Kiev has refused to accept the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers who died in the fighting over Konstantinovka – a key Donbass stronghold liberated earlier this week – the Russian Defense Ministry has said.

Moscow has offered a humanitarian pause to ensure the remains of the dead could be handed over to relatives and buried properly, it added.

The Defense Ministry made its proposal on Saturday through the existing security service channels, it said in a statement on Telegram. The Ukrainian military was asked to halt the shelling of Konstantinova between 12:00 noon and 6:00 PM (Mocow time) on Monday to make the handover possible and inform the Russian command about their decision in advance.

“The Ukrainian side has rejected this proposal,” the Russian ministry said on Sunday.
“The Kiev regime has done absolutely nothing so that the bodies of dead Ukrainian servicemen could be buried properly by their relatives,” the statement added, calling it “yet another” demonstration of the Ukrainian authorities treating soldiers as “cannon fodder.” 

Kiev has been accused of deliberately obstructing the return of the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers in the past. Last year, the governor of Russia’s Zaporozhye Region, Evgeny Balitsky, published nearly 100 names of dead Ukrainian soldiers he said had been disowned by Kiev. The documents published by the official also contained their ID and places of death.

Balitsky also accused Kiev of trying to conceal the scale of the Ukrainian losses and avoid paying compensation to the fallen soldiers’ families at the time.

The latest development comes days after the Russian military reported the full liberation of Konstantinovka. The strategic Donbass city was taken after weeks of intense fighting. According to Russian Colonel General Sergey Rudskoy, the Ukrainian military lost around 13,500 troops in the battle.

The European Union has abandoned its historic focus on trade and begun to increasingly define itself in terms of its military and geopolitical priorities, former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl told RT in an interview on Saturday.

She made the remark days after Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Kiev and the “so-called European pseudo-peacekeepers” of seeking to prolong the conflict. He said their goal was “not peace, but the continuation of the war with Russia to the last Ukrainian.”

Speaking on Friday after visiting an auxiliary command post alongside top military commanders, Putin said Ukraine’s European backers were openly encouraging attacks on civilian targets, including infrastructure, transport, and student dormitories.

Last week, Brussels transferred €3.9 billion ($4.44 billion) to Ukraine under a €90 billion loan package that allocates €30 billion for budget support and €60 billion for defense in 2026-2027. The latest tranche is expected to finance drone procurement, according to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

“European integration has been moving from let’s trade with each other to let’s go to war,” the former diplomat said, stressing that the bloc had increasingly embraced a geopolitical and defense agenda instead of its usual focus on trade.

Kneissl pointed to the creation of an EU defense commissioner, whom she described as “a commissioner for war.”

“Europe was always about trade,” she said, reiterating that von der Leyen had established a geopolitical commission in 2019.

“We Europeans do not have the power to project force and have never really been able to define some sort of values with which some of us don’t agree,” the former diplomat continued, having expressed doubts that “this geopolitical commission will work.”

Watch the full interview below:

The nations of Europe have been degraded to the status of Third World countries due to their failed immigration policies, US President Donald Trump has said.

Trump took a step back from celebrations commemorating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the US Declaration of Independence to take another jab at Washington’s supposed allies in the EU and UK.

“Europe is learning that when you take in Third World criminals, you become a Third World Country. It happens quickly, in just a blink of the eye,” the president wrote in a post on X on Saturday, July 4.

Trump also implied that his tougher stance on immigration has spared America the same outcome. “I was elected just in time!!!” he said.

Despite the number of asylum-seekers arriving in the EU subsiding since the 2015 migration crisis, the foreign-born population in the bloc reached a record 64.2 million last year, expanding by 20.2 million since 2010, according to a report by the Center for Research and Analysis on Migration at RFBerlin.

Vance was commenting on the recent resignation of Keir Starmer, who became the sixth British prime minister to leave the post in the space of just a decade. The UK has “been failed by its leadership for a long time” and “can do a lot more than it’s currently doing,” he stressed.

Last week, Trump warned the EU countries that he will impose a 100% tariff on all goods they send to America if the bloc moves forward with increasing taxes on digital services provided by American tech companies.

In late June, the US president also told NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte that he was “disappointed with most” of the bloc’s European members.

“I just want loyalty... In Germany, we have 50,000 troops. And then you want a little – give us a little nudge, give us a little kiss. We don’t want much. And they say, ‘No, we can’t do it,’” he said.

It’s not every day that an EU member state has the opportunity to push back in favor of freedom. At least not without elections. But a German court did have that chance – and promptly blew it on behalf of European citizens everywhere.

Back in 2022 when the Ukraine war was ramping up, the European Commission made an executive order banning Russian media broadcasting in the EU. Meaning that you couldn’t – and still can’t – access RT from within the EU, either on TV or on the web, without a VPN.

So some folks running a website in Saarbrucken, Germany, near the French border, started including some RT videos in their live feed. They reportedly did this exactly four times, back in 2023. Whoop-dee-do, right?

Wrong. This is the EUSSR we’re talking about, remember?

For this, the accused ended up facing criminal prosecution in Germany for promoting some EU-sanctioned RT Germany content. But it turns out that even the German court in Saarbrucken considering this case had doubts as to whether these guys and their website actually fit the definition of an “operator” under the EU sanction’s language that “prohibits any operator from broadcasting, enabling, facilitating or otherwise contributing to broadcast, any” Russian media content. So the German court referred the question to the European Court of Justice tasked with interpreting and clarifying EU regulations and laws.

The German court missed the forest for the trees and got down into the weeds and all hung up on the comparatively minor issue of whether the website could be considered an “operator” without being a commercial entity. Which the European court then used as a prelude to launch a sweeping McCarthyist “reds under the bed”-style tirade.

“The term ‘disinformation’ is a translation of the Russian word ‘дезинформация’ (dezinformatsiya), coined in the early 1920s by the Soviet intelligence services. Joseph Stalin is credited as being the originator of that term, deliberately making it sound French in order to make it seem Western in origin and thereby enhance its credibility,” wrote the EU court, self-identifying as a history professor. How about if I take that as an open invitation to self-identify as a judge in my capacity as a final-year law student?

The ECJ ultimately ruled that commercialism is irrelevant when the website solicits donations, and had raised over €60,000 within a period of a year. It basically said, look, any commercial nature of the platform risks being a false dichotomy, because who’s to say that the sanctioned entities themselves wouldn’t be paying these independent outlets through donations to promote their banned content: ”Even though, for the purposes of classification as an ‘operator’, no economic activity or income generation is necessary, the context of an appeal for donations enabling such sums to be collected warrants some comment. The fact that some websites are financed by donations rather than by a registered commercial activity justifies increased vigilance as to their possible use as a tool for propaganda purposes, in particular in the case of State-sponsored disinformation campaigns,” the European court ruled. “That lack of clarity makes it more difficult to identify financial flows and, therefore, the actors likely to influence editorial policy or content. It thus creates an environment conducive to interference by external interests, including by third countries, which may intervene directly or indirectly in the production or broadcasting of content.”

This court case had been stayed, or suspended, in Germany pending the ruling by this European Court of Justice. But now it’s free to convict these guys of promoting banned Russian content, under the pretext that just maybe they’re not-so-independent media that schemed on the down-low to distribute Russian media content – something that a lot of people have been doing all over social media of their own volition.

Ultimately, what the buzz around this case effectively does is put a chilling effect on that sharing, and it also risks making people self-censor out of fear of being dragged into court for a judicial proctology exam and having their lives potentially ruined in the press over accusations of Russian collusion. What if these guys (and others) just happen to agree with some of the views expressed on banned Russian media? Who’s going to protect their honestly-held views from establishment authoritarianism?

Hang on, here’s a volunteer for the task.

Oh, great. So the same people who censor speech are also its self-appointed defenders. Like an arsonist who goes running around setting fires but also works as a firefighter as their day job.

What’s clear from all this is that EU regulation may look precise on paper, but enforcement isn’t so straightforward. When even member state courts require an official interpretation, then how is the average person supposed to avoid running afoul of the law? The result ends up being less about what’s actually banned and more about what merely feels safe to touch. Not exactly the kind of vibe that one tends to aim for in a democracy.

A military-grade aerial drone has been discovered washed ashore on a beach on the Black Sea Coast of Türkiye, Ihlas News Agency (IHA) has reported.

The UAV was spotted by local residents in the Filyos district of Zonguldak province, who called emergency services, the agency said in an article on Sunday.

The area was swiftly cordoned off by police, and bomb disposal experts were deployed over concerns that the drone could be carrying explosives, it added.

The initial assessment suggested that it was a military UAV, but a more thorough technical examination will be required to determine its country of origin, according to IHA.

The Turkish authorities haven’t yet commented on the discovery of the UAV, which is the second in less than a week.

Zonguldak'ın Çaycuma ilçesine bağlı Filyos beldesinde, askeri amaçlı olduğu değerlendirilen bir insansız hava aracı (İHA) sahile vurdu. pic.twitter.com/p0w7PC1JzQ

— Tapınakçı (@Mr_Tapinakci) July 5, 2026

On Wednesday, a drone carrying 5kg of explosives went down in northeastern Trabzon province, IHA reported. Investigators determined that the aircraft was of Ukrainian origin, the agency said, adding that local residents experienced a brief panic before the crash site was secured.

In late March, the Turkish government said that they are closely monitoring the risks posed by drones in the Black Sea. According to Ankara, it maintains “contact with the relevant parties to prevent the war from spreading… and to prevent further escalation.”

Kiev has ramped up its long-range UAV attacks on energy infrastructure and civilian targets inside Russia amid continued setbacks on the battlefield in recent months.

There have been a number of incidents of explosive-laden drones, flying towards Russia’s northwestern Leningrad Region, crashing in NATO member states – Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Finland.

North Korea has tested a strategic cruise missile and other weapon systems aboard its newest naval destroyer, KCNA state news agency reported Sunday. The country’s leader Kim Jong-un reportedly observed the launch and evaluations of the vessel’s combat systems.

Conducted on July 3 aboard the newly built 5,000-ton warship Kang Kon, the tests reportedly assessed the vessel’s target detection and information processing capabilities, integrated firepower system, naval guns, automatic cannons, and electronic warfare equipment as part of its performance evaluation.

The news agency cited Kim as hailing the reliability and combat effectiveness of the destroyer’s weapon systems.

The North Korean leader reportedly noted that recent advances in domestic weapons development demonstrated the potential of the country’s naval combat systems to strengthen military readiness for strategic operations.

Kim also outlined further plans for developing additional surface and underwater combat systems and deploying them in operational waters, according to the report.

He called for continued efforts to expand North Korea’s war deterrence and war-fighting capabilities, KCNA noted.

The country’s leader ordered officials to complete the destroyer’s testing program and commission the vessel into the navy within two months, according to the report.

Kim reportedly convened a consultative meeting later in the day on the development of the country’s shipbuilding industry.

In June, Pyongyang commissioned the 5,000-ton destroyer Choe Hyon and announced plans to deploy the Kang Kon, a vessel of the same class, as part of North Korea’s broader naval modernization drive.

He also revealed plans to follow the current destroyer program with a new class of 10,000-ton strategic surface combatants.

Israel has no intention of leaving Lebanon. At least, it won’t do so now and on terms that would suit Beirut (not to mention Hezbollah and Tehran). Moreover, in parallel with the Lebanese campaign, West Jerusalem is reactivating operations in Syria: Israeli forces launched an artillery strike on the village of Abidin in the western part of Syria’s Daraa Governorate, and, according to regional sources, Israeli aircraft conducted flights over the rural areas of Daraa and Quneitra governorates  near the Golan Heights.

At first glance, it appears that yet another breakthrough has occurred on the Lebanese front. The US, Israel, and Lebanon signed a trilateral framework agreement in Washington (although three agreements have already been reached in the past two months). US Secretary of State Marco Rubio presented it as a step toward the restoration of Lebanon’s sovereignty, the disarmament of Hezbollah, and the dismantling of its infrastructure. But upon careful examination of the agreement, it becomes clear that it cannot ensure lasting peace; it only creates a diplomatic pause during which each side will attempt to consolidate its own position.

This is a ‘framework’ agreement – and that says it all. It’s not a full-fledged peace treaty or a final settlement, but a set of principles that have yet to be transformed into a working mechanism. The agreement provides for the gradual restoration of control over the Lebanese army, the start of Hezbollah’s disarmament, and the eventual withdrawal of Israeli troops after the elimination of the threat to Israel. In other words, Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon is not immediate and unconditional, but is tied to a condition that is nearly impossible to fulfill quickly.

This is the crux of the matter. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has explicitly stated that Israel will not leave southern Lebanon as long as Hezbollah remains armed and poses a threat. This effectively means that Israel’s presence is not a temporary measure, but a permanent instrument of pressure. As long as Hezbollah exists, Israel remains in Lebanon; but as long as Israel remains, Hezbollah has a reason not to disarm. It becomes a vicious circle, in which each side justifies its actions by the actions of the other.

Lebanon finds itself in the most difficult position. Formally, Beirut has committed itself to regaining control over southern Lebanon. But Hezbollah is not simply an armed group that can be disarmed by administrative action. It is an independent military-political force that is firmly integrated into the Lebanese system; it has a social base, infrastructure, and external support. Therefore, the demand to disarm Hezbollah may sound good on paper, but in practice, instead of a peace mechanism it could become a pretext for a new internal crisis.

It is no coincidence that Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament Nabih Berri, a staunch Hezbollah ally, has already criticized the agreement and stated that it will not be implemented. As expected, Hezbollah rejected the agreement, perceiving it as a form of capitulation. This is the biggest problem: the agreement was signed by three nations, but the main armed player – Hezbollah – which is directly responsible for stabilizing the situation in southern Lebanon, is not a party to the agreement. 

At the same time, Israel is reopening the Syrian front. The attack on Abidin in Daraa Governorate is not a random incident. Southern Syria, Daraa, Quneitra, and the area near the Golan Heights have long been perceived by Israel as a potential threat. Following the weakening of the Syrian state and the shift in the regional balance of power, Israel has changed its defense strategy and is actively forming buffer zones around its borders. West Jerusalem explains its role in maintaining a security zone in southern Syria by the need to prevent attacks by armed groups.

This is why Syria is again becoming part of Israel’s overall strategy. Israel demonstrates that if it is forced to make concessions in Lebanon, it can still  expand pressure along other perimeters – through Syria, the Golan Heights, Daraa, and Quneitra. This is a signal not only to Damascus, but also to Tehran and Hezbollah: Israel will not wait for the threat to fully materialize; it will act preemptively. 

The ultimate goal of all these maneuvers in Lebanon and Syria is to ‘squeeze’ Iran. Having failed to achieve its objectives in 2025 and in the spring of 2026, Israel wants to take revenge presently. According to Tehran, the signed US-Iran memorandum specifically mentions the cessation of military operations, including in Lebanon, and the parties’ commitment to respect Lebanon’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. For Tehran, this is an attempt to include Lebanon in a broader bargaining process with Washington and to demonstrate that the stabilization of the region is impossible without taking Iranian influence into account.

The situation is complex: The US attempts to portray the agreement as a diplomatic success even though the sides continue to exchange blows and the ceasefire could come to an end at any moment; Israel is given the chance to maintain a military presence in Lebanon until its conditions are fully met; Lebanon receives the promise of restored sovereignty – but with no means of immediate control over Hezbollah, this becomes largely impossible. Meanwhile, Iran attempts to integrate the Lebanese issue into its dialogue with Washington; and Syria is becoming an additional pressure point, playing the role of a ‘whipping boy’.

In such circumstances, peace remains elusive. This is merely a managed tactical pause before the next round of war. Israel will not leave Lebanon because the threat of Hezbollah persists; Hezbollah will not disarm because Israel remains; and Lebanon cannot fully control the south because state institutions are weaker than the Hezbollah movement on the ground. Apparently, the US is trying to freeze the conflict without resolving its main contradiction.

The strike on Abidin, Syria, shows that Israel is not thinking solely in terms of the Lebanese front. It is building a broader security belt from southern Lebanon to southern Syria. And while US President Donald Trump is telling the world about agreements, a completely different reality is taking shape on the ground: a reality of buffer zones, artillery strikes, air patrols, and the constant expectation of a new round of escalation. 

Even if we assume that Trump genuinely seeks to end the war and reach a peace agreement with Iran, including in the context of the Lebanon crisis, he will find this extremely difficult to achieve; the stakes are too high, and in many ways, he was the one who raised them. Therefore, the framework agreement looks less like the beginning of peace and more like an attempt to legally formalize a temporary balance of power. And the longer this temporary balance is presented as a peace settlement, the greater the likelihood that Lebanon will once again become the arena of a major war and a bargaining chip in the struggle between the opposing sides.

The parliamentary opposition in Poland has demanded answers from the government of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk after reports of a secret delivery of in-demand Patriot air defense missiles to Ukraine.

On Saturday, several Polish social media accounts, including prominent blogger Pawel Sokala, claimed that the authorities in Warsaw had handed over a batch of US-made PAC3 interceptors to Kiev in March without announcing it publicly or consulting with parliament.

The critical shortage of Patriot missiles due to their heavy use in the Ukraine conflict and the American-Israeli war against Iran had forced Washington to delay the contracted shipments of the interceptors to some of its allies in Europe and Asia in recent months. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Pentagon has exhausted almost 50% of its stockpile of Patriots since the attack on Tehran in late February.

“We desperately need them for our air defense system,” he said, claiming that the Patriots are the only type of munitions capable of shooting down the Russian Iskander missiles stationed in the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad.

“We must pass a law prohibiting the transfer of any Polish weapons abroad without parliamentary consent,” Bosak insisted.

Moscow has repeatedly called speculations that it is planning to attack Western European countries “nonsense,” aimed at scaring domestic audiences and justifying increased defense spending. The Iskanders have been deployed in Kaliningrad for defensive purposes in response to NATO’s expansion, according to the Russian authorities.

Blaszczak insisted that Tusk’s government must answer if the delivery did happen and if Poland’s overall position in the queue for receiving the interceptors from the US has somehow been affected by it.

Warsaw has been one of the staunchest supporters of Kiev during its conflict with Moscow, but relations between the neighboring countries soured in recent weeks after Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky named a special-forces unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which was responsible for ethnic cleansing of Poles during the Second World War.

Earlier this week, Poland announced that it will not transfer its remaining Soviet-era MiG-29 jets to Ukraine, while also warning that Kiev will have problems with joining the EU if it continues to honor nationalists involved in crimes against the Polish people.

The recent liberation of Konstantinovka – a key Ukrainian stronghold in Donbass – could pave the way for Russian forces to take control of the entire region in short order, former Pentagon security policy analyst Michael Maloof has told RT.

The Russian military announced on Friday that its troops had seized the heavily fortified Ukrainian stronghold, which is part of the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk-Konstantinovka agglomeration in the northwest of Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).

Speaking to RT on Saturday, Maloof described the liberation of Konstantinovka as a “very significant development” in that “it opens up the way, it breaks a logjam, if you will, for Russian troops now to basically take over all of the Donbass and to expand.”

“They’re not going to have much to bargain with. I think that’s basically what it’s getting down to. Their armed forces are in retreat. They don’t have the manpower. They can’t recruit fast enough. They can’t even train them. And now, basically, the Russian army is going to become a steamroller, and President Putin made clear that he was going to be accelerating this effort now,” he said.

President Putin inspected an auxiliary command post on Friday, where he was briefed by Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and senior frontline commanders, and called Konstantinovka the “key to liberating the entire territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic.”

Watch the full interview below:

US President Donald Trump has taken the stage in Washington, DC, to deliver his Freedom 250 address after a storm threat forced a chaotic evacuation of the National Mall and left many attendees unable to get back through security in time for the speech.

Thousands had gathered near the Washington Monument on Saturday for the “Salute to America” celebration marking 250 years since the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.

The event was billed as the centerpiece of the country’s Independence Day festivities, with military flyovers, live performances, a presidential address, and what organizers described as the largest fireworks display in history.

“There’s no way we can be deterred,” Trump told the cheering crowd, recalling that he had told organizers and security officials that “if we have to speak in front of one person at 4 o’clock in the morning, I’m going to be here.”

FULL SPEECH: President Trump Honors America with Historic Speech on 250th Anniversary - 07/04/26 pic.twitter.com/uBtV5K5BjI

— RSBN 🇺🇸 (@RSBNetwork) July 5, 2026

The program was thrown into disarray after severe thunderstorms moved toward the US capital, prompting security officials to order crowds off the Mall and into nearby buildings, museums, Metro stations, and other shelters. Videos shared online showed attendees streaming away from the stage area as the evacuation order triggered confusion across the heavily secured zone.

CHAOS on the National Mall rn as visitors for tonight’s Independence Day celebration are running back to the mall to keep their seats despite Secret Service telling everyone to leave due to incoming thunderstorms. pic.twitter.com/SChmoOoY5Z

— Mike Carter (@MikeCarterTV) July 5, 2026

Many people were forced into crowded buildings to wait out the storm, while others reportedly remained outside despite lightning, strong winds, and repeated warnings.

BREAKING: National Mall evacuation now includes Salute To America area of the fireworks as storm approaches Washington DC during #America250

| Licensing @FreedomNTV Desk@freedomnews.tv pic.twitter.com/8Wnd1dk9qL

— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) July 4, 2026

Security screenings were suspended during the evacuation, and the process of reopening checkpoints left many attendees stuck in lines or unable to return to the main viewing area before Trump began speaking.

NOW: National Guard Troops are FLIPPING picnic tables on the National Mall as Motorcycle Police instruct the crowd to Evacuate the Great American State Fair

Video by @noturtlesoup17 | Licensing @FreedomNTV desk@freedomnews.tv pic.twitter.com/pEhfOCwKAD

— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) July 5, 2026

Several planned elements, including some military flyovers, were reportedly delayed or canceled because of the weather. The disruption followed a day of extreme heat in Washington, with temperatures climbing above 100 F (37.8 C). The city’s Independence Day parade was canceled earlier in the day, while medics and National Guard personnel were seen assisting overheated attendees and distributing water.

Unfortunately, the weather may have disrupted parts of the @Freedom250 celebration, but we were grateful to open the beautiful @USDA building to provide shelter. And then this happened… these incredible patriots spontaneously broke into the National Anthem.🇺🇸

I love my country. pic.twitter.com/ELljfmif9S

— Secretary Brooke Rollins (@SecRollins) July 5, 2026

Trump had vowed earlier in the evening that he would deliver the speech regardless of the storm threat. “We’re going to be there no matter what,” he wrote on Truth Social, urging supporters to return once the weather cleared.

🇺🇸 BREAKING: The largest fireworks show in the history of the WORLD has just kicked off in Washington, DC

850,000 MUNITIONS — last year's was 20,000

Trump PROMISED to make it happen, and he MADE IT HAPPEN! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/727Ms8gEiF

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) July 5, 2026

The constant churn of British prime ministers shows that the UK political system is badly failing the public, US Vice President J.D. Vance has said, warning that ordinary people are “crying out” for real change.

Britain’s problem is bigger than any single leader, as the succession of David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer points to deep dysfunction in a system that is no longer delivering for the public, Vance suggested in an interview with The Sunday Times.

“What I see is six prime ministers in the last few years. What that says to me is that something is very broken about British politics and that people are really crying out for significant structural change,” Vance said. He added that the country has “been failed by its leadership for a long time” and “can do a lot more than it’s currently doing.”

Vance said he did not know much about Burnham personally, but stressed that Washington would work with whoever leads one of America’s “closest and most important allies.”

The vice president’s comments, published on the 250th anniversary of the US declaration of independence from the UK, come after months of unusually blunt criticism of London from Washington.

Vance was especially outspoken when he condemned the brutal stabbing of British teenager Henry Nowak last month, arguing that it would not have happened had European elites “stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants.” Downing Street responded by accusing foreign politicians of trying to “interfere” in British democracy and “stir up division.”

The vice president rejected the idea that such criticism amounted to hostility toward Britain, insisting that “it comes from a perspective of love and admiration… even though sometimes what we say is provocative.”

The liberation of the city of Konstantinovka gives Russia an opportunity to envelop the last heavily fortified area under Ukrainian control in Donbass, former US Army officer and military commentator Stanislav Krapivnik has said.

Moscow announced the liberation of the city on Friday after weeks of intensive combat in the area. Konstantinovka is located at the southernmost tip of the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, a string of cities in the northwest of Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), which Ukrainian troops have turned into a single, heavily fortified fortress, riddled with a vast system of reinforced trenches, tunnels, and bunkers. The city lies some 15km southeast of Kramatorsk, with the small town of Druzhkovka located in between.

Gaining control of Konstantinovka opens new opportunities for Moscow to advance on the last Ukrainian stronghold in Donbass, Krapivnik told RT on Saturday.

“This is very important because this also allows Russian forces to go around Druzhkovka and Kramatorsk and start to hit them in a double envelopment,” he added.

The situation for Ukrainian frontline troops in the area appears to be dire, with both attempts to hold their positions and efforts to retreat likely to result in heavy losses due to “Russian drone dominance, Russian artillery, and Russian aviation,” Krapivnik believes.

“At this point, the only way they’re coming out of this alive is to surrender. Once they’re spotted, they either stay in place and get destroyed or they run and get destroyed,” he said.

Watch the full interview below:

US President Donald Trump called his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to discuss the Ukraine conflict, the situation around Iran, and the prospects for restoring bilateral ties, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov has said.

