the Kremlin's effort to keep using the mercenaries after the death of their chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

In remarks released by the Kremlin on Friday, Putin told Andrei Troshev that his task is to "deal with forming volunteer units that could perform various combat tasks, primarily in the zone of the special military operation" — a term the Kremlin uses for its war in Ukraine.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán cast doubt Friday on the prospect of the European Union beginning negotiations any time soon for Ukraine to join the bloc, saying it was unrealistic to launch the accession process with a country that's at war.

Speaking to state radio, Orbán noted that unanimity among the EU's 27 member states is required to admit a new country into the bloc. In the case of Hungary, he said, the parliament would have to give the go-ahead to Ukraine, which has ambitions to join the EU within two years.

Kosovo police on Friday raided several locations in a tense Serb-dominated area in the north of the country where weekend clashes left four people dead and further strained relations with Serbia.

Police said in a statement that they were conducting searches on five locations in three municipalities in northern Kosovo. A statement said the operation was in connection with Sunday's shootout between Serb insurgents and Kosovo police in the village of Banjska.

The leaders of nine southern European Union countries met in Malta on Friday to discuss common challenges such as migration, the EU's management of which has vexed national governments in Europe for years.

The nations represented at the one-day huddle included host Malta, France, Greece, Italy, Croatia, Cyprus, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain. Slovenia and Croatia, with Adriatic Sea coasts, were added to the so-called "Med Group" in 2021. While Portugal has a long Atlantic Ocean border, the European Union considers it partially in the Mediterranean region.

Chaos erupted as a gunshot rang out during a protest in northern New Mexico where officials had planned to install a statue of Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate, an event that county officials had already postponed anticipating that tempers would flare.

One man was struck by the gunfire and rushed to the hospital as Rio Arriba County sheriff's officials took the suspected shooter, 23-year-old Ryan Martinez, into custody. Authorities said they were not currently seeking any other suspects in connection with the shooting.

A powerful bomb exploded in a crowd of people celebrating the Prophet Muhammad's birthday in southwestern Pakistan on Friday, killing at least 52 people and wounding nearly 70 others, authorities said. It was one of the deadliest attacks in recent years.

TV footage and videos on social media showed an open area near a mosque strewn with the shoes of the dead and wounded. Some of the bodies had been covered with bedsheets. Residents and rescuers were seen rushing the wounded to hospitals, where a state of emergency had been declared and appeals were being issued for blood donations.