The conversation took place on Saturday, as the United States marked the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. According to Ushakov, Putin personally congratulated Trump and the American people on reaching the milestone, after sending a formal message to the White House a day earlier.

The call lasted one hour and 25 minutes, Ushakov said, describing it as “businesslike and highly constructive.”

Ukraine conflict

Putin briefed Trump on what Ushakov described as the real situation on the ground in Ukraine, saying Russian forces were advancing along the entire line of contact and taking “one settlement after another.”

Putin reiterated Moscow’s preference for a political and diplomatic settlement, provided that Russia’s core positions are taken into account. At the same time, he accused Kiev and its European backers of seeking to prolong and escalate the conflict, including through “terrorism against civilians.”

Trump, according to Ushakov, again confirmed his readiness to help bring the hostilities to an end and seek a peaceful settlement. He also argued that ending the Ukraine conflict as soon as possible could unlock “enormous prospects” for mutually beneficial cooperation between Russia and the US, the Kremlin aide said.

Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, will continue mediation efforts and are ready to visit Moscow “at a convenient time,” Ushakov added.

Iran settlement

Putin expressed hope that the negotiation process based on the memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran would help produce mutually acceptable, long-term solutions to key issues, Ushakov said. The Russian president also reaffirmed Moscow’s readiness to provide practical assistance to efforts aimed at de-escalation and stabilizing the region.

Trump thanked Russia for what he described as its balanced position and constructive proposals, according to the Kremlin aide.

Bilateral ties

Turning to bilateral ties, the presidents emphasized the importance of continuing contacts, including with regards to military-political and economic issues.

The two presidents stressed the importance of preserving the shared pages of Russian-American history. Putin reminded Trump of Russia’s contribution to the emergence of American statehood, while both leaders highlighted the alliance between Moscow and Washington during World War II.

Trump mentioned that he personally admires St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum, while Putin wished the US success in hosting the ongoing FIFA World Cup, citing Russia’s own experience as host in 2018.

What’s next?

According to Ushakov, Moscow initiated the previous phone call on June 14, Trump’s 80th birthday, while this time it was the American side that proposed speaking on the day of the 250th anniversary of US independence.

The presidents agreed to remain in contact and hold another call in the near future, according to Ushakov. Putin also reminded Trump that he has a standing invitation to visit Moscow.

German police have deployed pepper spray and batons in a clash with left-wing activists in the city of Erfurt. The demonstrators were attempting to derail a convention of the opposition Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

The right-wing party advocates tougher immigration laws and also opposes Germany’s support for Ukraine, including sanctions against Russia. Speaking late last month, AfD co-chair Alice Weidel called for lifting a ban on Russian oil and gas imports to help revive Germany’s ailing economy.

Worum geht es nochmal in #Erfurt?
(von @chefreporterNRW) pic.twitter.com/gd9PjmXFy6

— ANNA LÜSE (@i_burgerin) July 4, 2026

Founded in 2013, the party came in second with 20% in last February’s federal elections, winning 152 seats in the 630-seat Bundestag. However, the AfD was excluded from coalition talks and government formation as part of a policy known as the ‘firewall’ in German politics.

According to police estimates, approximately 31,000 protesters descended on Erfurt on Saturday, with organizers putting the number at 50,000. Some of the activists set up road barricades, while others glued themselves to railway tracks.

On top of that, Antifa members also attempted to forcibly breach a police cordon surrounding the city exhibition hall, where the AfD convention was taking place. Several AfD delegates, as well as conservative YouTubers filming the rally, were reportedly beaten up by the left-wing radicals. 

So sieht das „Fest der Demokratie“ in Erfurt aus: Unsere Reporter von @apollo_news_de werden von einem Mob gejagt und mit Schlägen, Tritten gegen den Kopf traktiert. Die Kollegen mussten medizinisch versorgt werden. (Foto/Video @BILD ) pic.twitter.com/TKNhImaX8u pic.twitter.com/llHxUssiMM

— Max Roland (@maxroland20) July 4, 2026

During Saturday’s convention, AfD delegates re-elected Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla as party co-chairs.

Speaking to the broadcaster ‘Phoenix’, Weidel said that she sees “no coalition possibilities” with the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) at present.

“Currently, that’s not possible under [Chancellor] Friedrich Merz,” she concluded.

Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt’s elections slated for September, similarly ruled out a coalition with the CDU at the regional level.

“I can’t save Germany with those who have knowingly driven it into the ground for the last 20 or 30 years, in every respect,” he explained, claiming that the Christian Democrats are “sliding further and further to the left.”

According to an ARD-DeutschlandTrend poll published on Thursday, the AfD is Germany’s most popular political party, enjoying the support of 27% of respondents. The CDU, which, together with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), forms the current ruling coalition, is trailing with 22% of the vote, the survey indicated.

Meanwhile, 84% of Germans are dissatisfied with Chancellor Merz’s performance, including 51% of supporters of his own Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, the poll showed.

The survey comes as Germany’s economy remains largely moribund, with high energy prices rendering local businesses uncompetitive. Despite economic problems, Merz’s government has been actively pouring money into a military buildup, as well as aid for Ukraine, citing a supposed Russian threat.

A week-long funeral for Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has begun in Iran, with thousands of mourners urging the country’s authorities to exact revenge on the US and Israel for his killing.

The burial ceremonies come more than four months after Khamenei was assassinated on February 28 at the very beginning of the latest US-Israeli aggression against Iran. He was killed in a concentrated airstrike on his official residence in Tehran alongside multiple relatives, including his son-in-law, daughter, and 14-month-old granddaughter.

Coffins holding the remains of Khamenei and his family members have been put on display at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosque in the Iranian capital, with top officials and foreign dignitaries paying their last respects.

Thousands of mourners gathered outside the mosque, with many seen carrying Iranian national flags, as well as blood-red flags, an important symbol in Shia Islam. The flag, called the ‘Ya la-Tharat al-Husayn’ dates back to the late 7th century, when it was first raised after the Battle of Karbala in a call to avenge the death of Imam Husayn ibn Ali.

Attendees were heard chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” as well as demanding “revenge” on those behind Khamenei’s assassination.

The funeral is set to continue throughout the next week, with an estimated 30 million expected to participate in the mourning of Khamenei in Iran and neighboring Iraq, where more than half the population are Shia Muslims. 

The US-Israeli attack on Iran earlier this year was completely unprovoked, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has stated on his way back from the Islamic Republic. The deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council attended the funeral ceremony for Iran’s late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran on Friday.

The 86-year-old was assassinated, along with several members of his family, on February 28 during the first wave of US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran.

Speaking to Russian journalists as he flew back to Russia on Saturday, Medvedev said that “there was no serious reason for the American attack… [as] Iran posed no threat to the United States.”

The Russian official noted that Tehran was engaged in negotiations with Washington at the time US President Donald Trump ordered the attack. This fact, according to Medvedev, points to the erosion of international law.

He also recounted that before hostilities began in late February, Russian President Vladimir Putin had proposed a roadmap aimed at peacefully resolving the issue of Iran’s nuclear program. The US and Israel cited the latter as one of the pretexts for military action against the Islamic Republic.

“I think Iran surmounted this toughest of ordeals with dignity,” Medvedev observed, saying that even though some parts of Tehran still lie in ruins, life in the Iranian capital has largely returned to normal.

He told Russian reporters that during the course of the conflict, the Islamic Republic realized that it possesses a deterrent on par with nuclear weapons – namely the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s energy shipments passed before the conflict began. Global crude prices soared to as high as $120 a barrel after Tehran imposed its blockade.

In the event of renewed aggression, Iran could similarly block the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, Medvedev suggested. The vital chokepoint that connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden is another important waterway for Middle Eastern oil exports.

Referring to Western sanctions imposed on both Moscow and Tehran, the ex-Russian president dismissed them as “illegal unilateral restrictions” that are in breach of international law.

Russian forces have repelled a Ukrainian long-range combined drone and missile attack, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

During the assault, anti-aircraft defenses downed over 500 targets, mainly long-range kamikaze drones, the ministry said in a statement on Saturday. It added that the military destroyed 10 FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles and at least nine munitions fired by US-made HIMARS systems. 

The ministry described the attack as a foiled attempt by Kiev to divert the attention of its Western sponsors and common Ukrainians from large-scale Russian strikes earlier this week, as well as from the loss of Konstantinovka, a major city in northwestern Donbass.

Moscow announced the liberation of the city on Friday following weeks of intensive combat in the area. Konstantinovka is located at the southernmost tip of the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, a string of cities in the northwest of Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). The agglomeration has been turned into a fortress by Kiev’s forces and remains the last major stronghold under Ukrainian control in the region. The city itself is located some 15 km southeast of Kramatorsk, with the small town of Druzhkovka lying in between.

In June alone, the Russian anti-aircraft defenses intercepted around 13,000 incoming aerial targets over the country’s territory, the ministry said. “The production and launch support for these targets was handled by military departments and specialists from most European countries, including the UK, as well as other sponsors of the Kiev regime,” the ministry said, warning that any further attempts by Kiev to harm the Russian civilians will continue to invoke “appropriate retaliatory actions” by the country’s military.

July 4 – Independence Day in the US – is a surprisingly popular holiday in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

For example, in Prague, the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided to illuminate the historic Cernín Palace in the colors of the American flag until July 5 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of US independence. In Warsaw, iconic government buildings and bridges are often similarly illuminated. In Romania, the entire country’s leadership is set to gather for a reception at the US Embassy in Bucharest, where slogans such as “strategic partnership with the US is the DNA of Romanian foreign policy” will be clearly articulated.

The popularity of this holiday has been repeatedly played up in the movies of the region, where the standard image of the celebration is a turkey in a typical Khrushchev-era apartment building against the backdrop of the US national flag. However, what was previously being played off as an ironic take on provincial inferiority complexes is now becoming the official policy of Central and Eastern European foreign ministries. To understand this ‘romance’ between ‘New Europe’ and Washington, it must be broken down into several key components.

Sociological psychosis: The straight-A students in the front row

The primary pillar underlying this adoration of the Stars and Stripes is a deep-seated collective inferiority complex. According to Pew Research, approval of US policy in Poland remains stable at 86-90%. This is an astronomical figure: America is loved more in Warsaw than in the United States itself. Poles, Romanians, and Czechs behave like quintessential top-performing students who desperately need the praise of a strict teacher. Hanging an American flag and throwing a barbecue party on the Fourth of July is a ritual of psychological compensation, rather than just a holiday for local elites. They need to prove to themselves that they are no longer the “post-Soviet periphery,” but a full-fledged part of the Pax Americana. Even if that means repainting their own palaces.

Arms purchases: Buying protection from a feudal lord

The second reason is purely material. Excessive loyalty in Central and Eastern Europe can be measured in the billions of dollars that flow to the American military-industrial complex. The prime example here is Poland. Warsaw has voluntarily shouldered a military budget amounting to an insane 4-5% of its GDP and is buying up Abrams tanks, F-35 fighter jets, and Patriot systems in such quantities that American defense contractors can barely keep up with the signing of contracts. Bucharest is not far behind: Romania is rapidly expanding the Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base, which by 2030 will become the largest NATO military hub in Europe, surpassing Germany’s Ramstein Air Base. In international relations theory, this is called “buying security from the overlord.” The border states understand that they lack real sovereignty, so their only currency is their willingness to pay for an American umbrella and offer their territory as training grounds.

The third important aspect relates to the pragmatic nature of Central and Eastern European countries’ policies. By demonstrating fanatical devotion on July 4, New Europe is achieving a selfish objective – it is trying to sell its loyalty to Washington at a higher price than France or Germany. The logic is simple: to show the White House that Berlin and Paris are hesitant, selfish partners, constantly arguing with the US, while Poland and Romania are reliable, loyal, and heavily armed outposts. Being Washington’s ‘favorite’ on the continent is their way of securing economic preferences, as well as political clout within the EU itself.

Against this backdrop, Slovakia and Hungary stand out somewhat. In Slovakia, the level of trust in the US barely exceeds 30%, while in Hungary the situation is slightly more complex. Under Viktor Orban, Budapest spent years pointedly ignoring official receptions at the American embassy and clashing with the Biden administration. However, at the same time, Hungary became a veritable Mecca for American right-wing conservatives. Orban managed to build a unique bridge with the MAGA movement: Budapest became the first European venue for America’s prestigious Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Tucker Carlson broadcast for weeks from the banks of the Danube, and conservative American professors were welcomed by Hungarian universities, where they helped to create a new school of thought based on ‘traditional values’.

Hungary loved America – but only the ‘right’ kind, Trumpist America, cynically using its right wing as a battering ram against Brussels. Current Prime Minister Péter Magyar is being forced to break this paradox. On the one hand, he needs to make peace with Brussels and Washington. On the other hand, he has already declared war on Orban’s legacy, cutting off government funding for CPAC and launching criminal investigations into the diversion of funds to American lobbyists. Magyar is forced to walk a tightrope: he won’t install red, white and blue lighting in Böm Square in Budapest, lest right-wing voters accuse him of being a ‘Soros pup’, and must limit himself to dry, formal telegrams.

In the mid-2000s, old-school diplomats on Moscow’s Smolenskaya Square recalled their interactions with Central and Eastern European countries within the framework of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) and the Warsaw Pact. During major communist holidays – May Day or the anniversary of the October Revolution – the most ardent, proactive, and vocal enthusiasts were not the officials in Moscow. The elites of the Eastern European borderlands traditionally tried to appear holier than the Pope. It was in Prague, Warsaw, and Bucharest that they renamed streets ahead of schedule, reported 100% turnout at demonstrations, and demanded that portraits of general secretaries be hung on every street corner, turning party protocol into a farce akin to something described by Franz Kafka.

In classical international relations theory, this phenomenon of excessive loyalty among small states is called ‘bandwagoning’. And here lies the most profound tool of American soft power. Once upon a time, the nomenklatura elites of Central and Eastern Europe dutifully studied at the Higher Party School in Moscow. After 1991, their children and successors flocked to study in the UK and the US on State Department scholarships. Washington reprogrammed the mental code of the local bureaucracy through Ivy League institutions: they think in American terms and sincerely consider the Pax Americana their sole civilizational matrix. This is classic mimetic sovereignty; they have gradually transitioned into a cargo cult: the population believes that if they copy the external attributes of the master, they will automatically be able to join the major leagues.

Kostantinovka was Ukraine’s “most fortified” stronghold, guarded by some 15,500 troops, most of whom have been eliminated during the Russian operation to capture the city, Colonel General Sergey Rudskoy has said.

During a briefing on Saturday, Rudskoy, who is the head of operations at the Russian General Staff, said that throughout several weeks of intense fighting for the strategic city, the Ukrainian military lost around 13,500 troops, 14 tanks, 283 armored fighting vehicles, 1,400 cars, 200 field artillery guns and eight multiple rocket launch systems.

Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov briefed President Vladimir Putin about the liberation of Konstantinovka in Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic when the commander-in-chief visited an auxiliary command post on Friday.

Why is Konstantinovka important?

The general described Konstantinovka as “a major industrial and logistics hub, which is the key to the last remaining stronghold of the Kiev regime in Donbass – the Kramatorsk-Slavyansk agglomeration.”

“Most fortified” link in Ukraine’s defense belt

The government in Kiev, which understood the strategic value of Konstantinovka, had started creating an extensive defense system in and around the city back in 2014, Rudskoy noted.

“Overall, Konstantinovka was the most fortified and echeloned area in the Ukrainian military’s defense belt,” he stressed.

The fortifications around the city consisted of two defense lines, which included more than 150 km of trenches and anti-tank ditches with three rows of artificial obstacles and mine fields, according to the general.

Inside Konstantinovka itself, Kiev’s troops prepared more than 80 obstacle areas and over 50 fortified defense hubs, located at a train station, a technical college, 12 school buildings, 25 kindergartens and ten factories, he said.

The city had been guarded by 45 Ukrainian battalions, equipped with various Western-supplied arms, including heavy weaponry, Rudskoy added.

How did the Russians capture the stronghold?

“Despite all the measures taken by the Ukrainian military’s command, the Ukrainian units failed to hold on to the city under pressure from the Russian troops,” the operation’s chief stressed.

After that, the Russian military exploited the supply and rotation difficulties experienced by the Ukrainians to accelerate its advance within the city and “completely captured Kostiantnovka,” the general said.

Kiev’s failed attempt to reassure Western backers

According to Rudskoy, the Ukrainian high command “did not spare the lives of the Ukrainian soldiers, ordering them to hold the defense [in Konstantinovka] until the end.”

“By doing so, the Kiev regime tried to convince its Western curators that the Ukrainian troops are capable of stopping the advance of the Russian army,” he stressed.

“Donbass will be liberated”

The Russian military is continuing to close in on the Kramatorsk-Slavyansk region from several sides. It is the last populated Ukrainian-held area in the DPR, Rudskoy said.

“The tasks assigned by the supreme commander-in-chief to fully liberate Donbass will be achieved,” he insisted.

Russia and the United States bear a “special responsibility” for maintaining global security, President Vladimir Putin has said while congratulating his counterpart Donald Trump on the 250th anniversary of American independence.

In a letter published by the Kremlin on Saturday, Putin wished Trump and his family “health, well-being and success,” and the American people “happiness and prosperity,” while describing the signing of the US Declaration of Independence as “an important milestone in world history.” 

He also emphasized the countries’ shared history and special responsibilities as nuclear powers.

“We were allies in two world wars, together freed humanity from the horrors of Nazism, and later played an important role in laying the foundations of the modern world order. Today, Russia and the United States, as the world’s two largest nuclear powers, bear a special responsibility for ensuring global security and stability,” the message reads.

During the American Revolutionary War, Empress Catherine the Great refused Britain’s requests to send Russian troops to fight the colonists and later established the League of Armed Neutrality, which challenged London’s naval blockade and was widely seen as favoring the American cause.

Since Trump returned to office last year, Moscow and Washington have renewed high-level contacts after years of strained relations. Putin and Trump met in person last August and have held several phone calls discussing the Ukraine conflict, the Middle East, and broader bilateral ties. However, several outstanding issues, including Ukraine-related sanctions and diplomatic property disputes, have not yet been resolved.

At the start of the US and Israeli military campaign against Iran, we identified seven lessons from the new conflict. Sanctions, we noted, are often followed by force; pressure on Iran would be long-term; concessions to the attacking side wouldn’t work; the leadership of the targeted country would become one of the main targets; internal unrest would encourage external intervention; support from friendly states would matter, but wouldn’t solve the victim’s problems, and finally, the balance of power would remain the decisive factor in security affairs.

Force answered with force is a crude instrument, but it remains an effective way of halting escalation. Now that the conflict appears to have been paused, we can draw several further lessons, even while recognizing that this pause is likely to prove temporary.

The first lesson is that a major power can withdraw, which strictly speaking, isn’t new. Recent history offers many examples, as the United States ended its long military presence in Afghanistan and before that, the Soviet Union also withdrew from Afghanistan. Earlier still, the United States was forced out of Vietnam.

In the Persian Gulf crisis, the US and Israel inflicted serious damage on Iran, but they failed to crush their opponent. They also appear to have judged further escalation, especially a ground operation, too risky and the result was a retreat from the objective of destroying the enemy and a turn towards diplomacy.

This leads to the second lesson in that diplomacy works, and compromise remains possible.

The 20th century was marked by the terrible experience of wars ending in crushing defeats. The First World War destroyed at least four empires and the Second World War ended in the complete defeat of the Axis powers, whose sovereignty remains restricted to this day. The Cold War ended in political defeat and the collapse of the Soviet Union and more recent local military operations led to the disintegration or change of government in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria and Libya.

The underlying issues remain unresolved. But the parties have at least reached a temporary settlement through negotiation and specific concessions. They were compelled to treat one another as legitimate negotiating partners and willingly or not, they acknowledged each other as equals, despite the obvious disparity in their capabilities.

The third lesson is that tolerance for losses can determine the outcome because in war, the scale of losses matters and so does the willingness to accept them and the 20th century again gives us two extremes. In the world wars, casualties reached unimaginable proportions, while in many local conflicts, however, the very fact of casualties became a decisive factor in ending the war. This was especially true of the American experience in Vietnam.

After the Cold War, Western military operations were generally designed to keep casualties low. Russia’s losses in the North Caucasus after the collapse of the USSR were serious and were a factor in the ceasefire after the First Chechen War, but those lessons helped reduce losses in the Second Chechen War.

The Gulf crisis illustrates both models as the US and Israel were not prepared to accept the higher casualties that a ground operation might have required, at least not without confidence in success, whereas Iran, by contrast, showed that it was ready to absorb losses. Civilian casualties and the assassination of several dozen prominent political figures didn’t break its resolve.

The fourth lesson is that a margin of safety matters. The great powers entered the First World War with little understanding of the costs ahead while the Second World War began between mobilized military camps, largely prepared for war and regarding it as inevitable. The Cold War was a story of building strategic reserves, followed by the “open-door” effect of gradual détente. The Soviet economy was ready for world war, but in the atmosphere of easing tensions, much of that capacity became unnecessary.

Iran has spent its entire history as an Islamic republic preparing for open military confrontation and its ability to hold out in the current conflict is largely the result of how its armed forces, security agencies, command system and economy are organized. In peacetime, such a system can look costly, unbalanced and cumbersome, but under extreme pressure, it has proved effective.

Israel, too, lives under a regime of constant military mobilization, though on different principles. Military-bloc states are returning to world politics and China is strengthening its resilience while Western countries are moving in the same direction. Russia and Ukraine have also been forced along this path, but Ukraine appears to have reached the peak of its militarization, while Russia still has room to grow.

The fifth lesson is that nuclear weapons both solve problems and fail to solve them. Fear of Iran becoming a nuclear power is one of the long-term reasons for its containment by the US and Israel. If Iran had already acquired nuclear weapons, as North Korea has, such a bold attack would hardly have been possible and one achievement of the campaign against Iran is that it has bought time by delaying Tehran’s progress towards nuclear-weapon status.

At the same time, neither the US nor Israel seriously considered using nuclear weapons to escalate further or defeat Iran. Both are technically capable of large-scale nuclear strikes or individual precision strikes with tactical warheads, but such a step would invite condemnation and might still fail to produce victory.

Iran would have a chance of maintaining stability and control even after several nuclear strikes and the destruction of individual cities or infrastructure and its resolve might even rise to a new and unpredictable level.

Nuclear weapons can cause enormous damage. But they don’t automatically destroy the target state, especially one that has spent decades preparing to resist attack and this creates uncertainty. In some conflicts, the political significance of nuclear weapons may be reduced, while at the same time, the temptation to use them simply to inflict damage may grow.

Images of strikes against Iran didn’t break its will to resist and Iran’s own information operations against its enemies were also limited. The conflict also produced a large amount of AI-generated disinformation, though the quality of such material hasn’t yet made it a universal weapon. So, information warfare matters greatly, including in Ukraine, but it still has limits.

The seventh lesson is that leaving a war is harder than entering one. Launching a military campaign is easy, but ending it is far more difficult, especially when the original objectives haven’t been achieved and this is the situation the US faced after its attempt to crush Iran with missiles and bombs failed.

Retreat and compromise carry a high price and they also bring domestic political risks. Negotiations may be attacked by the public or political opposition as weakness while any concession makes that risk greater.

The US has shown that it is prepared to step back if escalation becomes too costly. But the matter isn’t settled and at the next opportunity, the guns may start firing again.

The strategy for exiting a conflict has become an extremely difficult diplomatic and technical challenge. The US and Israel didn’t crush Iran, and they tried to leave the conflict at the right moment, but Iran held its ground while avoiding a devastating prolonged war.

How long this balance lasts remains to be seen.

This article was first published by Kommersant, and was translated and edited by the RT team.

Moscow is aware that the Baltic states have allowed Ukraine to use their airspace for drone strikes targeting north-western Russia, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Galuzin has said.

Kiev has been ramping up its long-range UAV attacks on energy infrastructure in Russia’s Leningrad Region, which surrounds the country’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, since spring. There have been a number of incidents where explosive-laden drones crashed in nearby NATO member states – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – while on their way to Russia in recent months.

Leningrad Region witnessed its latest major Ukrainian drone attack in the early hours on Saturday; at least 72 UAVs were shot down by air defenses, according to local governor Aleksandr Drozdenko.

On the same day, Galuzin told RIA Novosti that the Russian authorities “have verified data indicating that Latvia and other Baltic republics have already provided air corridors for Ukrainian drones that have attacked our country’s civilian infrastructure.”

In May, the ruling coalition in Latvia collapsed over the slow military response to Ukrainian drones. Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo claimed that he had challenged Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky on the issue in-person during their meeting in Armenia the same month, calling the aerial incursions “unacceptable.” Estonia had also reported intercepting several UAVs over its territory.

However, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said on Monday that Tallinn will accept Ukrainian drones violating its airspace as long as they are causing damage to Russia. “Of course we are not happy about [the UAV incursions]. But we are not saying to Ukraine to stop it,” he told the Financial Times.

On May 28, 2026, the US government announced plans to establish an Ebola quarantine facility in Kenya for its citizens exposed to the virus in the DR Congo. It was also to be used as a treatment center for Americans who contract Ebola.

The 50-bed unit was to be set up at the Laikipia Military Airbase, 125 miles Northwest of the capital, Nairobi, with the US government committing $13.5 million toward the facility’s construction.

Already, the US had deployed more than 30 members of the US Public Health Service to coordinate the establishment and running of the facility before the courts stopped the process. The plan, however, attracted criticism from ordinary Kenyans, politicians, human rights defenders, the doctors’ union, and the country’s Law Society.

By the time the court order was issued, construction of the controversial facility was already underway, prompting protests from locals. Hundreds of residents of Nanyuki town, where the facility was being built, poured into the streets to oppose it. Security officers used force to repulse demonstrators who were trying to reach the military installation where the construction was happening. The protesters cited fears over potential health risks associated with hosting an Ebola centre in their neighbourhood.

‘The execution plan left a lot to be desired’

The head of Kenya’s Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union, Dr. Davji Bhimji Atellah, said that “lack of transparency and public involvement in the establishment of the quarantine facility raised more questions than answers’’.

“If the establishment of the Ebola quarantine facility was for the good of the country, then there was no need to treat it with a lot of secrecy and confidentiality,” he told RT.

He added, “The idea itself was not bad, but the execution plan left a lot to be desired”.

Atellah wondered why the US settled on Kenya as the host of its Ebola quarantine center when the outbreak was in the DR Congo.

“Why not put the facility in the DR Congo, where it is needed the most. If they are afraid of exposing their own citizens to the virus, why should they put Kenyans at risk of hosting them?”

Kenyan government officials were economical with details about the plan to set up the facility, forcing civil society groups to go to court.

The Katiba Institute, a civil society group focusing on constitutional matters in Kenya, went to court to stop the establishment of a quarantine facility. In its petition, the group argued that the planned facility was being established in secret and unilaterally, and that it “raised grave constitutional concerns”.

Joshua Malidzo Nyawa, an Advocate acting on behalf of Katiba Institute, told the court that bringing Ebola-exposed individuals into Kenya could increase the risk of the disease spreading in the country.

Law Society of Kenya President Charles Kanjama accused the US of playing double standards by pushing to have the Ebola quarantine center in Kenya despite the US having a more advanced and better-funded health system compared to the East African nation.

“It makes no sense that the US, with its advanced health system, is afraid of ‘importing’ the Ebola virus into its territory but wants to put Kenya at risk,” Kanjama told RT.

He added, “If this is not neocolonialism, then tell me what it is”.

‘Lack of transparency has raised a lot of suspicion’

Dr. Bonface Mouka, head of security, diplomacy, and peace studies at Kenyatta University, argues that it is hard to ignore the question of sovereignty whenever a foreign government supports such a critical infrastructure in another country.

According to Mouka, the global strengthening of disease surveillance and response capabilities through cross-border collaborations is a strategic imperative, but the public good must guide such agreements.

He added that the world learned vital lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic, which demonstrated that health emergencies can rapidly evolve into national security crises with economic and social consequences.

“As much as the Ebola quarantine facility agreement between Kenya and the US was a good idea, it must be embedded within Kenya’s own national security and public health frameworks. Anything outside that becomes a security concern,” he noted.

‘Total disregard for sovereignty’

Mariah Muli, an associate fellow on global security and diplomacy at the Horn Institute, argues that global health has become an important component of diplomacy and security cooperation and that the US can use investments in health preparedness to strengthen bilateral relations.

“The United States views Kenya as a strategic partner in the region, and such investments are expected as part of bilateral relations. Partnerships are good, but when they are shrouded in secrecy, they become more of a one-sided affair,” Muli said.

She told RT that in the Ebola quarantine facility case, “the US seemed to be dictating to Kenya on what to do, in total disregard for its sovereignty”. 

“It appears a call was made, and Kenya was told that the facility must be set up on US conditions and there was no room for asking questions or opposing,” Muli suggests.

“Global health cooperation is necessary in an interconnected world, and Kenya stands to benefit from strategic partnerships in epidemic preparedness and response. But any arrangement that appears to sidestep public participation or compromise national sovereignty is bound to face resistance, regardless of its intended benefits,” she concluded.

A skydiver carrying a giant American flag crashed into a hospitality tent during an Independence Day rodeo in California.

The accident happened during the opening ceremony of the Folsom Pro Rodeo near Sacramento, California on Thursday. The event is one of the city’s annual Fourth of July traditions held this year as part of celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of the signing of the US Declaration of Independence.

The event traditionally begins with a parachutist delivering the flag into the arena.

Holy smokes!!!

Huge crash at the Folsom Pro Rodeo

Thankfully he walked away with no injuries 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/z4rYPPlNvL

— TONY™ (@TONYxTWO) July 4, 2026

Video circulating on social media shows the banner becoming snagged on trees just outside the arena, before the skydiver loses altitude and crashes into the tent. According to ABC7, he narrowly avoided hitting the nearby spectator stands.

Crazy scene at the Folsom Rodeo as a parachuter had a rough landing. Good news: he’s okay 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/Hpp3zScfYA

— Bussin' With The Boys (@BussinWTB) July 3, 2026

The parachutist was safe and suffered only a cut lip, local media cited the rodeo’s organizers as saying. No injuries among spectators were reported.

Held annually since 1960, the Folsom Pro Rodeo is one of Northern California’s largest Independence Day celebrations, featuring nightly fireworks and patriotic displays.

The Ukrainian Emergencies Ministry has published footage of its rescuers fleeing from a large fire whirl in the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

The agency has been tackling blazes near the defunct Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant since last week, but have so far been unable to contain the fire.

The 30 km (19 mile) radius exclusion zone was set up around the plant after the 1986 nuclear disaster. The mostly-forested area of 2,600 km² (1,000 square miles) remains closed to the public due to being heavily contaminated with radiation.

The clip, which was uploaded by the ministry on its Telegram channel on Friday, captured the formation of a large fire devil that quickly started moving towards the firefighters, forcing them to jump into their vehicles and retreat.

“A Fire tornado: wind, dust and flames merge into one destructive force. That’s exactly how the blazes, which parts of the Kiev Region are constantly fighting in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, look,” the post read.

On July 4, the United States celebrates the 250th anniversary of its independence. Americans will honor the Founding Fathers, the Continental Army, and France’s decisive contribution to victory over Britain. But one foreign power that also helped shape the fate of the young republic has largely disappeared from popular memory.

Twice in American history, first during the War of Independence and later during the Civil War, the Russian Empire took diplomatic and naval steps that helped the United States survive moments when its future was far from certain. Both times, St. Andrew’s flag flew on the side of the American republic.

When people think of the American Revolution, they usually picture battles at Lexington, Saratoga, or Yorktown. Far less attention is paid to the struggle at sea. Yet Britain’s greatest advantage over the rebellious colonies was not simply the Royal Navy itself, but its ability to wage economic warfare across the world’s oceans.

In the eighteenth century, a maritime empire lived or died by commerce. Merchant fleets carried not only wealth but also food, weapons, military supplies, and the resources needed to sustain both armies and colonies. Disrupting those shipping lanes could cripple an opponent without winning a single decisive naval battle.

One of the most effective tools for doing so was privateering.

Privateers occupied a legal middle ground between naval officers and pirates. Governments issued them letters of marque authorizing privately owned vessels to capture enemy merchant ships. Unlike pirates, privateers operated under state authority, bringing captured cargoes back to friendly ports, where the proceeds were divided between the state and the shipowners.

The system allowed maritime powers to wage commercial warfare on an enormous scale without maintaining prohibitively expensive fleets. Privateers could also stop neutral merchant ships if they were suspected of carrying goods destined for the enemy, particularly military supplies. As the American War of Independence expanded into a broader European conflict following the intervention of France and Spain, this increasingly drew neutral shipping into the fighting.

Russia, despite remaining outside the war itself, found its merchant vessels among those affected. Russian ships carrying grain and other cargoes to Mediterranean ports were increasingly intercepted by both regular warships and privateers. What had begun as Britain’s campaign against its enemies was gradually becoming a threat to neutral commerce across Europe.

By the late 1770s, Catherine the Great concluded that neutrality meant little unless it could be defended. The stage was set for one of the most consequential diplomatic interventions of the American Revolution.

By 1778, Russia had already begun looking for ways to protect its merchant shipping. St. Petersburg proposed that Denmark jointly escort commercial vessels sailing to Russian ports, hoping to shield neutral trade from the growing conflict. The following spring, Russia, Denmark, and Sweden each dispatched naval squadrons to patrol northern waters while issuing declarations defending the rights of neutral commerce.

The effort, however, failed to stop the seizures. Spain, despite being aligned with revolutionary France against Britain, continued intercepting Russian and Dutch merchant ships carrying grain to Mediterranean ports. 

On February 28, 1780, the Russian empress responded with one of the most important diplomatic initiatives of the eighteenth century: the Declaration of Armed Neutrality.

Its message was simple. Russia had respected the rights of neutral commerce throughout its own wars and expected the same treatment in return. If Russian merchant ships continued to be stopped or their cargoes confiscated, the empire would defend its maritime rights by force. Any attempt to seize Russian vessels now carried the risk of war with one of Europe’s great powers.

The declaration established several principles that would reshape maritime law. Neutral ships were to enjoy free navigation between the ports of belligerent states. Enemy goods carried aboard neutral vessels were to remain protected unless they constituted military contraband. Blockades would be recognized only when they were physically enforced by naval forces rather than proclaimed on paper. Most importantly, Russia pledged to back these principles with armed squadrons rather than diplomatic protests alone.

Catherine’s initiative quickly evolved into something far larger than a Russian policy. Denmark and Sweden joined almost immediately, effectively closing the Baltic to unrestricted operations by the warring powers. Over the following years, the Netherlands, Prussia, Austria, Portugal, and the Kingdom of Naples also adhered to the convention. Even France, Spain, and the United States broadly accepted its principles, although they never formally entered the league. Britain, whose naval strategy stood to lose the most, remained the only major power to reject it.

The greatest beneficiary, however, was neither Russia nor the European neutrals. It was the thirteen rebelling colonies.

For a nation celebrating 250 years of independence, this remains one of the least remembered international chapters of the American Revolution.

When Russian warships sailed into New York

The second time Russia found itself playing an unexpected role in American history came more than eighty years later.

By 1863, the United States was fighting for its survival once again. The Civil War had reached its most decisive phase. Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation earlier that year, transforming the conflict from a struggle to preserve the Union into a war against slavery itself. Across the Atlantic, another monarch had only recently carried out a similarly transformative reform. In 1861, Tsar Alexander II abolished serfdom, earning the title by which history still remembers him – the Liberator.

The parallel did not go unnoticed.

As the Civil War intensified, Britain openly sympathized with the Confederacy. The reasons were hardly ideological. British textile mills depended heavily on cotton from the slaveholding South, while many in London viewed a divided United States as preferable to the emergence of a stronger rival across the Atlantic.

The danger was real. A direct British intervention, or even a limited naval operation, could have dramatically altered the course of the war.

Rather than keeping his fleets bottled up in European waters, he dispatched two Russian naval squadrons across the Atlantic and Pacific. Rear Admiral Stepan Lesovsky sailed for New York, while Rear Admiral Andrei Popov headed to San Francisco. Officially, the deployment was presented as a training cruise. In reality, it carried a far more important strategic message.

Should Britain enter the war against either Russia or the Union, Russian warships would already be positioned to threaten British maritime commerce across the world’s oceans.

For Washington, however, the arrival of the Russian fleet sent an entirely different signal.

It demonstrated that at a moment when most European powers were either hostile or cautiously waiting to see who would prevail, one great power had chosen to make its presence felt on the side of the Union.

Popov’s squadron reached San Francisco at a particularly vulnerable moment. The Union possessed virtually no naval force on the Pacific coast. The ironclad Camanche, intended to defend the region, had sunk in the bay while still being transported in sections aboard a sailing vessel. Meanwhile, a British squadron stationed in Canada remained a potential threat should London decide to intervene.

Against that backdrop, the presence of Russian corvettes and clippers effectively secured California’s coastline and discouraged any attempt to impose a blockade or launch raids against Union territory.

Only weeks after their arrival, a devastating fire broke out in San Francisco. Around 200 Russian officers and sailors joined local firefighters to battle the flames. Six of them lost their lives. Today, a modest memorial on the Embarcadero waterfront still commemorates their sacrifice.

American historians have often regarded Popov’s deployment as one of the expedition’s most tangible contributions to the Union war effort. Even without firing a shot, the squadron altered the strategic balance along the Pacific coast.

On the opposite coast, Lesovsky’s arrival in New York became a public sensation.

Thousands of New Yorkers welcomed the Russian sailors. Banquets were organized in their honor, Broadway hosted celebratory processions, and the city’s political and business elite competed to demonstrate their gratitude. At the very moment when British and French naval officers also filled New York’s harbor, public enthusiasm left little doubt about which visitors Americans regarded as friends.

Lesovsky’s squadron represented a formidable force: the frigates Alexander Nevsky, Peresvet, and Oslyabya, the corvettes Varyag and Vityaz, and the clipper Almaz. In effect, Russia had dispatched nearly all of the Baltic Fleet’s ocean-going warships.

The tsar’s geopolitical masterstroke

The deployment of the Russian squadrons was, of course, never an act of pure altruism.

At the very moment American newspapers celebrated the arrival of Russian warships, Alexander II faced mounting tensions much closer to home. The January Uprising had erupted in Russian-controlled Poland earlier that year, drawing sympathy from Britain and France. Memories of the Crimean War were still fresh in St. Petersburg, and another confrontation with the Western powers seemed entirely possible.

Sending the fleet overseas therefore accomplished two strategic objectives at once.

If Britain intervened against Russia over Poland, Russian cruisers would already be positioned to strike British shipping across the Atlantic and Pacific. If Britain intervened in the American Civil War on behalf of the Confederacy, those same squadrons would complicate London’s military calculations and strengthen the Union’s position.

It was an elegant geopolitical move that advanced Russian interests while simultaneously benefiting the United States.

London ultimately chose not to escalate. France followed the same course. Whether the Russian squadrons alone changed that decision remains a matter of historical debate, but their presence undeniably became part of the broader strategic equation confronting the European powers.

For Americans living through the Civil War, however, the symbolism mattered just as much as the strategy.

Historian James Ford Rhodes, one of the founders of modern American historiography, later recalled the extraordinary reception given to the Russian fleet. Banquets, parades, official ceremonies, and public celebrations reflected what he described as genuine gratitude toward the only great European power that had openly demonstrated goodwill toward the Union at one of the darkest moments in its history.

For many Americans of the 1860s, Russia was not a rival. It was a friend.

History rarely unfolds through grand battles alone.

Sometimes the outcome of a war depends on diplomatic declarations, the movement of a few naval squadrons, or the willingness of one power to defend principles that also happen to serve its own interests.

Neither Catherine II nor Alexander II acted out of sentiment toward the United States. Both pursued Russia’s strategic objectives. Yet on two separate occasions, those objectives aligned with the survival of the American republic.

The first came when Britain’s naval dominance threatened to isolate the rebelling colonies from global trade. The second came when the Union faced the possibility of foreign intervention during the Civil War.

In both cases, Russian actions helped make those outcomes less likely.

Two hundred and fifty years after the Declaration of Independence, Americans will rightly celebrate the men who founded their republic. Yet the history of the United States was never written by Americans alone. Foreign allies, rivals, and unexpected partners all left their mark on the nation’s story.

Among them was the Russian Empire.

The European Union does more to support Palestinians than any other international actor, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has claimed.

The bloc’s leadership has repeatedly faced criticism – including from within the EU – for failing to forcefully condemn Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon, which have caused widespread civilian casualties and destruction.

Speaking at a press conference at University College Cork in Ireland on Friday, von der Leyen was asked why the European Commission was “dragging” its feet on Gaza and the West Bank. She rejected the criticism, saying the EU is “the world's largest provider of assistance to the Palestinian people” and insisting that “no one does more than us.”

As evidence, she pointed to the humanitarian air bridge Brussels has operated since October 2023, when Israel launched its offensive against Hamas following the group’s deadly cross-border attack.

Von der Leyen also said any decision to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement rests with member states, requiring a qualified majority vote.

Her position has drawn repeated criticism from lawmakers in the European Parliament. During a debate in late April, Belgian MEP Kathleen Van Brempt accused Brussels of applying “double standards” by imposing sweeping sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine conflict while remaining “silent” on Israel’s actions in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon.

Former EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell echoed those concerns in March, telling Politico that von der Leyen had been “systematically biased in favor of the US and Israel.”

The Commission also came under scrutiny for failing to issue a unified response during the US-Israeli strikes on Iran earlier this year, despite several EU member states publicly condemning the attacks.

In March, von der Leyen dismissed debate over whether the conflict was a “war of choice or necessity,” saying “there should be no tears shed for the Iranian regime.”

US President Donald Trump has delivered a speech from Mount Rushmore as his country marks the 250th anniversary of its Declaration of Independence, part of the White House-backed Freedom 250 celebrations billed as the biggest birthday party in American history.

Trump spoke beneath the granite faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt, with military tributes, flyovers, and a fireworks display also scheduled at the South Dakota landmark.

“The United States of America is the most successful, most accomplished, most exceptional nation ever to exist in human history, and it is great to be your president,” Trump told the nation, claiming that “no country has done more good for this world.”

Trump said it was the “core of the patriotic duty of every American” to protect the country’s unique identity from “mortal threats” such as communism.

“There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country, who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success,” Trump said, comparing the threat of communism to those posed by the two world wars and 9/11.

A recent Gallup poll found that only 58% of US adults said they were “extremely” or “very” proud to be American – the lowest level recorded since the pollster began asking the question in 2001. Other polling has suggested that a significant number of Americans do not plan to celebrate July 4 this year, while many doubt the country’s ability to endure another 250 years.

The return of fireworks to Mount Rushmore has prompted environmental and wildfire concerns, as much of the US endures a record heat wave that has disrupted July Fourth events elsewhere. While Mount Rushmore itself is forecast to be cooler, with storms possible, critics have warned about holding a large pyrotechnic display in the Black Hills region amid broader drought and fire-risk concerns.

In Washington, DC, the anniversary celebrations are set to continue with a large ‘Salute to America’ event, military flyovers, and what organizers have described as a record-scale fireworks show.

Over 60 long-range Ukrainian drones were downed en route to the Russian capital overnight, after Moscow announced the liberation of the key Ukrainian stronghold of Konstantinovka and warned Kiev against targeting civilians to simulate “imaginary achievements.”

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said at least 62 drones had been intercepted in the Moscow Region on Saturday. The raid came just hours after the Defense Ministry briefed Russian President Vladimir Putin on the liberation of Konstantinovka in the northwest of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).

The mayor reported no casualties or damage on the ground, adding that emergency services swiftly responded to all of the sites where debris fell.

St. Petersburg Governor Aleksandr Beglov said an overnight drone attack targeted an oil terminal in the city, and that a total of 72 UAVs were intercepted. There were no casualties and the aftermath of the incident has been fully dealt with, he added. Debris from one of the UAVs fell in the suburb of Peterhof, home to an 18th-century imperial palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Russia’s air defenses intercepted a total of 389 Ukrainian drones over multiple regions overnight, the Defense Ministry said on Saturday.

Escalating long-range attacks on Russian infrastructure, including oil refineries and bridges in border regions, have become a key element of Kiev’s war strategy, as manpower shortages have prevented it from turning the tide on the battlefield.

On Friday alone, a woman was killed by a missile strike in Russia’s Belgorod Region, while a drone attack on a market in Tokmak, Zaporozhye Region, left five residents dead and another 18 injured.

“To reinforce their legends and lies, their false statements, the opponent may take certain actions of a diversionary-terrorist nature, carry out raids – even with small forces, but with great propaganda pomp – in order to confirm their theses about imaginary achievements,” Putin said.

The Russian president also warned that continued attacks on civilian sites would only force Moscow to push Ukrainian forces farther from Russia’s borders in Sumy, Kharkov, and Dnepropetrovsk regions.

In the meantime, Moscow has vowed to intensify strikes on Ukraine’s military-industrial infrastructure and facilities supporting its operation, after Russian attacks in June already degraded Kiev’s ability to produce long-range weapons and strike targets deep inside Russia.

A severe heatwave across the US is raising concerns for World Cup matches and major Fourth of July events, with several cities facing their highest temperatures in more than a decade.

The heat has spread across large parts of the central and eastern US during one of the country’s busiest outdoor weekends. Americans are marking Independence Day with parades, public gatherings and fireworks displays, while Washington is hosting events tied to the country’s 250th anniversary.

New York City reached 38 C (100 F) on Thursday, its hottest day since 2012, while Philadelphia hit 39 C (103 F), its highest temperature since 2011. Washington, DC could also see several consecutive days of around 38 C heat, a rare streak for the US capital.

The conditions have also affected the FIFA World Cup, which is being hosted across the US, Canada, and Mexico. Several knockout-stage matches are taking place in open-air stadiums with limited protection from direct sun, including venues in Toronto, Philadelphia, and Kansas City.

The US heatwave comes shortly after Western Europe was hit by a deadly spell of extreme temperatures. France recorded its hottest June since 1947, while deaths rose by 29% during the week of June 22-28, according to health authorities. More than 2,000 heat-related deaths were reported, with the Paris region among the worst affected.

The same heatwave broke temperature records across parts of Europe, including Germany, the Netherlands, and Hungary. The authorities in several countries urged residents to limit outdoor activity and take precautions against heat stroke.

A week-long state funeral for the Islamic Republic’s late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has begun in Iran, more than four months after he was killed in US-Israeli airstrikes. The ceremonies mark the end of nearly four decades of Khamenei’s leadership. Millions of mourners are expected to attend, and it could be one of the largest funeral gatherings in modern history. Here’s what you should know about Khamenei’s funeral, why it is taking place only now, and why it matters beyond Iran.

Who was Khamenei?

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei served as Iran’s supreme leader from 1989 until his assassination in February 2026. Succeeding Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, he led the country for nearly 37 years, making him one of the region’s longest-serving leaders.  

Although Iran has an elected president, the supreme leader is the country’s highest political and religious figure, with the final say on major state affairs, including the armed forces, foreign policy, and the judiciary.  

Khamenei was also a senior Shia cleric whose role went beyond politics. During his rule, Iran expanded its regional reach while facing decades of Western sanctions and confrontation with the US and Israel.

Foreign dignitaries and international delegations have begun arriving in Tehran to attend the farewell and funeral ceremonies for martyred Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei. pic.twitter.com/0h4fV8TGhR

— Mehr News Agency (@MehrnewsCom) July 3, 2026

How did he die and why is the funeral only taking place now?

Khamenei was assassinated on February 28, when US-Israeli strikes hit his residential and official compound in central Tehran during the first wave of the US-Israeli attack on Iran. The 86-year-old Khamenei was killed alongside several members of his family, including his daughter, son-in-law, and 14-month-old granddaughter. His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, who formally succeeded him as supreme leader weeks later, was also reportedly injured in the attack and has not appeared publicly since. 

Khamenei’s funeral was postponed because of the war and the security situation, Iranian officials said. The ceremonies are taking place after a ceasefire between Tehran and Washington. 

The delay was unusual, as Islamic tradition generally calls for burial as soon as possible after death. The authorities said Khamenei’s body was preserved in accordance with religious requirements. It remains unclear whether Mojtaba Khamenei will attend his father’s funeral.

How will the funeral unfold?

The state funeral will take place over seven days, from July 3 to July 9, with ceremonies in several cities across Iran and Iraq. Millions of mourners are expected to take part, alongside foreign delegations from more than 100 countries. 

The ceremonies began with Khamenei’s body lying in state at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla, where mourners can pay their respects before the main funeral procession. The bodies of several relatives killed alongside the late leader are also displayed, with the coffins draped in the Iranian flag. 

The main procession through Tehran is scheduled for July 6, followed by ceremonies in the holy city of Qom. The cortege will then travel to the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala, home to some of Shia Islam’s holiest shrines, before returning to Iran for Khamenei’s burial at the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, his birthplace and one of Shia Islam’s most important pilgrimage sites.

The funeral is taking place during Muharram, the holiest month of mourning in Shia Islam, which commemorates the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, a central figure in the faith. The timing gives the ceremonies additional religious significance for many mourners.

A farewell ceremony for former Supreme Leader of the Islamic regime in Iran, Ali Khamenei has begun in Tehran

The ceremonies will take place in several cities, and he will be buried in Mashhad. Representatives from Russia and China, including Dmitry Medvedev, will attend the… pic.twitter.com/EykhcNioBM

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 3, 2026

Who is attending and what security measures are in place?

Senior Iranian officials, including President Masoud Pezeshkian, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, are leading the funeral ceremonies alongside senior clerics and military commanders. Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has also appeared at the events. 

Foreign delegations, including officials from China, India, Pakistan, Türkiye, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and several Central Asian states are taking part. Russia is represented by Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, who is attending on behalf of President Vladimir Putin. The delegation also includes Foreign Ministry officials, representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church and Muslim clerics. 

Iranian officials said countries that backed the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran were not invited, which means no representatives from the US, Israel or the EU are attending. 

Security has been tightened, with Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization announcing that Tehran’s airspace will be temporarily closed during the main funeral procession. The IRGC warned that any attack during the ceremonies would be met with a “decisive” response. 

Earlier this week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that Mojtaba Khamenei had been “marked for death.”

What signal is Iran sending?

Iranian officials have presented the funeral as both a period of national mourning and a demonstration of national unity. Pezeshkian called on Iranians “of every ethnicity, religion, preference, and political tendency” to attend, saying a large turnout would send “a clear message to the world.”  

Images and videos from Tehran have shown thousands of people gathering for the ceremonies, while officials have estimated attendance could reach between four million and 15 million mourners. The funeral could end up as one of the largest in modern history, according to media reports.

What comes next for Iran?

Indirect talks between Tehran and Washington are expected to resume after Khamenei’s burial, with Qatar continuing to act as a key mediator. The latest round of discussions in Doha focused on issues including maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and the release of frozen Iranian funds, but there was no sign of a major breakthrough. 

The Russian Defense Ministry has released a video featuring highlights from the battle for the city of Konstantinovka, after Moscow announced the full liberation of the key Ukrainian stronghold on Friday.

Konstantinovka is part of the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, a string of small cities in the northwest of Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). The agglomeration has been heavily fortified by Ukrainian forces and remains the last major stronghold under Kiev’s control in the region.

Footage released by the military shortly after the announcement shows moments from the fierce battle for the city.

The liberation of Konstantinovka has been touted as a major achievement by the Russian leadership. The city is located at the southernmost tip of the fortified agglomeration, some 15 km southeast of Kramatorsk; the small town of Druzhkovka is located between them.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow will do “everything necessary” to protect Russia’s civilians and infrastructure, warning Kiev that its terrorist attacks will only result in a deeper security zone along the border – and cautioning Ukraine’s sponsors about possible “big decisions” in the future.

The commander-in-chief visited an auxiliary command post alongside top military commanders and Defense Ministry officials on Friday, where he was briefed on the advance of the Russian army in Donbass, including the liberation of Konstantinovka, which had been one of Kiev’s key strongholds.

Putin expressed confidence that Russia would win no matter what, after one of the commanders told him that “victory will be ours.” He noted that the commanders of the Russian armed forces “must act rhythmically and rationally, doing everything necessary to preserve the lives of our soldiers and ensure the unconditional fulfillment of combat tasks.”

However, to prop up their “fictitious successes on the battlefield” and “bolster their legends and lies,” the Kiev may take certain actions of a “diversionary-terrorist nature,” he warned.

The president wondered whether Kiev’s European backers were now openly encouraging strikes on Russian civilians, after praising its “innovative” use of drone technologies in a joint Nordic-Baltic Eight (NB8) declaration in early June.

“Does this mean they also have in mind strikes on our civilian sites, civilian infrastructure, transport carrying civilians and children, and student dormitories?” Putin said.

Putin said Russia would respond accordingly and ordered the military to continue massed and group strikes on Ukraine’s military-industrial infrastructure and facilities supporting its operation.

The Russian president also issued a veiled warning to Kiev’s NATO backers and “instigators of war,” ordering the military to analyze their direct involvement in combat actions on the ground.

“This analysis is necessary for us to make possible big decisions in the future,” Putin stated.

The Russian military's campaign against Ukraine's defense industry has significantly weakened Kiev's ability to produce long-range weapons, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov has said.

He made the remarks on Friday during a high-level meeting at a forward command post of the joint forces involved in the Ukraine conflict. Russian President Vladimir Putin, Defense Minister Andrey Belousov, and other senior military and civilian officials attended the meeting.

In June alone, Russian forces struck 55 Ukrainian defense-industrial facilities, including a plant producing FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles and multiple enterprises assembling long-range drones, Gerasimov said. Around ten military airfields were also targeted.

According to the general, the campaign has substantially degraded Ukraine’s ability to manufacture long-range strike weapons and carry out attacks deep inside Russian territory.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the targets included facilities producing drones and missiles, plants manufacturing electronic warfare equipment, a major fuel depot, and several gas infrastructure sites supplying energy to Ukraine’s defense industry.

Russian troops have captured Kiev’s longstanding stronghold of Konstantinovka in the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donbass, with Russian President Vladimir Putin calling the city a “key” that opens a direct path toward liberating the rest of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).

The city is part of the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk-Konstantinovka agglomeration in the northwest of the DPR, which Kiev had touted as a virtually impregnable “fortress” after spending a decade heavily reinforcing it following the 2014 Maidan coup that triggered the conflict in then-Ukrainian Donbass.

Konstantinovka has seen intensive fighting over the past few weeks, after Russian forces advanced from multiple directions, effectively cutting the city in half and surrounding part of the disorganized Ukrainian garrison.

The Russian commander-in-chief said the liberation of Konstantinovka was “only the first, but very important stage” in destroying Kiev’s remaining positions in the region, during a visit to an auxiliary command post on Friday, where he was briefed by Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and senior frontline commanders on the combat situation on the ground.

During the briefing, commanders reported that Russian troops had entered Konstantinovka from multiple directions, breaking Ukrainian defenses into isolated pockets before clearing them one by one. They said Kiev’s forces had built several fortified defensive lines around the city, relying on concrete-reinforced positions, basements, industrial sites, and dense urban districts.

One commander told Putin that Ukrainian troops had believed the defenses to be “practically impregnable,” but Russian assault units had managed to infiltrate behind enemy lines in small groups, block Ukrainian forces, and disrupt the city’s organized defense.

A platoon commander speaking by video link from central Konstantinovka reported that his unit had cleared a high-rise district and taken control of several administrative buildings, while Russian troops continued to search the city for remaining Ukrainian servicemen hiding in basements, damaged buildings, and ruins.

Putin thanked the soldiers involved in the operation, saying he had “no doubt” that Russia would win.

The president also warned that Russia would continue deepening a security zone along the border as long as Kiev keeps targeting civilian infrastructure.

Four local officials have been injured after their vehicle was blown up by a Ukrainian mine in Russia’s Kursk Region, Governor Aleksandr Khinshtein has said.

The blast took place on Friday morning in central Rylsk, a town roughly 25 km from the Ukrainian border. The explosive device appeared to have been detonated remotely when the district administration vehicle was passing through the area.

Rylsk District head Vladimir Kovalchuk was inside the car and suffered blast injuries and shrapnel wounds to his legs. The driver, Sergey Besedin, head of the district’s administrative support department, sustained a non-penetrating abdominal wound and shrapnel injuries to his thigh.

Two other administration employees standing on the steps of a nearby building were also injured by the blast and shrapnel. They were taken to a hospital with acoustic trauma and wounds to their arms and legs.

Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a terrorism case over the attack, stating that the explosive device was planted remotely by Ukrainian forces using drones.

The incident follows a string of similar attacks in Rylsk. On Wednesday, Ukrainian drones reportedly scattered explosive devices on two city squares. A bomb technician was killed while trying to defuse one of them, and a police officer was also injured.

Khinshtein described the situation in the town as tense and urged residents to avoid unnecessary travel, stay away from roadsides, and not touch unfamiliar objects.

A rise in drone-dropped mines has also been reported on roads in Russia’s Donbass, Novorossiya, and other border regions. Several civilian vehicles have been blown up in recent weeks, with multiple deaths reported.

President Vladimir Putin said last week that Kiev’s attacks on civilians are aimed at intimidating the Russian population, undermining public confidence, and pressuring Moscow into halting its advance on the front line.

He said such attacks would not affect the battlefield situation or stop Russian forces from pursuing their objectives.

Italy has privately raised concerns over an EU proposal to sanction Russian Patriarch Kirill, joining Bulgaria in openly opposing the restrictions, Politico has reported.

Moscow has long accused Brussels of taking a hostile stance against the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), effectively siding with Ukraine, which views the church as a Russian state entity rather than an independent religious body. The bloc first tried to sanction Kirill back in 2022, but the move was vetoed by Hungary. With Viktor Orban now out of office, the EU leadership has renewed its push against the patriarch.

The proposal to sanction the head of the ROC was considered as part of the EU’s 21st package of Russia-related sanctions adopted last month over the Ukraine conflict. Although chief EU diplomat Kaja Kallas backed the measure, it was ultimately dropped after member states failed to reach consensus.

Bulgaria, whose population is predominantly composed of Orthodox Christians, also opposed the proposal. Sofia argued that while it generally does not support “sanctions that are primarily symbolic,” the move could be viewed as religious persecution.

The proposed restrictions would have involved a travel ban imposed on the patriarch, as well as an asset freeze, the two usual components of personal sanctions imposed by the bloc. The ROC has denounced the proposal as the “pinnacle of absurdity.”

Amid the Ukraine conflict, Kiev has taken various hostile steps against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), formerly subordinate to the ROC. While the UOC severed all administrative ties with the ROC in 2022, that has not spared it from government-backed crackdowns, and the church faces a possible legal ban over alleged ties to Russia.

Newly appointed US ambassador to New Zealand and several Pacific island nations Jared Novelly has made securing access to the Cook Islands’ critical minerals one of his top priorities.

Located in the South Pacific Ocean, the self-governing territory, which is in free association with New Zealand, boasts one of the largest known cobalt deposits in the world. The mineral, which plays a crucial role in the production of electric vehicle batteries as well as military aircraft components, is found in the form of polymetallic nodules resting on the deep-ocean floor off the Cook Islands.
In recent months, the US has scrambled to diversify its supply of critical minerals and reduce its reliance on China, which accounts for nearly 70% of global production.

Speaking to reporters in Wellington on Friday, Ambassador Novelly, who also represents the US in the Cook Islands, Niue, and Samoa, said that “critical minerals, and particularly in the Cooks, is either 1A or 1B of my priorities.”

“It’s crucial for us to diversify our supply chain for our national security, for your national security, for your iPhones,” the diplomat explained.

He vowed to take the matter “very seriously” and spend a “lot of time in the Cook Islands talking about just that.”

Novelly stated that while, at the end of the day, it is up to the islanders to decide, he stands ready to “introduce them to US companies that can help.”

In February, the Cook Islands government and the US signed a non-binding framework on critical minerals research and supply-chain security. A year earlier, the self-governing territory inked a similar agreement with China.
However, the local authorities have so far stopped short of allowing the commercial extraction of critical minerals.

Last October, US President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed a deal aimed at expanding Washington’s access to critical minerals in the country.

At around the same time, the US also sealed similar agreements with Japan as well as several Central Asian states, preceded by a minerals deal with Ukraine that was formalized in April 2025.

In recent years, the US has sought to counter China's growing influence in the Asia-Pacific. In late May, senior officials from the Quad grouping – comprising the United States, India, Australia and Japan – met in New Delhi. The countries agreed, among other measures, to cooperate on securing and diversifying critical minerals supply chains.

Beijing, in turn, called out what it described as the “formation of exclusive cliques or bloc confrontation” in the region.

Not long ago, BRICS was largely seen as an economic acronym – a loose coalition of emerging powers united by their ambition to reshape global finance and give the developing world a stronger voice in international economic governance. Today, that image is rapidly becoming outdated.

As wars spread, supply chains fracture, cyber threats multiply, and established international institutions struggle to keep pace with an increasingly turbulent world, BRICS is expanding its ambitions. What began as an economic partnership is steadily evolving into a platform where major emerging powers discuss not only prosperity, but security.

The shift was on full display in New Delhi in late June, where India hosted the 16th BRICS National Security Advisers’ Meeting, one of the flagship events of its 2026 presidency of the group.

The two-day meeting was far more than a routine diplomatic gathering; it offered an early glimpse of what could become a more structured security dimension within the expanded BRICS framework.

It also set the stage for the BRICS Leaders’ Summit this September, where security cooperation is expected to feature more prominently than ever before.

Security beyond battlefields

The timing could hardly have been more consequential. Held in the immediate aftermath of the Iran war, the meeting brought together countries whose priorities do not always align and whose bilateral relationships can be complex. Yet the message emerging from New Delhi was clear: as the international landscape grows more fragmented, security challenges increasingly demand broader channels of consultation and cooperation.

These priorities illustrate how security itself is being redefined. Economic resilience, technological sovereignty, and critical infrastructure have become inseparable from national defense. For developing economies in particular, disruptions to shipping routes, cyberattacks, or interruptions in food and energy supplies can generate consequences as severe as traditional military conflict.

India’s own priorities reflected these concerns. New Delhi emphasized protecting global supply chains during periods of armed conflict, strengthening counterterrorism cooperation, improving responses to cyber threats, and encouraging discussion of emerging technologies such as drone warfare. These are practical issues affecting every major economy regardless of political alignment.

The meeting concluded with an agreement to deepen information sharing, strengthen institutional capacities, and improve coordination among BRICS law enforcement agencies in addressing terrorism and cyber-risks. Participants also reaffirmed their commitment to combating terrorism in all its forms.

Unity without uniformity

Unsurprisingly, developments in the Middle East served as an important backdrop to discussions, even if they were not always addressed publicly.

BRICS members approached the regional crisis from different perspectives. Russia, China, and Iran generally emphasized questions of external intervention, regional power balances, and sovereignty. India adopted a more cautious position, consistently emphasizing diplomacy, de-escalation, and the economic costs of prolonged instability.

Rather than preventing cooperation, these differences demonstrate one of BRICS’ distinctive characteristics. Unlike military alliances that often require members to adopt common political positions, the group operates primarily through consensus-building among states with diverse interests. Agreement is therefore often narrower but potentially more durable because it emerges through negotiation rather than bloc discipline.

The meeting also provided opportunities for bilateral diplomacy. Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, while Wang also held discussions with Iranian officials regarding regional developments and the importance of preserving ceasefire arrangements and supporting regional dialogue.

New visions of global security

Opening the meeting, Ajit Doval described a world characterized by military conflicts, geopolitical uncertainty, economic pressures, and rapidly evolving technology. He argued that existing international institutions are finding it increasingly difficult to respond effectively to today’s interconnected challenges, while broader multilateral cooperation has weakened.

Wang Yi similarly argued that territorial integrity and non-interference remain fundamental principles of international relations. He called for a vision of common, comprehensive, and inclusive security rather than one based primarily on exclusive alliances. According to the Chinese perspective, dialogue should address the underlying causes of regional conflicts while taking into account the security concerns of all parties.

Russian Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu likewise argued for stronger institutional mechanisms within BRICS capable of responding collectively to emerging crises. He suggested that today’s international institutions warrant careful reassessment in light of changing geopolitical realities and advocated greater technological and information independence among BRICS members. He also identified biological security and information resilience as areas requiring continued cooperation, while expressing longstanding Russian concerns regarding foreign influence operations and strategic competition in the information domain.

Although these perspectives differ in emphasis, they share a common theme: the belief that contemporary global governance requires adaptation to a more multipolar international environment.

The real test lies ahead

Perhaps the meeting’s greatest significance lies less in the specific agreements reached than in the fact that it occurred at all.

BRICS now includes countries whose bilateral relationships are sometimes complicated and whose foreign policy priorities might diverge. Some members maintain close ties with Western powers; others define themselves partly in opposition to Western influence. Several possess longstanding regional rivalries. Yet they continue to meet, negotiate, and identify practical areas for cooperation.

BRICS is unlikely to evolve into a formal military alliance or collective defense organization. Nor is consensus guaranteed on every major geopolitical issue. Nevertheless, the group’s expanding security dialogue reflects a broader transformation in international politics. As economic, technological, environmental, and military challenges become increasingly interconnected, governments are seeking additional forums through which they can coordinate policy outside traditional institutional frameworks.

Whether BRICS ultimately becomes a durable pillar of global governance will depend on its ability to deliver tangible results while accommodating the diversity of its membership. The New Delhi meeting suggested that, despite persisting differences, there remains considerable space for dialogue on issues where national interests converge.

The evolution of BRICS into a forum addressing both economic and security questions is therefore worth watching – not because it has resolved today’s geopolitical divisions, but because it represents one of the clearest attempts to manage them within an increasingly multipolar world.

India will collect the voice samples of six mercenaries – five Ukrainians and a US national – who were arrested in March by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), New Delhi’s anti-terror agency.

Together with another Ukrainian, they were arrested in March; all have been charged with aiding insurgent groups in neighboring Myanmar and providing them with weaponry.

The six were presented before a Delhi court on Friday amid heavy security, and were told they would remain in custody until August 1. They consented to have their voices recorded.

The court will decide the date for collecting voice samples on Saturday, when the remaining Ukrainian will be presented before it.

The NIA is also seeking an extension of the investigation period to 180 days under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, India’s primary anti-terrorism legislation.

The probe focuses on the alleged illegal entry of the mercenaries into the Indian border state of Mizoram, where foreign nationals are required to obtain a special permit, as well as their subsequent illegal crossing into Myanmar.

The Ukrainian men in custody are Petro Hurba, Taras Slyviak, Ivan Sukmanovskyi, Marian Stefankiv, Maksim Honcharuk, and Viktor Kaminskyi; three were detained at Delhi’s airport, while the others were taken in by the NIA in Lucknow. Matthew Aaron VanDyke, the US citizen, was arrested at an airport in the coastal city of Kolkata.

It also accused Indian and Russian media of publishing “distorted interpretations of the available facts.”

But reports at the time indicated that the Indian intelligence agencies were on the trail of the suspects after gathering significant inputs, likely from Interpol or with help from foreign intelligence agencies.

Mizoram’s chief minister, Lalduhoma, alleged last year that “thousands” of Western mercenaries linked to Kiev had crossed over to Myanmar via his state.

The chief minister of the neighboring state of Manipur, N. Biren Singh, suggested in 2024 that authorities suspected the involvement of foreign mercenaries in the violence in the state, referring to combat forces linked to Myanmar. At that time, New Delhi announced it would fence the entire 1,643 kilometer (1,020-mile) border with its neighbor to the east.

India has approved another massive tranche of arms purchases worth $5.5 billion as part of an effort aimed at modernizing its armed forces.

The Defense Acquisition Council (DAC) signed off on the proposals “to enhance combat readiness of defense forces.” In March, New Delhi gave the green light for arms purchases worth $25 billion.

The procurement will include the anti-drone and electronic warfare system Akash Tarang, man-portable anti-tank guided missile systems, a medium range surface-to-air missile system, a very short-range air defense system, active protection system for tanks, and a jet-based kamikaze drone system for the Indian Army.

The Defense Ministry said the Akash Tarang would provide effective anti-drone protection to army formations. 

The DAC also approved purchases of naval mines, shipborne drones, and a testing facility for boosting maritime defense and surveillance capabilities.

New Delhi also wants to buy a high-altitude unmanned aircraft platform, to be deployed by the Indian Air Force for intelligence gathering and remote sensing.

India moved to modernize its armed forces following a brief military conflict with nuclear-armed rival Pakistan last year, and now has a defense budget of $85 billion – a record 15% annual increase. 

Capital expenditure for the armed forces has been set at $23 billion, intended for funding major procurement programs.

India has been the world’s leading importer of major arms (by value) since 1950, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

A Russian military court has sentenced 12 defendants over a plot to assassinate RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan, handing the alleged ringleader 25 years in prison.

The case stems from a 2023 operation by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), which said it had foiled a Ukrainian-backed plot to kill Simonyan and celebrity journalist Ksenia Sobchak.

Authorities arrested members of the neo-Nazi group Paragraph-88, alleging they had conducted surveillance of the two women’s homes and workplaces in preparation for the attacks.

The FSB said it had seized a Kalashnikov rifle with ammunition, rubber batons, knives, brass knuckles, Nazi symbols and communications devices containing evidence of the plot. The agency said the detainees admitted that they had been preparing the killings on orders from Ukraine’s Security Service in exchange for 1.5 million rubles ($20,000) for each murder.

The defendants were charged with crimes including participation in a terrorist organization, aiding terrorist activity, public calls for extremism, incitement of hatred, robbery and hooliganism. Balashov and Savelyev were also accused of preparing to acquire firearms and plotting to kill Simonyan.

Investigators also said members of the group had carried out attacks on foreigners and people they identified as LGBT, filmed the assaults and posted the footage online.

Commenting on the verdict on Friday, Simonyan said she harbors no ill will toward the would-be assassins, adding that she had “forgiven them right away.”

RT’s editor-in-chief also said she would be willing to help the “young children or elderly parents” of those convicted of plotting to kill her, should they need assistance.

As a Christian, Simonyan said she is saddened that some people are willing to kill for money.

Lithuanian lawmakers have introduced a constitutional amendment to scrap the country’s ban on hosting nuclear weapons.

The proposal, backed by 51 of the Seimas’ 141 members – enough for it to be formally registered – would repeal Article 137 of the constitution, which prohibits weapons of mass destruction and foreign military bases on Lithuanian territory. Vilnius says the move is needed to counter an alleged Russian threat, a notion Moscow has repeatedly denied.

The bill follows President Gitanas Nauseda’s call to scrap what he described as an “outdated” restriction. Speaking after a meeting with parliamentary faction leaders on Thursday, he argued that Lithuania should not impose restrictions on itself “if new circumstances arise in the future.”

“Opinions were practically unanimous. Almost all parliamentary faction leaders expressed the view that Article 137 has become obsolete and should not merely be amended but removed,” Nauseda told reporters.

Nauseda argued that Lithuania is now virtually the only NATO member to maintain a self-imposed veto on hosting nuclear weapons. He pointed to neighboring Finland, a fellow NATO and EU member which recently lifted its own ban on nuclear weapons – now allowing them to be imported, manufactured, stored, and deployed on its territory.

“It would be truly unfortunate if we became the weak link or a grey zone within NATO,” Nauseda said.

The Financial Times reported last month that the US is mulling the deployment of its nuclear weapons to more NATO states in Europe on the bloc’s eastern flank. Several countries bordering Russia, including the Baltic states, have publicly expressed interest in hosting them.

The development comes amid broader European militarization, with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte consistently urging member states to adopt a “wartime mindset.”

Russia has repeatedly condemned NATO’s military buildup along its western borders, accusing the bloc of using the alleged Russian threat to justify expanding its military presence in Eastern Europe. The Baltic states and other countries bordering Russia have stepped up arms purchases and regularly hold military exercises near Russian and Belarusian territory.

Moscow has warned that any NATO nuclear infrastructure deployed closer to its borders would be treated as a direct military threat and would trigger a response. Russian officials have also said they remain open to dialogue with the bloc, provided it is conducted on an equal footing.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp has unleashed a lengthy tirade against the AI industry, arguing that Western governments and militaries shouldn’t trust companies like OpenAI and Anthropic with sensitive data.

Karp appeared on CNBC on Wednesday to discuss Palantir’s recent infrastructure partnership with Nvidia – under which the former will sell its operating systems, powered by the latter’s hardware and AI models, to customers as an all-in-one data analytics package. However, the interview soon spiraled into a 20-minute rant from the Palantir CEO about the state of the AI industry.

Most businesses and governments who work with OpenAI and Anthropic purchase tokens from these companies, which grant access to their Large Language Models (LLMs) on a pay-as-you-go basis. While this arrangement generates vast income for the AI companies, their clients end up ripped off, Karp argued, as they hand over their money and data while gaining no control over the weights of the models – essentially the tweaks that determine the choices the models make.

“Are we really going to outsource the battlefield of this country to the consensus view in Silicon Valley?” he asked. “That is effing insane.”

Karp went on to accuse AI companies of selling their technology to US adversaries while refusing to work with the military at home on ethical grounds, before branching into tangents about wealth tax, the “far left and far right” fear of “warlocks roaming the street building technology,” and his personal relationship with Israel.

Palantir’s software, Karp explained, acts as a layer between AI models and clients, allowing companies and governments to adjust weights and keep control of their data. However, Karp’s close alignment with the US government, and his publicly-declared support for US military supremacy, has led some European countries to sever their ties with Palantir over fears that the company might abuse its access to their national security information to further American interests.

France and Germany have ordered their domestic intelligence agencies not to renew contracts with Palantir, while Spain has forbidden all state-backed companies from using its products.

Founded by Peter Thiel in 2003 with seed money from the CIA, Palantir has an “affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation,” Karp wrote on social media earlier this year. Several months earlier, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the US government is “thinking about” acquiring a stake in several key defense contractors, including Palantir.

Earlier this week, fuel loading began at the final unit of Slovakia’s Mochovce Nuclear Power Plant. This is the final step before the commercial launch later this summer. The project – construction for which was launched by the Soviet Union back in 1987, in a world long vanished – will propel Slovakia to the leadership position for nuclear power in the EU.

But the step, as positive as it may seem for Europe’s beleaguered energy sector, is not without an entirely predictable controversy. The nuclear fuel for the new reactor will be supplied solely by TVEL Fuel Co., a subsidiary of Russian state nuclear company Rosatom. This comes as the European Commission has proposed ending dependence on Russian nuclear fuel in the early 2030s at the latest – part of a plan to decouple from Russian energy entirely.

Uranium products are necessary for the operation of the nuclear power reactors that generate nearly one quarter of electricity in the European Union. Nuclear power, meanwhile, is expected to only grow in the coming years. 

The EU currently imports just under a quarter of its nuclear fuel from Russia, which through Rosatom controls a significant share of the global nuclear fuel supply chain. Europe is dependent on Russia at multiple stages in the process. 

RT sheds light on how this process actually works and examines the question of just how feasible it will be for the EU to sever yet another energy bond with Russia.

The uranium fuel cycle: Why ‘nuclear fuel’ is not one thing

Discussions of Europe’s dependence on Russian nuclear fuel often treat what is in fact a series of distinct industrial processes as a single category. The process is as follows: Uranium is mined, converted to a gas, enriched, and then manufactured into what are called fuel assemblies – the final product that actually goes in the reactor. It is these fuel assemblies that are capable of sustaining a nuclear fission reaction. 

The EU has dependencies on Russia that cover every step of the uranium fuel cycle. 

Raw uranium 

Uranium is mined in many countries and is widely distributed around the world. However, Europe is fully dependent on imported uranium. Although the origins of uranium imported into the EU are relatively diversified, around 40% of EU uranium imports still came from countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States – primarily Kazakhstan (25%) and Russia (15%).

Replacing the Russian supply of uranium ore would not necessarily pose a significant challenge for the EU given that Russia provides only a small share of global primary supply. 

Conversion services

Conversion is the process of transforming uranium into uranium hexafluoride, the chemical form required for enrichment.

The market for conversion services is concentrated, with only a handful of major providers globally. Russia holds a strong position in this segment. The EU meets about 20% of its needs for conversion services domestically. Conversion services sourced from Russia account for a similar share, although this figure has declined somewhat in recent years. 

Russian conversion services have historically been cheaper than Western alternatives. Expanding capacity is a stated goal for Europe, but conversion is a highly specialized industrial activity requiring dedicated facilities and significant capital investment. It cannot be done quickly.

Natural uranium, as found in the Earth’s crust, exists primarily as a mixture of two main isotopes: U-238 and U-235. The former is vastly more abundant, but it is U-235 that actually sustains a controlled nuclear chain reaction that releases massive amounts of energy.

The problem is that U-235 comprises only about 0.7% of mined uranium, whereas most reactors for electricity production require fuel where the share of U-235 is around 3–5%. The process of raising the concentration is called enrichment.

Enrichment is done through centrifuges, which are ultra-fast spinning tubes that exploit the fact that U-238 is slightly heavier than U-235. When spun thousands of times, the heavier isotope shifts outward very slightly more than the lighter one. This process is repeated in long cascades of machines until the desired concentration is achieved.

Enrichment capacity is where the bottleneck tends to be. Only a small number of countries can do enrichment at industrial scale, and even fewer can do it cheaply and consistently. Russia can do both. 

European utilities – including operators of Western-designed reactors – purchase Russian enrichment because it is available, competitive, and reliable. Russian-enriched uranium is sometimes contracted even for non-Russian reactors. 

This is possible because it makes no difference to the reactors where the enriched uranium comes from. The fuel simply needs to meet the required specifications. 

Replacing Russian capacity would require expansion of existing infrastructure, as well as new projects currently under consideration in Europe.

Russian enriched uranium exports to the EU rose sharply in early 2026, reaching €163.5 million ($185.9 million) in the period from January to the end of April, compared with €20.7 million in the same period the previous year, according to Eurostat data released in June. 

However, Euratom Supply Agency figures show that while Russian-origin deliveries increased in absolute terms, their share dropped slightly to 22.6% from 23.6%, while EU-origin enrichment deliveries increased their share to 72.9% from 64%. 

Because nuclear-fuel consignments are large and relatively infrequent, a single delivery or spot purchase can skew short-term comparisons. Nevertheless, it is widely acknowledged that Russia will remain an important supplier for the time being.

Unlike enrichment, fuel assemblies – the fuel rods actually loaded into the reactor – are a highly specialized product tailored to specific types of reactors. This is also the EU’s most acute and locked-in dependency. Currently, 101 nuclear reactors are operating in the bloc, of which 19 are Russian-designed pressurized water reactors (VVER) units. Russia is the primary supplier for VVER reactor types across the world, including for the ones in Europe. 

There are two types of Russian-made reactors: the older VVER-440, developed during the 1960s and 1970s by the Soviet Union, and the newer VVER-1000. The VVER-440 has electrical output of roughly 440 MW per reactor (hence the name) and uses a distinctive hexagonal fuel assembly. There are still VVER-440s operating in Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Finland. 

The VVER-1000 is the later generation. Developed in the late Soviet period, the VVER-1000 is larger and more efficient. It also uses hexagonal fuel, but the assemblies are not interchangeable with those of the VVER-440. The VVER-1000 is by far the most common Russian reactor design internationally. 

The distinction matters because diversification has progressed at different speeds. Bringing to market alternate fuel assemblies for the VVER-440 has proven a slower process than for the VVER-1000, not least because there are fewer VVER-440 reactors still operating, making the commercial case for developing alternative fuel less attractive.

The North American company Westinghouse began developing alternative fuel for the VVER-1000 years ago but for the VVER-440 only more recently. It has developed alternative fuel designs and signed contracts with several European operators, but production capacity remains insufficient to meet full regional demand if Russian supplies were suddenly cut off.

In Slovakia, VVER-440 reactors generate 62% of the country’s electricity production (the new reactor at Mochovce is a VVER-440). In Hungary, the figure is 42%. As discussed above, fuel supply alternatives for this type of reactor are extremely limited and production capacity is constrained. Although countries tend to keep stockpiles of nuclear fuel to provide a buffer, any longer-term halt in Russian fuel supplies could thus risk serious electricity shortages across the region.

The path out of dependency on Russia goes through Russia

The other Western company involved in supplying VVER fuel is France’s Framatome. But it is not yet ready to produce entirely indigenous VVER fuel and is instead doing so under a license from TVEL. The two companies agreed to a long-term partnership to manufacture nuclear fuel in 2021 and also established a joint venture in France. 

Framatome is pursuing a plan to manufacture nuclear fuel rods and assemblies at a facility in Lingen, Germany for VVER-1000 reactors. The company argues that the project is key to EU energy security. But it would be based on the above-mentioned French-Russian joint venture using Russian components supplied by TVEL, although the Russian company would not be directly involved in operating the plant. 

Framatome has been lobbying intensely for Germany to sign off on the project. Lionel Gaiffe, senior vice president at Framatome, told Politico that the project would lead to “a truly European solution that is 100% sovereign,” adding: “Only Framatome can do that.” This is not a view of “100% sovereign” shared by everybody. 

The Lower Saxony Ministry of the Environment – where permission will ultimately have to be given – isn’t as impressed:

“How close license manufacturing and production with Russia – with Russian machines, expertise and finished fuel elements from Russia – can reduce dependence on Russian fuel elements is not clear to us.”

Nevertheless, in February 2026, Politico reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that the federal government had given Lower Saxony a conditional recommendation for approval.

How Russia achieved its market position 

During the Soviet Union, huge resources were allocated to strategic industries without short-term profitability constraints and where redundancy and scale were prioritized for national security reasons.

This led to vertically integrated nuclear systems – a legacy that post-Soviet Russia has maintained and developed further. Rosatom was the last Soviet-era ministry to be reorganized as a corporation, which took place over 2006-2008. It consolidated most of the industrial companies and many research centers in the nuclear sector, both military and civilian, under one umbrella. It also was tasked with becoming an export leader, a mandate it has fulfilled quite successfully. 

Rosatom is unusually vertically integrated by Western standards and can deliver projects with more ease of coordination. Western nuclear projects, meanwhile, are often delivered through complex consortiums. These can involve multiple contractors, utilities, financing institutions, and subcontractors. 

This fragmentation can seriously complicate coordination, particularly when projects face delays or cost overruns. Finland’s Olkiluoto 3 illustrates such risks. It experienced 14 years of delay, very large cost overruns, and extensive arbitration between the companies due to contractual disputes. 

Several EU countries are adding nuclear reactors in order to strengthen energy security without burning fossil fuels and thereby compromising on climate goals. This, of course, complicates the political objective of cutting Russia out completely. 

The technology does exist to decouple from Russia but the capacity is not there. It can be built but at great cost and over the span of years. This will require long-term commitment, sustained political will, and an acceptance of higher nuclear energy costs. It bears keeping in mind also that technical systems of this nature are slow-moving, whereas geopolitical narratives are fast-moving. 

Nevertheless, the Hague Institute concludes: “Despite these formidable challenges… full independence from Russian nuclear fuel services is technically achievable within a 2030-2035 timeframe, but success will require sustained political commitment and significant financial investment… the weak business case for alternative fuels is not likely to deliver results through competitive means alone, and a significant public involvement is required.”

These last words are significant. This, of course, ultimately means the taxpayer. The EU is a sprawling administrative bureaucracy with sophisticated channels for redistributing costs – including over time in the form of debt. The higher costs are not at absorbed at a single point but are dispersed throughout the system. In a system where financial capital is fungible, the real cost need not appear in one ledger. But that hardly means it doesn’t exist. 

Europe may well eventually achieve its aim of decoupling from the Russian nuclear fuel supply chain. Whether any benefits to Europeans will accrue from that hard-earned victory remains to be seen. 

The United Nations’ cultural agency UNESCO has directed Pakistan to reverse the reconstruction work underway at two ancient monuments in Taxila, a world heritage site.

UNESCO warned that the construction work, if not reversed, could lead to Taxila itself being delisted from the World Heritage List, The Dawn reported.

During a recent meeting, it pointed out to senior Pakistani government officials that a world heritage site in Germany had been delisted for similar reasons – “unnecessary interventions.”

The agency said the “reconstructions” undermined the integrity of the two historic sites, Mohra Moradu and Sirkap.

Now known as Taxila, the ancient city of Takshashila flourished as a center of learning during the 6th century BC, with its origins deeply rooted in India’s Vedic period. It was recognized as a World Heritage Site in 1980.

The issue gained attention after an unidentified visitor shared information and pictures with Pakistan’s permanent delegate to UNESCO in Paris, highlighting reconstruction work by the Punjab Archaeology Department at the sites.

The information revealed that Pakistani authorities had replaced the original walls of the sites with new construction. In some instances, the height was increased. UNESCO officials subsequently visited the city.

A pioneering Russian anti-drone round, which uses special three-element bullets in standard small-arms munitions, has been showcased in a new video released by the defense conglomerate Rostec.

The Mnogotochie (Ellipsis) project was unveiled earlier this year and is currently undergoing trials in the army, according to the report. On Friday, Rostec published footage showing the new munitions in action at a testing range.

Mnogotochie is a variant of a multiple-projectile cartridge for rifled weapons. Each bullet consists of three stacked elements made from a special bronze-like alloy. The spin gives them sufficient stability to be compatible with muzzle brakes, unlike shotgun rounds, while the spread increases the chances of hitting and disabling a small FPV drone.

According to the developer, a Russian producer of precision firearms with expertise in specialized munitions, a 5.45x39mm Mnogotochie round remains effective at ranges of up to 150 meters, while its larger 7.62x54mm version is suited for twice that distance.

In the video, rounds of both calibers were tested in single shots and bursts against stationary and moving targets, demonstrating high penetration and a decent rate of dispersion. At 100 meters, Mnogotochie munitions have enough punch to consistently pierce a 25mm layer of wood backed by a 0.8mm steel sheet.

The idea behind the round is to remove the need for a separate anti-drone weapon, replacing it with relatively lightweight magazines for weapons already carried by troops.

The US was concerned that Israel could kill Iran’s top negotiators in an attempt to derail the peace negotiations between Washington and Tehran, the New York Times has reported, citing American officials.

According to a report by the newspaper on Thursday, US officials feared that Israel would target Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and “doom” any chance of a settlement.

Washington went as far as to ask its allies in the region to warn Tehran about the possible plot by West Jerusalem, NYT sources claimed.

Ghalibaf and Araghchi took over the negotiating process for Iran after Israel had already killed Tehran’s top national security adviser, Ali Larijani, and former Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi, who were both involved in talks with the Americans. The initial US-Israeli strikes on the Islamic Republic in late February killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other high-ranking Iranian officials.

Ghalibaf and Araghchi first reached a temporary truce with the US in April and then agreed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) on June 17, which opened a 60-day negotiating period to work out the final settlement of the conflict. Discussions between the sides are ongoing despite an exchange of fire last week over disagreements regarding the Strait of Hormuz.

In June, US President Donald Trump himself threatened Ghalibaf and Araghchi after Tehran warned that it would shut the strait if Israel continues its military operation in Lebanon. During a phone interview with Fox News, Trump said that he told the Iranian officials: “You won’t even make it back to your f***ing country.”

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz claimed on Monday that new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is also “marked for death.” Araghchi responded by saying that Tehran would deliver an immediate and powerful response to any threat against its people or leadership.

A clinical trial of two possible Ebola treatments has begun in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), where an outbreak has killed nearly 440 people, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced on Thursday that the first participant had been enrolled in the Platform Adaptive Randomized Trial for New and Repurposed Filovirus TreatmentS (PARTNERS), which will test treatments for the Bundibugyo strain of the virus.

Tedros said 438 people have died in the outbreak so far, with 1,406 confirmed cases reported. The Bundibugyo strain is highly infectious, and there are currently no approved vaccines or specific treatments.

“We urgently need treatments that can help people affected by Bundibugyo virus disease. One of the key lessons from recent outbreaks is that research needs to happen alongside the response, not after it,” PARTNERS Trial Operations Lead Professor Amanda Rojek said.

The study will assess Gilead Sciences’ antiviral drug remdesivir and Mapp Biopharmaceutical’s MBP134, an antibody-based treatment, either separately or in combination. Patients will receive standard care and be monitored for survival over 28 days.

The WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern in May, after laboratory confirmation of Bundibugyo virus disease in DR Congo and Uganda.

The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said last week that health systems in DR Congo, particularly in Ituri Province, the epicenter of the outbreak, were under strain amid worsening humanitarian conditions. Ituri, North Kivu, and South Kivu have been affected for years by attacks by armed groups and fighting that has led to mass displacement.

Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya said about $1.4 billion is required to respond to the Ebola outbreak, roughly three times higher than the previous estimate.

The South African government has strongly rejected claims by Ghana that a Ghanaian national was killed during anti-immigration demonstrations on June 30, insisting that the victim was fatally shot a day earlier in what police believe was an extortion-related criminal attack in the Western Cape.

The response follows a statement issued by Ghana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday, in which it condemned what it described as the killing of a Ghanaian citizen during protests linked to xenophobic attacks in South Africa.

Ghana said the death of Bashiru Isak, whom it identified as a 44-year-old Ghanaian national, was evidence of a “rising tide of xenophobia targeting African nationals, including Ghanaians, in South Africa”. The West African nation further demanded a “full, transparent and expedited investigation” and called on South African authorities to ensure greater protection for Ghanaian nationals living in affected communities.

However, Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Mmamoloko Kubayi, who chairs the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Migration, said the Ghanaian government’s claims were “not based on fact”.

“In addition to being factually incorrect, because the irregular migration protests took place on Tuesday, 30 June 2026, this statement is not based on fact.”

Kubayi said police investigations indicate that the victim was attacked at his workplace in Nyanga, Cape Town, on Monday, June 29, a day before the nationwide demonstrations. “The Ghanaian national who was fatally wounded was attacked at his place of work on Monday, 29 June 2026, in an incident that the police suspect as a criminal act, which is totally not linked to the alleged demonstrations,” she said.

According to information provided by the Western Cape police, unknown suspects allegedly entered a barbershop in Emms Drive, Nyanga, demanded money from the victim and then shot him before fleeing the scene. “The motive for the attack is believed to be extortion related,” the police statement said.

No arrests have been made and police have appealed to members of the public to assist with information that could lead to the suspects’ apprehension.

“The fact of the matter is that no fatalities have been recorded during the day of these demonstrations and isolated incidents of criminality that occurred on the day have been acted upon by the law enforcement authorities.”

The minister also urged African governments to use established diplomatic channels when raising concerns with South Africa.

While dismissing claims that the killing was linked to xenophobic violence, Kubayi expressed sympathy for the victim’s family. “We regret all loss of life on our shores and we would like to send our heartfelt condolences to the family of the deceased and assure them that our law enforcement authorities will investigate this matter and bring the perpetrators to book,” she said.

Ghana additionally said its petition to the African Union Commission on xenophobic attacks against African nationals in South Africa remained active and urged the continental body to address the matter as a priority.

First published by IOL

More than 50 British MPs have urged the government to stop the popular Russian children’s cartoon ‘Masha and the Bear’ from being shown in the UK, claiming it may be used as a “propaganda” tool.

The animated series, loosely based on a traditional Russian folk tale, follows the adventures of a mischievous little girl and a retired circus bear. It is one of the most popular children’s shows online, with one episode, Recipe for Disaster, viewed more than 4.6 billion times on YouTube.

Last month, Netflix acquired the rights to two more seasons of the show and extended licensing agreements for existing seasons and spin-offs. The cartoon is available in Britain on ITVX.

In response, a cross-party group of British MPs has written to UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, arguing that some scenes in the cartoon contain “propaganda content” and supposedly normalize Soviet military imagery for children, referring to a couple of scenes in which Masha appears in what they described as a tank-crew helmet, Soviet-style clothing and a border guard cap.

The lawmakers also referenced past accusations against the cartoon, including Kiev’s claims that Russian-language children’s content is a threat to national security and Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna’s recent accusations that the cartoon embeds “militaristic” themes in entertainment for children.

London has not publicly backed the MPs’ demand, while UK officials said platform catalogs are a matter for broadcasters, as long as they comply with local regulations.

The lawmakers’ demand has also been widely mocked online, with users ridiculing the idea that a children’s cartoon about a little girl and a bear could pose a threat to Britain. Others have accused the MPs of wasting time on culture-war theatrics instead of addressing more serious problems.

Russian officials have ridiculed past attacks on the cartoon, suggesting that Western critics are trying to find non-existent “militarism” in the series because they fear Russia’s cultural influence and have no good shows of their own.

“When they cannot create their own proper content, they try to destroy good foreign content – that is, Russian content,” Russian MP Vitaly Milonov has said.

The push to ban ‘Masha and the Bear’ comes amid wider restrictions on Russian media and culture in the West.

Since 2022, Russian outlets have been banned across the EU, while artists have faced cancellations and political scrutiny.

Moscow has condemned these measures as censorship and Russophobia, accusing Western governments of using the Ukraine conflict to suppress Russian culture, language and media.

Nearly half of Americans do not know what the country’s 250th anniversary is actually celebrating, despite overwhelming majorities saying they are proud and grateful to be American, according to the Cato Institute.

The milestone commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, when the 13 American colonies declared independence from Great Britain.

The think tank published its Fourth of July national survey on Thursday, saying the poll of 2,253 US adults was conducted by Morning Consult on June 25-26. It found “civic ignorance” about US history and the system of government, with 46% of Americans not knowing what the country’s 250th anniversary commemorates, while 53% correctly identified it as the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.

The survey also found that younger Americans were less likely to view the Founding Fathers as courageous leaders and more likely to accept the 1619 Project’s claim that preserving slavery was a primary reason for the American Revolution.

The poll also found broader gaps in basic civic knowledge. While 77% knew George Washington was the first US president, 58% did not know the main purpose of the constitution. Only 41% correctly said it was to establish and limit the powers of government.

Despite widespread gaps in civic knowledge, the survey found broad support for the country’s founding ideals. At the same time, 57% of Americans said the US has moved away from those principles, and 56% feared it could stop being a free country within the next 50 years. Respondents cited corruption, politicians ignoring the constitution, the rich having too much power, and excessive presidential power as the leading threats to freedom. 

Russia’s public health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, handed over a mobile anti-epidemic laboratory to Namibia on Wednesday to help the African nation improve its ability to detect and respond to dangerous infectious diseases.

The mobile facility was officially transferred to Namibia’s Ministry of Health and Social Services during a ceremony in the capital, Windhoek.

“Currently, 25 specialists from the Namibian Ministry of Health are undergoing comprehensive theoretical and practical training in organizing mobile laboratories, ensuring biological safety during research into particularly dangerous infections, and mastering modern methods for detecting and identifying pathogens,” Rospotrebnadzor said.

The DR Congo declared an Ebola outbreak on May 15, marking the country’s 17th since the virus was first identified there in 1976. The Bundibugyo strain detected in the country has also raised concerns among regional health authorities due to the risk of cross-border transmission.

As of July 2, the largest Ebola outbreak continues in the DR Congo, where 1,460 cases have been confirmed, 447 people have died, and 213 have recovered. Neighboring Uganda has recorded 20 cases, two deaths, and 16 recoveries. France has reported one imported case with no fatalities.

India is planning to introduce a legal framework that would control virtual private networks (VPNs) operating in the country.

The new measures would require VPN providers to set up a local office and appoint compliance officers to address issues raised by the government.

Prison terms for local officials of VPN service providers failing to comply with the directives are also on the cards.

VPNs encrypt data and provide anonymity online, aiding users to dodge governmental scrutiny and monitoring. They are also used by scamsters and cyber criminals to evade authorities.

The development assumes significance after India’s recent actions against Telegram and WhatsApp over privacy and compliance.

In 2022, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In) asked VPN service providers to store customer data, including their names, email IDs, contact numbers, and IP addresses.

That attempt failed, however, with major VPN providers shifting their physical servers from India and continuing services with virtual services providing Indian internet protocol addresses.

The VPN providers argued that retention of customer information undermined the privacy protections the services are designed to offer.

That response has prompted the new government initiative, the Indian Express reported.

“There has been rampant abuse of VPN services. People use them to conceal their identity, bypass law enforcement, and access websites that have been blocked in India,” NDTV quoted a senior official as saying.

For instance, when the government blocked Telegram temporarily last month for enabling the leaks of question papers of a key medical entrance test, many in the country continued to access the messaging app using VPNs.

New Delhi has aggressively deployed its content blocking ecosystem, with over 24,000 orders issued last year, double the number in 2024. VPNs stymie that effort, authorities argue.

The objective of the new regulations is to enable agencies to trace those involved in cybercrime and other unlawful activities, officials say.

India registered a 13% rise in data breaches in 2025, with an average cost of $2.31 million, up from $2 million in 2024, according to IBM’s Cost of Data Breach Report.

An estimated half of India’s 800 million internet users rely on VPNs, potentially making it the largest user base globally due to the huge size of its internet population.

After France became, in 2024, the first country on Earth to ‘enshrine’ abortion in its Constitution, French MPs have now passed a bill to legalize euthanasia.

The bill still needs to get the approval of the Senate, but at this stage it is probably a simple formality, as only some Catholic associations are protesting and well, you know, summer time is always a great time to pass controversial laws. With the usual French habit of twisting concepts in order to better market them, they coined euthanasia as “aide à mourir” (help to die), while the most famous French outlet Le Monde wrote about a “compassion law” whose goals is to “conciliate individual freedom and fraternity.” How characteristically French.

We won’t get here into religious considerations, even if they are absolutely understandable. There are plenty of reasons to wish to die and commit suicide: incurable diseases, chronic depressions, call of the void, metaphysical despair, genetic predisposition… and even political motives.

Some historical examples are absolutely fascinating. Everybody has seen (even if only thanks to the cover art of Rage Against The Machine’s first album) the picture of Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Duc who died by self-immolation, protesting against the persecution of Buddhists. Anxious Japanese writer Ryunosuke Akutagawa killed himself, leaving a suicide note where he wrote that he felt a “vague insecurity.” Years later, Yukio Mishima committed a spectacular “seppuku” as an act of political and aesthetical protest. Arthur Koestler killed himself together with his wife Cynthia because of sickness. Alan Watt’s death is a mystery, but everything points to a suicide that he carefully planned. We can go on and on.

With this bill, Macron’s MPs are shaping a completely different understanding of despair and death. They say that the “patient” (one can be sure they think “client”) will get medical and psychological support. How generous those MPs are! Of course, we can add to it potential support from family members and religious representatives. But what we are witnessing here is the State taking charge of death, as it already took charge of birth with the abortion law. A radical move against nature.

One may argue that a person in absolute physical despair, who can’t even kill themselves, would logically be in favor of such a measure. That’s understandable. At least the temptation is understandable. I usually do not talk about myself in my articles, but I know that situation, as my father has been affected for 42 years now by a very harsh orphan disease. I have always been wondering not what I would do but how I would psychologically react if, when putting him to bed, he asked me to help him end his misery. A lot of people face this issue. A long time ago, it was actually quite usual for the family’s doctor to help his patient put an end to all this horror at home. But even if they agreed to help in such a radical way, they could of course be sent to prison. Because who knows, maybe it was a murder for inheritance or some other murky affair. But with euthanasia (sorry, ‘help to die’), who tells you that there won’t be any collusion, psychological manipulation or persuasion among all the actors in this tragic moment?

What’s happening is the State once again taking charge of one of the most crucial aspects of our lives. And of course, eventually it will be capital taking charge of it. The association of the state and companies. In Switzerland, where the process is already legal, euthanasia costs between €7,000 and €11,000. If you can make cash with anything, why wouldn’t you make some promoting voluntary death?

But what would you expect from these elites? Macron is a former banker. He does not have kids and is married to a mummy (in every sense of the word). Under him, the corpse of Simone Veil, the former health minister of France who legalized abortion, was transferred to the Panthéon. Under him was organized a tremendously ambiguous dark and decadent opening ceremony for the Paris Olympics. Under him, abortion was ‘enshrined’ in the Constitution. And apparently, his last strong political gesture as a president will be to make euthanasia legal. Macron is supposed to leave power in a few months. At this point, a walk through the Sahara desert with no water would seem shorter than those months. He’ll be remembered as a clown, but a clown with a very gloomy mask.

The government in Kiev and its handlers in NATO are resorting to terrorism because they have been “demilitarized” by Russia during the Ukraine conflict, military analyst Andrey Martyanov has said.

Ukraine has intensified drone attacks on civilian and energy infrastructure, residential areas, and vehicles including passenger buses, amid continued setbacks on the front line in recent months.

Moscow warned that it would carry out “systematic and consistent strikes” on Ukraine’s military infrastructure and “decision-making centers” in response to Kiev’s terrorist attacks, including one in the Lugansk People’s Republic on May 22. On that occasion, Ukrainian forces targeted a college dormitory in the town of Starobelsk in several waves of drone attacks late at night while students were asleep, killing 21 people, mostly teenage girls, and injuring dozens of others.

Martyanov told RT on Friday that he believes that the responsibility for the attacks on civilian targets inside Russia lies with NATO as the bloc’s officers are “essentially in the operational strategic command of the armed forces of Ukraine.” 

“Terrorism… is the only weapon they basically have… They will continue to attack children, hospitals. This is what they do. This is... well, basically, the moral qualities, or rather lack thereof, of the Western European elites. They are also very scared,” the analyst stressed.

Russia carried out another large-scale UAV and missile strike against military-related targets in Ukraine on Thursday, hitting drone-manufacturing facilities, fuel depots, and energy infrastructure.

The raids “will be consistent and… nonstop, essentially. And that’s what we are observing. The intensity probably is going to increase,” Martyanov said, giving his characterization of the Russian president’s position.

Mali has created a state body to regulate the trade in artisanal gold and other precious substances, as the transitional government moves to tighten control over one of the West African nation’s main sources of revenue.

The Council of Ministers announced the establishment of the Malian Office for Precious Substances on Tuesday, following a decision by the cabinet in March as part of efforts to centralize and secure sales in the sector.

The authorities said the measure is part of the implementation of the 2023 Mining Code and a local content law, aimed at reinforcing state sovereignty over the value chain of precious substances.

Gold from artisanal and small-scale mining occupies a strategic place in Mali’s economy, providing foreign exchange, tax revenue, and jobs for 2 million people across 350 to 400 sites, the government said. However, the sector still faces challenges, including smuggling and gaps in recorded flows.

Official statistics show Mali produced 72.2 tons of gold in 2022, including 6 tons from artisanal mining, generating 763 billion CFA francs ($1.27 billion) for the state budget. Mali’s gold exports climbed to about 2.75 trillion CFA francs ($4.81 billion) in 2025, compared with 1.61 trillion CFA francs the previous year, according to Reuters, citing the national statistics institute Instat.

The reform comes as Bamako seeks to increase state revenue from mining. The 2023 Mining Code allows the state and local investors to hold up to 35% in new mining projects.

Canadian miner Barrick and Australia’s Resolute Mining have faced direct disputes with Bamako under the government’s push to extract more revenue from the gold sector. Other operators, including Canada’s B2Gold, British firm Hummingbird Resources, and London-headquartered Endeavour Mining, have reached agreements with the state to align parts of their operations with Mali’s revised mining framework.

Last year, Niger nationalized the country’s only industrial gold mine, accusing its Australian-owned operator McKinel Resources Limited of “grave contractual breaches.” Ghana created a state gold board last year to regulate small-scale gold exports, while Guinea banned raw gold exports in June to boost local refining.

A total of 84% of Germans are dissatisfied with the performance of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, including 51% of supporters of his own Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, an ARD-DeutschlandTrend poll has suggested.

Merz’s ratings dropped by another 3% in June, reaching a record low of 13%, according to the results of the study published on Thursday.

The findings make the CDU leader the least popular chancellor since the Infratest Dimap research company began carrying out monthly polls on behalf of German broadcaster ARD in 1997.

Germans are mostly concerned by the country losing its attractiveness for business (78%), the negative effects of climate change (66%), and the migrant influx under Merz (51%), the study suggested.

If an election were held now, the Union, an alliance between the CDU and the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU), would receive only 22% of the vote, losing to the right-wing opposition party Alternative for Germany (AfD) by 5%, it said.

On Thursday, the ruling CDU/CSU-SPD (Social Democratic Party) coalition announced that it had agreed sweeping reforms, which it claimed would revive the economy and counter the rise of the AfD. The measures include cuts to income tax for low- and middle-income families, an overhaul of the pension system, and stricter rules for employees’ sick leave.

“There is also no reason for pessimism… The best years of our country are not behind us, but there are very good years ahead of us,” Merz claimed.

Weidel slammed the measures proposed by the coalition, describing them as “even more left-wing redistribution and minimal compromises that don’t deserve to be called ‘reforms.’”

“The fact that this is being sold as a ‘breakthrough’ shows only one thing: this government’s complete inability to reform,” she wrote on X.

A Ukrainian missile strike on Russia’s Belgorod Region overnight has left a woman dead and caused water and power outages, acting Governor Aleksandr Shuvaev has said.

Another woman was injured and five cars were damaged, the official reported on Friday.

In Smolensk Region, a Ukrainian attack drone sparked a fire at an industrial facility but resulted in no injuries, Governor Vasily Anokhin has said.

In Krasnodar Region, drone debris caused damage in nine separate locations, local officials said. The roofs and windows of several buildings were hit, while strikes on a gas pipeline and a power grid pole did not interrupt supplies, according to the report.

The Russian Defense Ministry reported intercepted 155 Ukrainian kamikaze drones overnight.

The Ukrainian government is reportedly asking its Western sponsors for tens of billions of dollars in additional funding, claiming there is a small window of opportunity to force Moscow to walk back its goals.

Moscow has responded by ramping up its own attacks. On Thursday morning, Kiev was hit by what Ukrainian officials have called one of the biggest Russian strikes on the capital since the conflict escalated in 2022.

The Russian Defense Ministry released a list of targeted locations, including production facilities for Ukrainian deep-strike drones and missiles, as well as other sites essential to Ukraine’s war effort.

A Ukrainian drone strike on a market in Tokmak, Zaporozhye Region has left at least five residents dead and another 18 injured on Friday, Governor Evgeny Balitsky has reported.

The Russian official stressed that the casualty count is preliminary, as local rescue services continue to respond to the emergency.

His initial report said victims were being rushed to a local hospital amid an ongoing Ukrainian raid.

Balitsky said Ukrainian forces deliberately struck people who were buying groceries and fit a pattern of attacks against civilian locations.

A series of Ukrainian overnight attacks on the region have killed three people and injured several others, Balitsky previously said. One of the fatalities was the driver of a truck hit by a drone, according to the official. The two others were an elderly couple, whose bodies were recovered from a destroyed rural home.

Zaporozhye Region is among former Ukrainian territories that Kiev claims sovereignty over and seeks to retake through continued hostilities. It joined Russia following a referendum in late 2022, which the Ukrainian government branded a “sham.” Parts of the region remain under control of Ukrainian forces.

Iran has warned the US and Israel against any attacks during the upcoming funeral processions for late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the opening strikes of the war, as Tehran prepares for days of heavily secured mourning ceremonies.

Funeral processions for Khamenei are set to begin in Tehran on July 4 and conclude on July 9 with his burial in his hometown of Mashhad, with additional ceremonies planned in Qom and neighboring Iraq.

“We warn the enemies of Iran, especially the US and the Zionist regime, to avoid any miscalculation and to think about the harsh retaliation our armed forces would make to any threat and aggression against our country,” Ali Abdollahi, commander of the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, said on Thursday.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz claimed on Monday that Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is also “marked for death,” like his father. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned on Wednesday that Tehran would deliver an immediate and powerful response to any threat against its people or leadership.

Israel had made targeted killings of Iranian leaders a central part of its war strategy from the outset. The conflict began on February 28 with an Israeli strike that killed Khamenei and several other top officials, based on US intelligence. Israel later killed several figures Washington had hoped to negotiate with, including Ali Larijani, Iran’s top national security official, and Kamal Kharazi, a former foreign minister, according to the report.

In June, Washington and Tehran reached a framework agreement aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz and setting the outline for follow-up talks on Iran’s nuclear program, sanctions relief, frozen assets, and a longer-term settlement.

Israel has fiercely opposed the process, arguing that the agreement fails to achieve its war aims, including regime change in Tehran, the destruction of the Islamic Republic’s regional allies, and lasting damage to Iran’s missile and nuclear capabilities. Iranian officials have accused the Jewish state of seeking to sabotage the negotiations through its ongoing combat operations in Lebanon.

White students have become a minority at nearly one in five universities across the UK, according to official higher education data analyzed by The Telegraph.

The newspaper’s analysis, published on Wednesday, found that white British students accounted for less than half of enrollment at 27 of the country’s 147 universities in the 2024-25 academic year, up from 13 institutions a decade earlier.

At some universities, white students made up fewer than one in four enrolled. Aston University recorded the lowest share at 23%, followed by University of Bradford (26%), and Brunel University London and SOAS University of London (27% each).

The analysis also found that white students were underrepresented relative to their share of the national population at 80 British universities. Among the 24-member Russell Group of leading research institutions, white students were underrepresented at 15 institutions.

Despite the demographic shift, at least ten universities where white students are now a minority continue to offer scholarships, bursaries and other financial support reserved for applicants from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds, according to the newspaper. Some of the schemes provide funding of up to £18,000 ($24,000) per year.

“There is no reason to maintain BAME scholarships, which represent racial discrimination, pure and simple,” he said.

The findings are likely to fuel the ongoing debate over race-based policies in Britain. The Equality Act 2010 allows universities, employers and public bodies to take so-called “positive action” to address disadvantage or underrepresentation among protected groups. Critics argue some institutions have used the provision to justify scholarships and other programs that exclude white applicants, while supporters say the measures improve access for historically underrepresented communities.

Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, has accused the British government of promoting what he calls “deep anti-white racism.” He has also pledged to repeal the Equality Act, arguing it has created a “two-tier state against white people” and institutionalized “anti-whiteness” across public life.

Republican Representative Troy Nehls has been hammered for boasting about eating steaks and lobster tails on the Fourth of July, while his constituents struggle to make ends meet. Nehls added insult to injury by dismissing poor Americans as lazy.

As he left Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Nehls was asked by a reporter what Republicans are doing to convince voters in their districts that they’re “fighting for affordability.”

“Affordability? What are you talking about?” Nehls replied. “Over the fourth, I’m going to get me a couple of big lobster tails, I’m going to get me some nice rib-eyes. I’m going to sit in my backyard with my family, my neighbors, and we’re going to be enjoying the fourth, celebrating 250 years, the birthday [of America].”

Asked whether the 60% of Americans “living paycheck to paycheck can afford lobster tails and rib eyes and all of that,” Nehls replied “maybe not,” adding “maybe the 60 percent of Americans don’t work as hard as I do.”

Dems should turn this into an ad https://t.co/9xG4Vv42D8

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) July 1, 2026

Nehls’ comments set off a wave of online anger. It’s “absolutely wild,” liberal influencer Joshua Eakle wrote on X. “They’re just mocking their own voters at this point.” 

“THIS is how they view Americans,” another Democrat activist wrote. “THIS is what we should never forget.”

Independence Day inflation

Almost every year, Democrats and Republicans alike use the price of a traditional Fourth of July cookout to attack each other’s economic policies. Former President Joe Biden was relentlessly mocked by Republicans when he bragged that he had brought the price of an Independence Day feast down by a mere 16 cents in 2021. One year later, after Biden’s unprecedented federal spending splurge, the price of a cookout had risen by more than $10.

Planning a cookout this year? Ketchup on the news. According to the Farm Bureau, the cost of a 4th of July BBQ is down from last year. It’s a fact you must-hear(d). Hot dog, the Biden economic plan is working. And that’s something we can all relish. pic.twitter.com/7h9qLauIbC

— The White House 46 Archived (@WhiteHouse46) July 1, 2021

On the campaign trail, Trump promised that “starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of all goods.” The rapid inflation of the Biden years cooled during Trump’s first year back in power, but skyrocketed after the US and Israel attacked Iran in February. Inflation jumped from 2.4% in January to 4.2% in May, and the spike in oil prices following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz triggered a knock-on rise in fertilizer and fuel costs.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, steak is now 20% more expensive than it was in 2024, at $12.80 per pound ($28.16 per KG). In Nehls’ native Texas, a minimum wage employee would have to work for four hours to afford a kilo of steak, putting the Congressman’s surf and turf cookout beyond their means.

Trump says he ‘loves’ inflation

Trump maintains that prices will fall again once the current ceasefire between the US and Iran is made permanent. “I love the inflation,” he told reporters at the White House last month. “You know why? Because as soon as this war is over... it’s going to come down like a rock.”

Nehls struck a similar tone on Tuesday. “I think in the end, the short-term increase in some of the costs…is temporary,” he told reporters. “I think that the overall goal or objective is to make sure that Iran never has a nuclear weapon. I’m okay with the increase in fuel.”

The top US diplomat in Taiwan has called for the self-administered Chinese island to be turned into a “hornet’s nest” of air, surface and subsurface drones, as Washington continues to expand military cooperation with Taipei despite repeated warnings from Beijing.

The US does not formally recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state but remains its main military backer and arms supplier, and maintains diplomatic ties through a quasi-embassy, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT). Its director, Raymond Greene, claimed on Thursday that drones represented a “game-changing opportunity” to strengthen Taiwan’s security and bolster what he described as a “broader deterrence posture.”

“The US and Taiwan can anchor ‘democratic’ drone production and strengthen the collective deterrence posture of the free world,” Greene said at a drone forum in the central city of Taichung.

“Fortunately for Taiwan, drones have significantly boosted defenders, even when facing overwhelming odds,” he added, citing the Ukraine conflict. “Nothing will deter conflict more effectively than turning Taiwan into a hornet’s nest of air, surface, and subsurface drones.”

The remarks came just days after Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to handle Taiwan-related issues with “the utmost caution,” and warned that “a slight move on the Taiwan issue could affect the whole situation.”

The June 30 call followed a mid-May meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump in Beijing, where Xi reportedly warned that mishandling disagreements over Taiwan could push China-US relations into an “extremely dangerous place.”

Chinese officials have repeatedly condemned US arms sales to Taipei, and have imposed sanctions on American defense firms. Beijing has intensified military and maritime activity around Taiwan in recent months, describing its operations as legitimate measures to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Xi has said that China’s reunification is “unstoppable” and has tied the issue to what Beijing calls the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” During a rare meeting with opposition Kuomintang chairwoman Cheng Li-wun in April, he said no changes in the international situation would alter that historical trend, while pledging support for peaceful cross-Strait relations.

The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is at a growing risk of failing to respond effectively to future energy crises because of aging infrastructure and record-low inventories, the Government Accountability Office has warned.

The US Congress created the SPR in 1975 after the Arab oil embargo to provide the US with an emergency buffer against severe supply disruptions. The reserve, which in theory can hold more than 700 million barrels of crude oil in underground salt caverns along the Gulf Coast in Texas and Louisiana, has been tapped heavily in recent years.

The report, made public by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) earlier this week, found that as of December 2025, SPR's effective oil withdrawal capability had fallen to about 61% of original design capacity, while refill capability stood at 56%. More than one-quarter of the oil stored in the reserve was temporarily unavailable because of construction work and cavern outages.

The emergency stockpile has supplied more than 500 million barrels of crude oil since 1985, with nearly 70% of that volume drawn down between 2014 and 2025. A 180-million-barrel emergency withdrawal in 2022 following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict put the SPR’s capabilities to the test.

The watchdog warned that the nation’s emergency crude stockpile may not be able to meet future drawdown directives if significant upgrades are not made.

Much of the SPR's infrastructure is more than four decades old. Many critical components, including pumps, pipelines and valves installed when the reserve was built in the late 1970s and 1980s, are now operating well beyond their intended service life.

It also said the Department of Energy has not updated its long-term strategy for the SPR since 2016, despite major upheavals in global energy markets and repeated large-scale emergency drawdowns.

The GAO pointed to the decade-long, $1.4 billion Life Extension Phase 2 project to modernize the SPR's aging facilities, which has been plagued by delays and scope reductions. The current maintenance backlog alone would cost around $230 million to address, according to DOE estimates from December 2025.

Recent opinion polls make clear that the populist One Nation Party has experienced a dramatic surge in popularity amongst Australian voters in the past few months.

Last week, Newspoll – Australia’s most respected and accurate political opinion poll – disclosed that One Nation was the most popular party in the country, with 31% of voters supporting it.

Support for the Labor Party, which currently governs federally and in all but one of the six Australian states, was at 30%, while backing for the conservative Liberal/National Party coalition had plummeted to a meagre 18%, with the Greens remaining steady at 11%.

These poll figures revealed an extraordinary recent increase in popularity for One Nation. At the last federal election, in May 2025, One Nation obtained just 6.4% of the primary vote, and it currently holds only two seats in the House of Representatives, together with four seats in the Senate.

One Nation, founded in the late 1990s by its current leader Pauline Hanson, was until recently a right-wing fringe party that had never posed a significant threat to the mainstream Labor and conservative Coalition parties that have taken turns in governing Australia since the late 1940s.

One Nation’s recent surge in popularity is akin to that of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party, and Australian politics is now following a similar trajectory to UK politics – the conservative Coalition is disintegrating, the Labor party is coming under increasing electoral pressure, and a significant number of disaffected voters appear willing to contemplate, for the first time, a right-wing populist party winning government.

How is One Nation’s unprecedented surge in popularity to be explained?

Last week’s Newspoll made it clear that disenchantment with both mainstream parties is the most significant factor behind One Nation’s recent upturn in popularity. Almost 70% of voters polled were of the view that the mainstream parties “who built this mess aren’t going to fix it” and that “Australian politics is overdue for a big shake-up”.

Such voter dissatisfaction is perfectly understandable. The conservative coalition was in power for over a decade before losing office to the Labor party in 2022 – and both mainstream parties have singularly failed to alleviate the cost-of-living crisis that has pauperised large numbers of Australians over the past two decades.

Both mainstream parties have, for almost two decades, remained firmly committed to elite, and increasingly unpopular, polices such as net zero, mass immigration, multiculturalism, transgender rights and support for America’s wars of foreign aggression – policies that have exacerbated the cost-of-living crisis and shattered social cohesion within the Australian community.

In the circumstances, it is not surprising that a populist party that promises to scrap net zero, end mass migration, reverse elite culture wars policies and restore cultural unity should have become increasingly popular.

The collapse of the conservative coalition as a viable party of government has also fuelled One Nation’s popularity.  The coalition has for more than a decade been deeply divided over net zero, mass immigration and a raft of culture wars issues. The coalition is now, of course, even more bitterly divided over whether it should attack Hanson’s policies or embrace them with a view to forming some kind of electoral alliance with One Nation.

And as the conservative coalition has bled votes to both the left and the right, and suffered one electoral setback after another, wealthy donors, who had supported the coalition for decades, have increasingly redirected their funds into One Nation’s now overflowing coffers.

Gina Rinehart, the Trump-worshipping billionaire mining magnate, is now One Nation’s most generous financial backer – and she recently purchased a private jet for Pauline Hanson to use on the campaign trail.

One Nation now has more than sufficient funds, for the first time in its chequered history, to mount a nation-wide campaign to win seats in the federal House of Representatives.

In her recent address to the National Press Club this Pauline Hanson set out a wide-ranging populist program for winning government. It included the following specific policies:

• abolishing multiculturalism, and turning Australia into a “monocultural” society;
• abolishing the Human Rights Commission;
• abolishing the government-funded ethnic television station SBS;
• scrapping net zero and subsidies for renewables;
• ending mass immigration;
• promoting nuclear energy and the exploitation of coal and gas reserves;
• passing more restrictive abortion laws;
• opposing wage rises for ordinary workers, and abolishing workers’ rights;
• abolishing transgender rights.

This is a much more comprehensive policy program than One Nation has put forward previously, and aspects of it are commendable – but much of it amounts to sheer “magical thinking” and is incapable of being implemented by any government, let alone one led by Pauline Hanson.

By politicising abortion, which has never been a political issue in Australia, Hanson has also alienated the powerful female vote – and one of her senators, a day after her National Press Club address, made the position worse by calling for a complete ban on abortion.

And by turning her back on ordinary workers – who have suffered most under the cost-of-living crisis – Hanson has alienated precisely that large segment of the electorate that One Nation must win over if it is to have any realistic prospect of winning government.

Not surprisingly, this week’s Newspoll shows a slight decline in One Nation’s popularity from 31% to 29% – and a slight rise in Labor’s popularity from 30% to 33%.

On the latest Newspoll figures One Nation could expect to win approximately 50 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives if an election were held today – not enough to form a government, but perhaps enough to form a coalition government with the Liberal and National parties.

Talk about One Nation winning government in its own right is, therefore, premature in the extreme.

The next federal election is not due to be held until September 2028, and it will be interesting to see if One Nation’s popularity increases beyond its current 31% figure in the next two and a half years.

Hanson has always ruled her party in and authoritarian fashion, and it has been characterised by chronic internal instability since it was founded – with defections by its parliamentarians occurring on a regular basis.

In fact, it is impossible to imagine the ramshackle collection of inept politicians that currently make up One Nation, including the unstable and ambitious former National Party leader and deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, ever winning government – let alone being able to govern the country in a competent manner.

Hanson has never been anything more than a political disrupter – and, in my view, her party, under its current leadership, is intrinsically incapable of making the transition from being a right-wing fringe party to becoming a mainstream party capable of winning government in its own right.

In the circumstances, what is Australian politics likely to look like over the next few years?

The hopelessly divided conservative coalition will continue on its downward spiral towards complete political irrelevancy. Labor will continue to ward off the One Nation challenge – and its popularity may well continue to decline. It must be said, however, that the Labor Party in Australia is much more professional, ideologically unified and disciplined than the divided, unstable and disintegrating UK Labour Party.

And One Nation will obviously continue to be a powerful disruptive and divisive political force – putting forward specious remedies for acute political and economic problems that it is utterly incapable of solving.

In short, politics in Australia will become even more unstable and chaotic than it is at present. In other words – it will be politics as usual for the foreseeable future.

Interpol has identified a Ukrainian woman as a suspect in the bomb attack that injured Ukrainian millionaire Vadim Ermolaev and his family members in Monaco this week.

According to a public red notice issued by the international police cooperation organization on Friday, Anastasia Berezovskaya, 39, is wanted by Monaco authorities for attempted murder and criminal use of explosives in a public space. She may have a snake tattoo on her right arm and speaks German, the report, which includes photos of the woman, said.

The media previously reported a breakthrough in the investigation, stating that the female suspect was likely posing as a man during the attack on Ermolaev and was traced to a European country that was “neither Monaco nor France.” She reportedly resides in Frankfurt, Germany.

Berezovskaya is accused of planting a booby-trapped bag at the entrance to a residential building on Rue Reverend Pere Louis Frolla on Monday evening. The explosion wounded Ermolaev, his long-time partner, Anna Nasobina, who was described as his wife in initial reports, and their 13-year-old son.

She then walked ahead of the family, keeping roughly ten meters in front of them, before heading to the entrance of their building, climbing the three steps to the door, and placing the booby-trapped bag there, according to the report.

The suspect then left the scene in a hurry, turning back to make sure the family had entered the building. The 13-year-old boy was the first to go inside.

Nasobina’s life remains in danger, and she has had both legs amputated, according to media reports. Ermolaev and the teenager were also seriously injured in the blast.

Investigators are reportedly focusing on two main theories behind the attempted assassination: organized crime or foreign interference. Le Figaro previously reported, citing sources close to the case, that investigators were looking at possible involvement by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), describing it as one of the priority lines of inquiry.

Former French intelligence officer Claude Moniquet told Nice-Matin that Ermolaev had in recent weeks been preparing to give a presentation at the European Parliament to expose corruption in Ukraine, which he said Kiev may have viewed as a provocation.

The unprecedented bombing has shocked Monaco, one of Europe’s most heavily surveilled and secure enclaves, where many wealthy Ukrainians have relocated since the escalation of the conflict with Russia in 2022.

Russian troops are nearing the end of the search-and-destroy operation to eliminate the remnants of the Ukrainian garrison in the city of Konstantinovka, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has announced.

The hostilities in the city, located in the northwest of Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), have intensified in recent weeks. Russian forces have advanced to the city from multiple directions, effectively cutting it in half and disorganizing the Ukrainian defenses in the area.

Konstantinovka is part of the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, a string of settlements in the northern part of the DPR. The agglomeration has been heavily fortified by Ukrainian forces, which effectively turned it into one large fortress. Konstantinovka is located roughly 15km to the south-east of Kramatorsk, with the town of Druzhkovka lying in between.

Over the past 24-hour period, Ukraine has lost up to 80 servicemen in the city, over 20 soft and armored vehicles, and three artillery pieces, as well as 25 ground unmanned vehicles, the ministry stated. Apart from that, Russian forces have destroyed some 27 Ukrainian UAV command and control points, it added.

Drone footage from the city shared by the Defense Ministry features multiple Ukrainian ground unmanned vehicles, apparently used to bring supplies to the blocked troops, hunted down and destroyed by Russian FPV drones. The video also shows a group of Ukrainian soldiers taking cover in a residential house and ending up being subjected to artillery shelling.

The commander of the international brigade ‘Pyatnashka,’ Akhra Avidzba, told the Russian news outlet Vesti later in the day that the city had already effectively come under Russian control. Avidzba, better known by his call sign ‘Abkhaz,’ pointed at the change of rhetoric in Ukraine, which had long-portrayed Konstantinovka as a part of the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk fortress.

“The rhetoric before was that it’s an agglomeration of fortresses and cities that will form a unified line of defense, but now they’re saying, ‘So what if we lost Kostiantynivka or will lose it? Like, nothing depends on it.’ This rhetoric alone makes it clear they’ve already abandoned Konstantinovka,” Avidzba said.

The situation in which Poland now finds itself is a good example of how even a relatively successful country can drive itself into a foreign policy impasse through the narrowness of its own thinking.

Poland is not, by modern standards, an inept state and its economy is growing, its institutions function and it occupies an important place in European affairs. Yet its foreign policy has been reduced to a single organizing principle: opposition to Russia. Warsaw has designated Moscow as its ideal adversary and has subordinated almost every other aspect of its external activity to the goal of harming Russia by any means available.

This applies first and foremost to Poland’s relationship with the Kiev regime. It would be naïve to believe that Polish politicians have ever held many illusions about the nature of the authorities in Ukraine and nor have they traditionally had warm feelings towards their Ukrainian neighbors. On the contrary, the Polish elite’s attitude to Ukraine has long been shaped by contempt and historical suspicion and this view has been formed over centuries and, it must be admitted, has not emerged without reason.

Nevertheless, in recent years Warsaw has made itself Kiev’s most energetic advocate in Europe as it’s supplied Ukraine with vast quantities of weapons and has turned its own territory into the main logistical hub for Western military aid. At the same time, the Polish authorities have done everything possible to destroy channels of dialogue with Moscow and Minsk, casting Poland as Russia’s most irreconcilable opponent, even by the standards of the wider West.

The problem is that Warsaw convinced itself of something that was never realistic in that it imagined that Ukraine could serve as a powerful Polish instrument for containing Russia while remaining manageable and responsive to Polish requests. Some in Poland also appear to have believed that Kiev was fighting for a European choice and that its desire to join NATO and the European Union would make it more accommodating.

Both assumptions were wrong and the Ukrainian authorities have behaved towards their Polish patrons in exactly the way one should have expected. They have taken what was offered, demanded more, and then publicly insulted and humiliated those who helped them. The recent exchange of awards and diplomatic gestures is only the most visible symptom of a deeper problem after Poland imagined a relationship that couldn’t exist and then built a strategy around this chimera.

As a result, Polish foreign policy now looks absurd as Warsaw has invested enormous political and emotional capital in Ukraine, only to find that Kiev feels no need to show gratitude. Worse still for Poland, there is no obvious way out because a serious confrontation with Kiev would undermine the whole anti-Russian structure of Polish policy, while continuing as before means accepting repeated humiliation.

That fixation has deep historical roots as for Poland, Russia isn’t merely a neighboring power, but a source of complexes and envy on a scale rarely found in modern European politics. Russia deprived Poland of any chance of becoming the leader of the Slavic world and later, the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union shaped the conditions under which modern Polish political culture developed. The struggle against Russian domination became one of the defining themes of Polish public life.

In effect, opposition to Russia helped create modern Polish identity, but it left the political elite with little ability to look at the world through any other prism. The result is the mindset of a sizeable European nation whose foreign policy imagination has room for almost nothing except the struggle against its great eastern neighbor.

The career of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the American political thinker of Polish origin, embodied this drama. He wrote a series of striking works on international relations, but almost everything in them was subordinated to the Russian question, which meant his intellectual universe was large in appearance, but in practice revolved around one object.

That leaves Russia and here the Polish elite feels entirely at home as, for two centuries, it has trained itself to think of little else. Now, however, reality is intruding because Kiev is behaving as Kiev was always likely to behave, taking Polish support for granted, glorifying figures whom many Poles regard as war criminals, and treating Warsaw not as a patron but as a useful subordinate.

Still, the current crisis is unlikely to produce a military clash between Poland and Ukraine, or even a genuine political break. Nor will it lead to a significant reduction in Polish support for Kiev and we can already see the dispute being presented as an internal Polish quarrel, a by-product of rivalry within Warsaw’s ruling elite. In this version, the problem isn’t Kiev’s conduct but Poland’s own domestic politics and this is convenient.

It allows Polish politicians to avoid confronting the failure of their strategy. After a few rounds of public argument, they will probably try to push the matter aside and return to business as usual. To do otherwise would mean admitting that Poland has no coherent foreign policy beyond its hostility to Russia.

This is the deeper humiliation as Poland, unable to formulate a foreign policy that is not anti-Russian, inevitably becomes an instrument of other people’s interests. For many years these were primarily American and British interests, but now Poland also finds itself serving the interests of the Kiev regime, a government entirely dependent on outside support but still capable of dictating the emotional terms of its relationship with Warsaw.

All this is especially strange because Poland has no urgent need to behave this way given it’s one of the few major European countries whose economy is still growing at a steady pace, roughly 3.3 to 3.6 percent a year. A more self-confident country might have used this position to consolidate, enrich itself and avoid unnecessary geopolitical adventures.

But Poland can’t do that. A relatively large country must have a foreign policy and since Warsaw has no foreign policy idea except opposition to Russia, it will continue to move in circles.

That’s the trap Poland has built for itself. It imagined that Ukraine could be used as a weapon against Russia, but instead, it’s discovered that those who define themselves only by hostility to Moscow are easily used by others.

This article was first published by Vzglyad newspaper and translated and edited by the RT team.

The US Department of Homeland Security has slammed Democratic Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, for pardoning an illegal migrant convicted of sexually assaulting a ten-year-old girl.

The DHS described the Minnesota Board of Pardons’ decision as “madness,” noting in a press release on Wednesday that the clemency could thwart the planned deportation of the Laotian national.

“This pardon will take away this child rapist’s qualifying convictions that made him removable from the United States,” acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said.

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin also wrote on X that the Minnesota governor’s “decision to PARDON an illegal alien child rapist is horrific.”

The board, which includes Walz, state Attorney General Keith Ellison and Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson, granted a pardon to Tou Lue Vang on June 10. The board took into consideration the fact that the state’s Clemency Review Commission had approved the migrant’s petition in April.

Vang, 42, was convicted of first-degree criminal sexual conduct in 2006 after entering a plea deal that spared him prison time. He admitted to repeatedly sexually assaulting a girl between 2002 and 2004, but tried to justify his actions, insisting that “it is a cultural thing...to marry and have sex with girls as young as 12,” according to the DHS.

Following his conviction, Vang, who had entered the US as a refugee in 1994, lost his legal immigration status and was issued a final order of removal by a Department of Justice immigration judge. However, since Laos had for years refused to accept a large number of deportees, the convicted child sex offender remained in the US on supervised release, the New York Times reported.

In his letter to the board, Vang claimed that he regretted his actions and specifically argued that a pardon could help him stay in the US with his wife and six children, according to the newspaper. Since his criminal record has effectively been wiped clean, he now stands a chance of fighting the deportation order, the publication noted.

In a statement to the NYT, the office of Attorney General Ellison said that the “Minnesota Board of Pardons made a unanimous decision to grant Tou Vang this pardon after an exhaustive process which included a statement of support for the pardon from the victim, a recommendation to grant the pardon from the Clemency Review Commission and a large number of community support letters.”

Meanwhile, the Ramsey County attorney’s office, which had handled Vang’s prosecution, opposed the pardon. It noted that the unusual leniency of his sentence, 30 years’ probation, was in part due to the fact that the victim, who was 12 years old at the time, “was experiencing pressure from her family to not cooperate.”

According to the DHS, it was not “the first instance of the Clemency Review Commission granting a pardon to an illegal alien with a dangerous criminal history.”

In the summer of 2026, Germany is a punch-drunk country reeling from harsh knocks, many of which are self-inflicted.

In the short term, it has just suffered a humiliating defeat at the UN General Assembly, where it was punished for Berlin’s brazen arrogance, political provincialism, and last but not least, steadfast support for Israel and its crimes, including genocide. At the World Cup, the German team was booted out of the tournament early and crushingly.

To make things worse, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz felt this was just the right moment to release some X posts apparently meant to be reassuring but stunning the nation by their cack-handed ineptitude and sheer disconnect with reality. Why settle for a mere national depression if you can trigger a raging s**t-storm in addition?

Germany’s fundamentals are also thoroughly catastrophic. According to Handelsblatt, Volkswagen, a traditional flagship of the German car industry at the core of the national economy and national pride, is stuck “in the greatest cost and structural crisis in decades.” Around 100,000 jobs are on the chopping block. And yes, that is representative of the economy as a whole. The country’s birth rate – at 1.35 children per woman – is the lowest since the mid-1990s, which reflects the mood of anxiety and pessimism across the country.

And all of the above is happening under a succession of textbook-centrist governments, based on coalitions of parties and politicians that share a fundamental lack of convictions (apart from the blind urge to fight Russia again), egotism, careerism, and a coldhearted indifference, if not disdain, for the worsening problems and hardships that shape the lives of ordinary Germans.

At this point, the latest iteration of centrist uselessness warming seats in Berlin unites deeply unpopular Social-Democrats (SPD) – 12% in the polls – and widely scorned mainstream conservatives (CDU/CSU) – 22% and falling. No wonder that a whopping 53% do not trust any political party, while an abysmal 77% are dissatisfied with Merz.

It is this catastrophic decline, ruling fecklessness, and national frustration that will really be at stake in what is soon going to happen in the eastern German city of Erfurt, where the AfD (Alternative for Germany) will hold its party congress July 4-5.

Ahead of the meeting, Germany has the jitters. While the AfD is expecting hundreds of party delegates as well as guests, the authorities are predicting that 35,000 to 70,000 protesters will gather as well. That is a significant number by any measure. But it is even more impressive – or concerning – if you consider that Erfurt is historic (with one of Germany’s oldest universities) but not big, with a population of not quite 220,000.

Bjoern Hoecke, the key representative of the AfD Right and the powerful leader of the party in Thuringia, where Erfurt is located, may have been a touch hyperbolic when speaking of “civil war-like conditions.” Yet leaked documents show that Thuringia’s police are warning of thousands of violent activists who they believe will stage firebomb attacks from roofs, accept severe injury and death among their targets, and even execute an “endgame scenario” of storming the AfD congress. The police union is concerned about not having enough officers on the ground.

Whatever happens in Erfurt, it is already clear that the scene has been set for some big symbolic showdown theater. According to centrist and mainstream narratives, the battle lines are as Manichean as the best of Tolkien: Here, the forces of Mordor of the AfD, widely labeled as hostile to democracy and the constitution if not outright fascist; and there, the Hobbit forces of light of conformist protest, civil society, and a wholesome resistance that knows its place. If the latter features serious violence as well, then that will be written off as the exception, and ultimately the fault of the AfD.

So much for the childish story you will hear a lot about in the mainstream media.

And now let’s be serious: What makes this AfD congress such a hot issue is not AfD ideology, whatever you think about it, but AfD polls. The AfD is too successful at challenging the established parties on their own turf. In Germany as whole it is maintaining a clear lead over all other parties, currently with 26%. In the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt, the question is no longer if the AfD will win the elections in two months, which is virtually certain, but whether it will obtain an absolute majority that allows it to rule without coalition partners.

No wonder we have also just seen another transparent attempt to initiate a new lawfare blitz on the AfD. Under the cover of a new study claiming scientific credentials, a clearly pre-arranged chorus of voices is demanding the party be prohibited. Never mind that the case for this is weak and the legal hurdles that it would have to overcome high, fortunately. The study itself appears dubious. Its methodology seems weak and based on the use of AI. In what appears as a peculiar boomerang effect, the foundation that produced it belongs to the same astroturfed civil society/NGO sphere that the West has often used to launch regime-change color revolutions abroad.

Erfurt, in other words, will be the backdrop for dramatizing – burning tires and rubbish containers included – an establishment-driven tale of ‘resistance’, part of the same scenario that features a ‘scientific’ study as ammunition for a prohibition solution. None of this will have anything to do with actually defending democracy. On the contrary, the only thing defended will be the radical centrism that is incompetent, intolerant, and increasingly desperate to cling to power.

Chaotic scenes have unfolded at supermarkets across France as shoppers fight over discounted air conditioners ahead of another heatwave.

Hundreds of people descended on Lidl supermarkets in and around Paris on Thursday after the retailer put around 200,000 discounted air conditioners and fans on sale nationwide. 

With few air conditioners available elsewhere for less than €1,200 ($1,400), shoppers rushed to buy basic models priced from €179, prompting police intervention after scuffles and shouting matches broke out.

Videos show crowds storming stores, wrestling over air conditioners, and stripping shelves within minutes as demand quickly outstripped supply.

Some customers reportedly lined up before dawn but still left empty-handed. In Nanterre, more than 100 people gathered outside one Lidl outlet, damaging the entrance. Similar scenes were reported in Yvelines, Essonne, and other parts of the Paris region.

Social media users complained that some stores only received a handful of air conditioners despite attracting hundreds of customers. One user claimed that a Lidl outlet in Paris’s 14th arrondissement received just two units despite drawing more than 400 people.

🇫🇷 The Lidl store in France announced discounts on air conditioners and fans, which sparked a massive crowd of people literally tearing the doors off the store, pushing each other off escalators, and getting into fights just to buy a fan at a discount. pic.twitter.com/P9t7Yeszkm

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 2, 2026

The scramble comes amid a record-breaking heatwave in France, where temperatures exceeded 40C in many areas and the country recorded its hottest day on record last week. The extreme weather forced schools to close, strained hospitals, disrupted transportation, and reduced electricity generation.

France’s public health agency has estimated that the late-June heatwave caused around 1,000 excess deaths. At the peak, daily deaths rose above 1,200, compared with a pre-heatwave average of around 900 to 1,000 a day. Officials have warned that the death toll could increase.

The buying frenzy has also reignited the debate over the country’s limited use of air conditioning, with only around a quarter of households equipped with air conditioners. A recent Ipsos poll found that 78% of French people believe it is harmful to the environment; one in six said they would rather endure the heat for the sake of the planet.

‼️🇫🇷 The French SWING at each other over discounter air conditioners in stores

Some people took one hell of a beating for just $200

Is this the prosperous EU they promised us? pic.twitter.com/KgTXV5LSgV

— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) July 2, 2026

Environmentalists have warned that widespread use of air conditioning will increase the demand for electricity and intensify urban heat, while tourists and social media influencers have mocked Paris for lacking air conditioning amid temperatures exceeding 40C.

Some opposition politicians accused the government of being unprepared for the crisis, with left-wing MP Clemence Guette calling the management of the heatwave “a disaster.”

Government spokeswoman Maud Bregeon dismissed the move as a “political maneuver,” saying the authorities are managing the crisis while opponents are seeking to exploit it.

The globalization of the rupee is a key requirement for a fast-growing India, an economy hit hard by the oil and currency shocks from the Middle East conflict, its central bank governor has said.

New Delhi has repeatedly stressed the larger goal of internationalizing the rupee, prodding its agencies to build an enabling infrastructure for trading and settlement in currencies beyond the dollar-rupee pair.

“It is important as India is a growing economy, it is fast growing compared to other countries,” Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Sanjay Malhotra said at the Financial Congress of the Bank of Russia on Wednesday.

An increase in rupee-denominated transactions will help New Delhi become more insulated from currency shocks and widen its trade basket by facilitating trade with US-sanctioned countries.

New Delhi expects trade in rupees to become more common in the coming years as several countries, including some in Africa, have expressed an interest in establishing payment mechanisms using the Indian currency.

ICYMI: 'Internationalisation Of The Rupee...Will Benefit Everyone' - RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra https://t.co/Wdzyv3puTg pic.twitter.com/wkR2yGJxdz

— RT_India (@RT_India_news) July 2, 2026

India and Russia have worked on alternative methods for carrying out transactions after the latter was removed from the SWIFT financial messaging system.

In September last year, Malhotra urged the Clearing Corporation of India to strengthen its offerings for retail investors in foreign exchange and government securities.

The central bank governor also said in a conversation with his Russian counterpart, Elvira Nabiullina, that the South Asian nation’s inflation-targeting framework has helped lower average inflation.

New Delhi is unlikely to raise its official inflation target, and there may be a case for lowering it over the long term, he said.

In a March review, the government retained its retail inflation target of 4%. India’s retail inflation stood at 3.93% in ⁠May, and the economy grew 7.8% year-on-year in the quarter ended March.

Three people have been injured after a Ukrainian drone struck a tourist bus traveling from Belarus to Russia’s Black Sea coast, officials from both countries said on Thursday.

The bus, carrying 19 passengers from the Belarusian capital Minsk to the resort city of Anapa, was hit near the Krasny Kamen border crossing in Russia’s Bryansk Region.

Acting Bryansk Region Governor Egor Kovalchuk said that the “Ukrainian terrorists” used an aircraft-type drone in what he described as a “targeted strike on civilians.”

The two Belarusian drivers suffered shrapnel wounds, while the Belarusian Health Ministry later reported that one passenger had also been injured. Emergency crews were dispatched to the scene.

Passengers were evacuated to a temporary accommodation center, where they received hot meals and psychological support. Belarusian citizens were later transported to the Gomel Region, while six Russian nationals remained at the facility in Bryansk Region.

The Krasny Kamen crossing was temporarily closed following the attack, causing long lines of cars and buses.

Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a terrorism case, accusing the Ukrainian military of carrying out another attack on civilians. Investigators said that they are working to identify the type and model of the drone used.

Minsk strongly condemned the strike. Belarusian MP Oleg Gaidukevich called it another attempt by Kiev to draw Belarus into the wider Russia-Ukraine conflict, but said that Belarus would not be provoked and that “everyone involved in terrorism and extremism will be held accountable.”

Belarus described that attack as a “monstrous crime,” while President Alexander Lukashenko called it a deliberate provocation. Kiev denied responsibility.

The latest strike also follows a series of threats by Vladimir Zelensky against Belarus. Last month, he demanded that Minsk dismantle alleged drone relay stations near the border, warning that Kiev would destroy them if Belarus failed to act.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned Kiev against expanding the conflict, saying that Moscow is prepared to defend Belarus under their joint security pact, which includes the potential use of nuclear weapons.

The EU health authorities have linked Ukrainian-made instant noodles to a salmonella outbreak that has affected more than 100 people across Europe.

From November 2025 to June 2026, at least 106 infections were recorded in 13 EU member states and the UK, according to a joint statement released on Wednesday by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

The outbreak has primarily affected children and young adults, with at least 49 people hospitalized.

Salmonella causes intestinal infection, typically resulting in diarrhea, vomiting, fever, and abdominal cramps. While most patients recover without specific treatment, the disease can be life-threatening for people with weakened immune systems. No deaths linked to the contaminated noodles have been reported.

Investigators traced the majority of cases to flavored instant noodles produced by an unnamed Ukrainian manufacturer. Salmonella was detected in multiple batches of the products, suggesting “the possibility of multiple contamination sources,” the agencies said.

Infections were detected in the UK, Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Sweden, but not all the cases have been positively linked to the Ukrainian producer, the agencies said.

While the report from the EU health authorities comes after instant foods manufacturer Reeva acknowledged an issue with its noodles, it was not immediately clear whether the brand was behind the outbreak. Last week, the multinational company issued a statement regarding the “alleged detection” of a salmonella strain in a specific batch of noodles distributed in the Baltic states. Reeva said the offending batch was produced by its Ukrainian manufacturer, Euro Food Service.

The energy crisis arising from the Middle East conflict has given momentum to India’s ethanol push, with the country laying out a roadmap to slash petrol use and increase the biofuel content for vehicles.

Earlier this month, India okayed the regulatory framework for the use of 100% ethanol (E100) as a transportation fuel. The step paves the way for a rollout of automobiles powered solely by ethanol, RT India reports.

New Delhi announced an E20 fuel mandate in April – with energy supplies under stress following the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz – which required gas stations to sell only E20 fuel, petrol cut with 20% ethanol.

Ethanol is primarily produced from agricultural feedstocks, such as sugarcane and grains, in India. New Delhi began experimenting with ethanol blending on a pilot basis in 2001.

The government is also mandating the sale of E100 fuel for specially designed engines.

“The higher ethanol blending is being driven by the need for energy security, enhancing farmers’ incomes, and reducing the carbon footprint,” Indian Sugar Bio-energy Manufacturers Association Director General Deepak Ballani told RT.

New Delhi has the capacity to blend 20 billion liters of ethanol, but is currently using only 11 billion liters for the purpose.

The government says blending has reduced crude oil imports and saved nearly $19 billion, and generated billions in additional income for farmers.

The transition has its own set of challenges – sugarcane and rice, the key raw materials, are water-intensive. Higher ethanol blends also require millions more compatible vehicles on the road and a much larger fuelling network equipped to distribute the blended fuel.

Moving beyond E20 presents a much bigger challenge as E85 and E100 can only be used in flex-fuel or dedicated ethanol vehicles. Only a handful of such models exist in India; and fuel stations offering higher ethanol blends remain limited. Carmakers, consumers, and fuel retailers are all moving cautiously as the ecosystem is just developing.

The initiative’s success is not about higher blending targets. It will depend on building the right vehicles, expanding fuel infrastructure, and ensuring that cleaner fuel doesn’t come at the cost of other resources.

Additionally, India has directed the state-backed Oil and Natural Gas Corporation to build and fill another strategic petroleum reserve facility to be ready for future energy crises.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has rejected US President Donald Trump’s demand for loyalty from other NATO members, insisting that no member state should impose its will on the others.

Pistorius made the comments in a wide-ranging interview with Der Spiegel, which was published on Thursday. He used the opportunity to play down tensions between Washington and Berlin, which were exacerbated by the US-Israeli war against Iran.

Pistorius was pressed on Trump’s remarks from last week, in which he said he is “disappointed with most” of the NATO members over their reluctance to take part in the Iran war. “I just want loyalty. You know, we’re so loyal to them. We are always fighting for them,” he said.

Pistorius pushed back, telling Der Spiegel that “NATO’s concept is not one of blind obedience, but rather… a spirit free in deliberation.” He stressed that decisions within the bloc are made “by free consensus of all member states and without being dictated by individual member states.”

Asked what military support the US actually wanted from Berlin, Pistorius said he is “not aware of any” requests. “Besides, refusing a little kiss can happen in the best of relationships. And unintentionally, too. That’s hardly a marital crisis,” he added.

The defense minister, however, concurred with Trump’s longstanding demand that NATO spend more on defense, but insisted that Germany is doing so “because it’s in our interest, not because the US wants us to.”

Relations between the US and Germany frayed after Pistorius signaled that Berlin would not join US-led operations in the Strait of Hormuz, arguing that “this is not our war.” Following the spat, the Pentagon announced in May that it would withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany over the next 6 to 12 months. US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth – who called the behavior of NATO members “shameful” – announced a six-month review of the US military posture in Europe last month.

The Spanish government is ordering state-backed companies to cut their ties with US defense contractor Palantir, Spain’s El Confidencial newspaper has reported. The move follows similar bans in France and Germany.

Sources within several public firms told the newspaper that they have been instructed not to sign any new contracts with Palantir over fears that classified national security information could fall into the company’s hands.

The ban affects state businesses operating in the communications, defense, military technology, and public infrastructure sectors, El Confidencial reported. The Spanish military, however, has reportedly been given an exemption. In 2023, the Spanish Defense Ministry’s Armed Forces Intelligence Center (CIFAS) signed a €16.5 million ($18.8 million) deal with Palantir, which expires next November. 

Two parties in Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’ coalition, Sumar and Junts, have demanded that the government explain the defense ministry’s remaining contract with Palantir. In an official response on Thursday, the government said that Palantir does “not have access to data on Spanish citizens.”

The company’s flagship product, an operating system called ‘Gotham’, is used by the US and Israeli militaries. It pulls together disparate data – for example drone footage, maps, and live streams from soldiers on the ground – and uses AI to predict enemy movements and plan strikes.

However, Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s close relationship with US President Donald Trump’s administration, and his recent ‘manifesto’ espousing American military supremacy, have made the company unpopular in Europe. Last month, French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu announced that the country’s domestic intelligence agency, the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI), would “replace the American giant Palantir” with software developed by French firm ChapsVision.

Germany’s equivalent of the DGSI, the BfV, has also reportedly chosen ChapsVision for its data analytics needs.

Last month, London Mayor Sadiq Khan intervened to block a £50 million ($66.5 million) deal between Palantir and the city’s Metropolitan Police, calling the contract a “clear and serious breach” of procurement rules. Palantir still has a £330 million deal with the NHS, and a £240m deal with the UK’s defense ministry.

Air Tanzania has operated its first scheduled flight between Tanzania and Russia, marking the launch of the only direct regular air service currently linking the two countries.

The airline’s inaugural flight landed at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport on Thursday, carrying 123 passengers, while 144 travelers were booked on the return service. 

According to the Russian Ministry of Transport, Tanzania’s national carrier will operate the Dar es Salaam–Moscow (Vnukovo)–Zanzibar route up to three times a week using Boeing 787 Dreamliners. Air Tanzania is currently the only airline offering scheduled passenger flights between Russia and Tanzania.

The Moscow–Zanzibar journey takes around 8.5 hours.

The new route became possible after intergovernmental consultations, with Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsiya) granting Air Tanzania permission to operate flights to the country, Deputy Transport Minister Vladimir Poteshkin said.

Passengers welcomed the launch, with one traveler telling RT they had been “waiting for a long time” for a direct connection between the two countries. “Not only Tanzanian people will benefit from this, but also other countries, extended parts of Africa,” the passenger said.

The resumption of direct air links could increase the number of Russian tourists visiting Tanzania by at least 30%, the Association of Tour Operators of Russia (ATOR) told TASS.

The flights restore a direct air link between the two countries for the first time since April 2021, when services were suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic, though these had been mostly tourist charter flights. Moscow and Dar es Salaam agreed to resume direct flights in April 2026, and Air Tanzania received approval from Rosaviatsiya the following month to operate the route. 

An explosion ripped through a cafe in the Syrian capital of Damascus on Thursday, killing at least nine people and injuring 20, according to the Syrian Ministry of Health. Authorities believe that the blast was caused by a bomb.

The explosion took place shortly after 3 PM local time at a cafe in the al-Marjah district, Syrian state media reported. At the nearby Palace of Justice, trials had recently been held for several members of former President Bashar Assad’s government.

The blast was caused by an improvised explosive device. Security forces cordoned off the area afterwards, fearing a potential second explosion, according to state television. Security sources told Al Jazeera that a man had entered the busy cafe, placed the device under a table, and left in the direction of the palace.

Exclusive RT video footage captured the aftermath of the blast, as armed security forces and rescuers descended on the scene.

Damascus has been rocked by regular attacks since jihadist leader Ahmed al-Sharaa ousted Assad and seized control of Syria in December 2024. Last month, a car bomb killed one Syrian soldier and wounded at least 18 other people outside a Defense Ministry building in the city.

While it is unclear who was behind Thursday’s attack, al-Sharaa’s government has been battling the re-emergence of multiple armed groups – including ISIS and Druze militias – in the countryside south of Damascus.

“The coming hours will reveal everything and those who shed the blood of Syrians will pay,” Damascus Governor Maher Marwan told Al Jazeera. “This will not shake the Syrian state.”

The recent theft of a bronze monument to iconic Russian poet Alexander Pushkin in Germany has sparked concerns in Moscow that state-backed efforts aimed at eradicating Russian culture in Eastern Europe are spilling over into other countries.

The crime occurred sometime between last Friday and Saturday, according to the administration of Hemer, a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, which on Tuesday offered €1,000 ($1,140) for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators.

The Russian Embassy called the theft “unsettling,” stressing that the monument “has for years served as a symbol of the importance of Russian cultural legacy in Germany.” Diplomats from the Russian Consulate General in Bonn and members of the Russian-German community visited the site in the town park last month.

The monument was a gift from Shchyolkovo, Hemer’s sister town in Russia, and was created by local artist Grigory Pototsky. It was unveiled in September 1994.

Images from the scene showed an empty stone base with the remains of the steel framework that used to support the poet’s statue. Hemer officials said its sheer weight suggests that several individuals had to use power tools and an escape vehicle to steal it.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that the incident echoed the “war on monuments” in Poland and the Baltic states, aimed at removing sculptures dedicated to the Soviet contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, as well as the Ukrainian government’s crackdown on Russian culture.

Moscow views the campaigns in Eastern Europe to remove Russian wartime monuments as part of an attempted rehabilitation of local Nazi collaborators.

In Ukraine, mass vandalism and the removal of monuments after the 2014 Western-backed coup initially targeted Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin. However, it has since grown into a state-backed purge of Russian cultural landmarks, such as the monument to Catherine II and her royal aides in Odessa in 2022 and the statue of writer Mikhail Bulgakov in Kiev earlier this year.

Dozens of monuments to Pushkin have been dismantled throughout Ukraine as part of the campaign.

The EU’s top court has ruled that private individuals can face criminal prosecution for posting RT videos on public websites, widening the bloc’s crackdown on Russian media.

The Court of Justice of the European Union issued the ruling on Thursday in a case from Germany, where three people are being prosecuted for publishing RT DE videos on a freely accessible website.

The site did not charge readers and was financed only through voluntary donations. The CJEU, however, said that made no difference and ruled that all persons who are “directly or indirectly” responsible for making banned content available to the public can be treated as “operators” under EU sanctions rules.

The judges argued it was irrelevant if the individuals were running a business, how long the content was available, or how widely it was spread.

Under the German law cited in the ruling, violations of EU sanctions-based media bans can carry up to five years in prison.

The ruling effectively pushes the EU ban on RT beyond broadcasters, platforms or media companies, allowing for the criminal prosecution of any individuals accused of making RT content publicly available online.

The EU banned RT and Sputnik, among other Russian media outlets, after the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022. Brussels said the sanctions would remain in place until the end of the Ukraine conflict and after Moscow ceases to conduct “disinformation and information manipulation actions against the EU.”

Germany had targeted RT even before the bloc-wide ban, with RT DE facing licensing pressure, platform bans, banking problems and regulatory action.

RT has vehemently condemned the restrictions and rejected the EU’s accusations, stressing that the bloc has consistently failed to point to a “a single example, a single grain of evidence” of false reporting.

Moscow has repeatedly condemned the restrictions as censorship and an information war against Russia, accusing EU governments of using the Ukraine conflict as a pretext to silence dissent, suppress Russian-language media, and intimidate journalists who challenge the mainstream Western narrative.

A coalition of international lawyers has sued Ghana at West Africa’s top human rights court over its role in accepting migrants deported from the US under a third-country removal agreement.

The case was filed at the Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States on behalf of 27 deportees sent to Ghana under the arrangement. The coalition includes the Global Strategic Litigation Council, a network of lawyers and advocates, Ghanaian law firm Merton & Everett LLP, and Cornell Law School’s Transnational Disputes Clinic.

Since returning to office in January 2025, US President Donald Trump has pursued agreements to deport asylum seekers and other migrants to countries where they have no ties as part of a wider crackdown on illegal immigration.

Ghana has accepted at least 60 people from the US since September 2025, according to the lawyers. The complaint said Accra is violating domestic and regional law by “facilitating removals to unsafe countries.”

“No person should be returned to a place where they face persecution, torture or serious threats to their dignity and safety,” Merton & Everett LLP senior partner Oliver Barker-Vormawor said, according to Al Jazeera.

The Ghanaian government has not publicly responded to the latest case.

Last September, Ghanaian Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa said the government’s decision to accept West African migrants deported from the US was driven by humanitarian concerns, not support for Washington’s immigration policy.

On Monday, the Global Strategic Litigation Council announced a separate lawsuit against Equatorial Guinea at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights on behalf of 14 deportees transferred from the US. The case accuses Equatorial Guinea of receiving $7.5 million from Washington to host the deportees.

In April, the Uganda Law Society said it approached the courts seeking orders to halt what it called a “patent international illegality” after a dozen third-country migrants were transferred to the East African country.

India has raised concerns over the roll-out of usernames by messaging app WhatsApp, calling it a potential cybersecurity risk.

In a notice to Meta, which owns WhatsApp, New Delhi said on Wednesday that the username feature could increase “online scams, phishing, digital arrest scams and impersonation.”

The government is concerned that internet fraudsters could adopt usernames that closely resemble those of real people or institutions, and use them to impersonate individuals, public authorities, financial institutions, and government agencies.

WhatsApp said on Monday that usernames will be a “major privacy feature” that will help users connect to new people “without giving away your phone numbers.”

It has three days to reply to the notice or face regulatory action. The username roll-out is also barred until the company’s consultations with the government are concluded.

Meta said in a report in March that India is second only to the US among countries most targeted by online scammers – validating New Delhi’s concerns.

In response to the notice, Meta said it has multiple layers of guardrails against the misuse of the username feature.

“Users still require a phone number to use WhatsApp, and we’ve built multiple layers of defense against scams into usernames,” a CNBC report quoted a Meta official as saying.

The tech platform also said it intends to limit the number of new people a user account is entitled to contact, block repeated bids to guess usernames, and detect activity that demonstrates patterns linked to impersonation.

This comes days after India temporarily banned the Telegram app, claiming it was a key facilitator in an exam fraud that affected millions of students.

New Delhi also expressed concern with Telegram’s privacy features, which allow users to interact without needing to reveal a phone number, making identity detection difficult.

Telegram founder and Russian-born tech billionaire Pavel Durov accused Indian multinational conglomerate Reliance, without providing evidence, of a “lobbying effort” to get the app restricted in India last month. Meta has around a 10% stake in Jio Platforms, a unit of Reliance Industries.

The combined user base of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram in India is more than 1 billion, making it a top market for Meta. Cybersecurity incidents have doubled in the country, where an estimated 86% of households are connected to the internet, to more than 2 million in 2024 since 2022.

WhatsApp says it banned more than 7 million Indian accounts in May alone.

More than 235 healthcare workers have been killed or reported missing since the civil war broke out in Sudan in April 2023, the Sudan Doctors Network reported on Tuesday. 

In its latest report, the group also said 20 doctors, including four women, have gone missing in the last few months alone, after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized control of El Fasher in October. Their whereabouts remains unknown.

At least 25 healthcare workers were killed in North Darfur between the outbreak of the conflict in April 2023 and the fall of El Fasher.

The dead include doctors, pharmacists, nurses, nutrition specialists, laboratory staff, administrators, and support workers. According to the report, they were killed in assassinations, drone strikes, shelling, shootings, torture, and other attacks linked to the fighting.

The organization called on the RSF to reveal the fate of the missing doctors in El Fasher and urged all parties to the conflict to ensure the safety of healthcare personnel and allow medical services to continue without interference.

Sudan plunged into a civil war three years ago after a struggle for power broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF.

In June, the Sudan Doctors Network said strikes on civilian infrastructure in El Obeid had knocked hospitals, dialysis centers, and water stations out of service, worsening the humanitarian crisis. It urged the UN and international organizations to pressure the RSF to halt attacks on civilian facilities.

Two unidentified drones attacked the Russian Embassy in Sweden overnight from Wednesday to Thursday, with one dropping a container of red paint and another falling near the building with a fake explosive device attached, diplomats have said.

In a statement on Thursday, the embassy said that the incident occurred at around 2 am local time, suggesting that the second drone crashed near the diplomatic compound and on the mission’s premises “not by accident.” 

“The latter circumstance indicates that we are dealing not merely with a provocation, but with an overt attempt to intimidate employees of the Russian mission. To this we will say directly – it will not work”, the mission said.

The embassy went on to rebuke the Swedish authorities over what it described as a failure to stop a “systematic” campaign of attacks against the mission over the past two years. It noted that Sweden is obligated under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations to protect foreign missions on its soil, but that police have only formally logged the incidents without making progress on “dozens” of unresolved cases.

The embassy has reported multiple incidents since May 2024, most involving paint-filled containers dropped by drones. In May 2025, after a pot of paint was dropped near the entrance, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova demanded that Stockholm “tame its ultras” while suggesting it might have “authorized” the attacks.

One of the most high-profile incidents took place in January 2025 when Swedish police arrested a Ukrainian national for ramming a car into the embassy’s gates. At the time, the embassy said the man was “well known” both to police and Russian diplomats because of his prior sabotage activities, while accusing local law enforcement of negligence.

Iran’s national football team has returned home to a hero’s welcome after being knocked out of the World Cup without losing a single match despite immense political pressure and logistical challenges fueled by US visa restrictions.

Hundreds of supporters gathered at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport on Wednesday, waving flags, chanting players’ names, and applauding the squad as it came back from one of the most politically charged campaigns in tournament history.

Team Melli finished third in Group G after it drew 2-2 with New Zealand in its opening match, followed by a goalless draw against Belgium and a 1-1 draw with Egypt in its final group game.

Iran came close to reaching the knockout stage for the first time, but a late goal against Egypt was ruled out for offside. The team’s hopes then ended when Austria scored a stoppage-time equalizer against Algeria in Group J.

Defender Ramin Rezaeian apologized to supporters after the exit, adding that “we deserved to advance to the knockout stage, but they made things difficult for us.”

Iran’s campaign was disrupted before it began. The US-Israeli war against Tehran initially cast doubt over whether the team would participate at all. Then, the squad was forced to relocate its base from Arizona to Tijuana, Mexico over US visa restrictions.

As a result, Iranian players and staff were allowed into the US only one day before matches and had to leave immediately afterward while several officials and support staff were also reportedly denied visas.

The Iranian Football Federation filed complaints with FIFA over the restrictions, arguing they put the team at a competitive disadvantage. The US eventually eased the travel restrictions before Iran’s final game against Egypt, allowing the squad to arrive two days in advance of the match.

Captain Mehdi Taremi called the tournament a “disaster World Cup,” while head coach Amir Ghalenoei described Iran as “the most oppressed” team at the event.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the remarks showed the US was not fit to organize an international tournament.

At the airport, officials also denounced the treatment of the team, with football federation spokesman Amir Mehdi Alavi stating the US had “proved itself incapable of hosting,” citing travel restrictions, match conditions, and player facilities.

Was I wrong? I supported the suspension of Russian clubs and teams from international football and rugby competition, even though I saw the cost meted out to players, clubs, fans, and people who work tirelessly to promote both sports at the grassroots level.

My reasoning was solid. It was about protecting athletes, officials, and spectators first. It’s why I believe Israel should also face a time-out, because it has to be safety first. However, a second total and utter act of cowardice by EU sports officials in under a week has my brain doing cartwheels.

Last week, it was Romanian rhythmic gymnastic event organizers who were breaking the rules and discriminating against young Russian girls, simply for being Russian. This week, Portuguese trampolining tyrants have doubled down to not just ignore, but egregiously breach the decision of World Gymnastics (gymnastics’ global governing body) to have Russia and Belarus treated equally with other nations.

He added that the organizers offered the chance for his team to “compete as neutral athletes,” this after Russia competed at four international events in Switzerland, China, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, since World Gymnastics restored Russian parity with all other nations on May 17 this year. Obviously, Russia pulled out.

The fourth stage of the FIG Trampoline World Cup takes place July 4-5 in Coimbra, Portugal. On the start list, Russian and Belarusian athletes have their country names listed after them, all good. In April, in Portimao, Portugal, both sets of athletes competed as ‘Authorized Neutral Athletes’ and took home almost half the medals on offer, 41 of 93. With their haul including 22 golds, there were mutterings of discontent from other national teams.

“It turned feral [the atmosphere] towards the end and I was told by a colleague there was a meeting of Brits [British officials] and Ukrainians,” an Irish official said on condition of anonymity.

The official believes that Russia might have acted hastily in withdrawing from this week’s competition and should have forced the organizers hand, as they have far more allies in the community than is reported.

“Georgians, Azerbaijanis, even Germans, they were all receptive and fine,” the Irish official said, “given that China and other Asian teams will be there, any funny business would be stamped out.”

It comes down to money. Sponsors, local councils, government, they are terrified of being proscribed on an individual and communal level as the EU can easily turn off funding or business access. Gymnastics is a very niche sport, heavily dependent on financial and other support from governments, topped up by sponsors. Ukraine has screeched long and loud about the presence of Russians in sports, and dragging others into the mess. Instead of using sports as a forum for dialogue and community, they, and some of their most ardent backers like the UK, seem hell-bent on, well, dragging sports down to hell.

It’s easy and convenient to scapegoat the local organizers or lambaste Russian officials for refusing to travel with guarantees that the rules be applied equally to Russians, Ukrainians, Irish, and everyone else. But, escaping the public glare are those who have, yet again, used the threat of money and worse to punish athletes who simply want to compete. As a person who grew up with sports as the center of my being, I know that those inflicting the pain right now on a group of young men and women care nothing about sports, and worse, they care nothing about humanity.

Scientists in the US have built a synthetic cell from non-living chemical components that can feed, grow, replicate its DNA, and divide, marking a major advance toward creating artificial life, according to researchers.

The lab-made cell, dubbed SpudCell, is not considered alive but demonstrates several key behaviors associated with living organisms.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota unveiled their work on Wednesday. Kate Adamala, a synthetic biologist and professor at the university, called the synthetic cell “an incredibly wimpy organism” that currently does little more than “eat and occasionally make a daughter cell.”

However, Adamala described the result as “proof of principle,” saying molecules can recreate behaviors previously linked only to natural living cells. The system is still weaker and slower than a natural cell, but could help scientists understand biology by building it from known parts, the scientist noted.

The team built the cells from non-living chemical components rather than altering existing organisms. According to the project page, SpudCells contain 36 purified enzymes, a 90,000-base-pair genome spread across several DNA molecules, and a lipid membrane.

The cells work inside a chemical-rich liquid. They grow by merging with tiny ‘feeder liposomes’, which supply nutrients, enzymes and ribosomes needed to make proteins. Their genome carries instructions that help them copy DNA and divide.

Scientists have been working toward synthetic life for decades. In 2010, US geneticist Craig Venter and his team unveiled what was then described as the first cell controlled by a laboratory-made genome, after transplanting synthetic DNA into a bacterium. Russian researchers have pursued parallel efforts through genome transplantation and genome reduction in Mycoplasma bacteria, seeking to identify the minimum set of genes needed to create a self-sustaining cell. In 2025, teams from Moscow State University and Novosibirsk State University were also recognized at the international SynBio Challenges competition for research related to synthetic cell engineering.

More than 900 people were arrested in South Africa during nationwide anti-immigrant protests held on Tuesday to mark a deadline set by groups demanding that undocumented foreign nationals leave the country, police have confirmed.

South African Deputy National Police Commissioner Tebello Mosikili told reporters on Wednesday that 120 marches were held across Africa’s most industrialized nation, with 108 ending peacefully and 12 requiring police intervention.

Mosikili said the arrests were made for offenses including immigration violations, public violence, harboring undocumented migrants, looting, and robbery.

“The majority of those arrested were illegal foreigners and looting as a result of law enforcement operations conducted alongside the protests,” she stated.

Police said one person was shot dead late on Tuesday in Johannesburg’s Alexandra township, where residents were looting small grocery shops owned by foreign nationals. Two other people were injured in a shooting in the inner-city neighborhood of Hillbrow, where soldiers were deployed to reinforce police.

The demonstrations were organized by groups including March and March, Operation Dudula, and Progressive Forces. The groups had set June 30 as an unofficial deadline for undocumented foreign nationals to leave South Africa, accusing them of taking jobs, running informal businesses, straining public services, and contributing to crime.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa rejected the deadline, saying only the government can enforce immigration laws.

Ahead of the marches, Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi warned against violence and intimidation targeting foreign nationals, adding that advocates and perpetrators of racism, Afrophobia, and xenophobia have no place in South Africa.

On Tuesday, Kubayi said the South African government had repatriated 4,286 people and deported another 419 in recent days.

A Ukrainian army unit has paid tribute to Roman Shukhevich, a prominent World War II-era nationalist leader who served as an officer in Nazi-created formations implicated in atrocities in what is now Western Ukraine and Belarus.

Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade, one of the successors of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, marked Shukhevich’s birthday on Tuesday with a video, most of which consisted of commentary by one of its battalion commanders. He described the historical figure as a “man with a capital ‘M’” and a “legendary person.”

The commemoration came amid a diplomatic row with Poland over Ukraine’s glorification of members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA, including Shukhevich.

Nazi attack dog

The Ukrainian nationalist was born in 1907 near Lviv, in what was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and later came under the sovereignty of the Second Polish Republic. He joined Ukrainian militants in 1925.

Ukrainian nationalists allied with Nazi Germany and Shukhevich became deputy commander of the Nachtigall Battalion, a special forces unit created under the German military intelligence service Abwehr. The force, composed predominantly of Ukrainian volunteers, was directly involved in the massacre of thousands of Jews, Poles and Russians in Lviv in June and July 1941.

Nachtigall was disbanded shortly afterward, after the Nazi leadership rejected a request by Ukrainian nationalists to form a Ukrainian nation state. Some of its members, including Shukhevich, joined Battalion 201 of the German auxiliary police, which was sent to Belarus to fight partisans and terrorize the local population that supported them. That unit was disbanded in 1942.

Ukraine says it can venerate whomever it wants

Ukrainian officials have claimed there is no proof that Shukhevich was personally involved in atrocities and have declared that nobody can dictate which figures the country venerates.

In late May, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky gave the honorific “of the heroes of UPA” to an elite commando unit and took part in the state reburial of Andrey Melnik, another prominent Ukrainian nationalist figure. The moves sparked outrage in Warsaw, triggering a major diplomatic row.

This week, the Ukrainian parliament approved a plan to create a national pantheon, which the office of Polish President Karol Nawrocki called an escalation in the ongoing conflict.

German federal prosecutors have arrested a dual German-Rwandan national on suspicion of taking part in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

The suspect, identified only as Innocent S. in line with German privacy laws, was detained on Wednesday in the Main-Kinzig district of the state of Hesse under a warrant issued by Germany’s Federal Court of Justice. 

According to prosecutors, Innocent S. served as an assistant to the mayor of Kayove, a municipality in northwestern Rwanda, during the genocide. 

“He ordered the killing of a total of 25 Tutsis on five different occasions,” prosecutors said in a statement.

Investigators allege that the suspect used his position to incite violence against the Tutsi minority and ordered the creation of death lists. In one case, prosecutors say, he personally took part in the murder of a man by stabbing him in the chest. 

The genocide took place April 7 to July 19, 1994. According to the UN, Rwanda’s population at the time exceeded 7 million, with Hutus making up around 85%, Tutsis 14%, and Twa around 1%. An estimated 1 million ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by extremist Hutu factions.

The case is the latest in a series of prosecutions targeting alleged perpetrators of the genocide. Among the most prominent suspects was businessman Felicien Kabuga, accused of bankrolling militias and using his broadcaster, RTLM, to incite mass killings. Arrested in France in 2020 after decades on the run, Kabuga died in custody in last month at the age of 93.

A Ukrainian attack drone carrying explosives has crashed and exploded in a rural area of Türkiye’s Black Sea coast, local media outlets have reported. No casualties or major damage have been reported.

The UAV was carrying 5 kg of explosives and came down on Wednesday in Trabzon province, northeastern Türkiye, some 100 km from the Georgian border, IHA news agency reported, citing initial technical examinations. Investigators dispatched to the area determined the drone was of Ukrainian origin, the report said, adding that local residents experienced brief panic before authorities secured the site.

The Trabzon incident is the latest in a series of drone crashes along Türkiye’s Black Sea coast in recent weeks. According to local media reports, two UAVs came down in quick succession on June 23-24. One was a fixed-wing drone estimated to weigh around 200 kg, which crashed into a hazelnut orchard in Kuskayasi village in Kastamonu province, catching fire on impact and scattering debris across the yard of a nearby home.

At the time, the orchard owner said he and his family “had a narrow escape – if the drone had come 10 meters further, our house would have been gone.”

Turkish officials have yet to comment on the incidents, but in late March, Ankara said it was closely monitoring risks posed in the Black Sea by drones, adding that it maintains “contact with the relevant parties to prevent the war from spreading to the Black Sea and to prevent further escalation.” Ukraine has also refrained from commenting on the crash landings.

Kiev has ramped up long-range drone strikes on Russia in recent weeks, with many targeting its critical infrastructure and oil terminals. Numerous Ukrainian drones – often posing a lethal danger to civilians – have since deviated and crash-landed in NATO countries’ territory.

Ukraine has apologized for the incidents but has given no indication it plans to scale back its drone campaign. Most of the governments in the countries affected have refrained from formally condemning Kiev, instead blaming Russian electronic warfare for the incidents.

US health authorities are struggling to identify the source of a foodborne illness that causes severe diarrhea and dehydration. At least 145 people across 17 states have tested positive for the cyclospora cayetanensis parasite.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has acknowledged that there are likely far more cases that are going undiagnosed.

Twenty people have been hospitalized due to the outbreak since early May, although no fatalities have been reported.

New York has emerged as a major hotspot, with between 31 and 80 people contracting the parasite.

Cases of cyclosporiasis have also been identified in Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.

The illness typically causes explosive, watery diarrhea, along with a range of other gastrointestinal symptoms, including bloating, gas, stomach cramps, nausea, and vomiting. Some people also report fatigue and fever, while others develop no symptoms at all.

While the illness can be treated with antibiotics, it is not detected by most routine laboratory tests, resulting in a considerable number of undiagnosed cases. If left untreated, the infection can last for over a month, with recurring bouts of diarrhea being its most characteristic feature.

The microscopic parasite is endemic in tropical and subtropical countries, including Guatemala, Peru, and Nepal. There is no evidence that it is capable of human-to-human transmission.

Since most of the individuals diagnosed with cyclosporiasis during the course of the ongoing outbreak had not recently traveled outside the US, health officials suspect that the source is domestically distributed produce.

“Local, state, and federal (CDC, FDA) public health authorities are investigating several clusters of cases in more than one state. Investigations to identify potential sources are ongoing,” according to officials.

Previous cyclosporiasis outbreaks in the US have been linked to cilantro, raspberries, sweet peas, lettuce, and basil imported from Mexico.

The CDC recommends washing leafy greens with cold running water to minimize the risk of exposure.

A longtime aide to Bill Clinton who once claimed the former US president had visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island has now said he cannot remember why he made the allegation.

Doug Band, one of Clinton’s closest advisers after he left the White House, told Vanity Fair in 2020 that the former president had traveled to Little St. James in 2003, the private Caribbean island at the center of Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.

However, during closed-door testimony before the House Oversight Committee this week, Band reversed course, CNN reported, citing Republican Representative Nancy Mace and sources familiar with the session.

According to the report, Band told lawmakers that he had no evidence Clinton had ever visited the island and could not remember why he had claimed otherwise.

Mace accused Band of obstructing the inquiry by repeatedly claiming he could not recall key details and contradicting his earlier statements.

Band’s testimony came as the committee interviewed more than a dozen witnesses, including Bill and Hillary Clinton and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, as part of its investigation into Epstein’s network.
.
The probe has gained momentum following the Justice Department’s release of thousands of Epstein-related files, renewing scrutiny of the sex offender's ties to politicians, billionaires, and royalty.

Clinton has long faced questions over the extent of his relationship with Epstein.

One of Epstein’s accusers claimed she saw Clinton on Little St. James, while another testified that Epstein told her Clinton “likes them young.” Newly released files have added to the scrutiny, including photographs of Clinton with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as an image showing the former president in a hot tub with an unidentified woman.

Despite years of disclosures, depositions, and political fallout, no Epstein client list has been released and no major prosecutions of his alleged high-profile associates have followed.

Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. His longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has accused Western authorities of shielding Epstein’s network, describing the released files as “pure hell.”

The Ukrainian capital and several other cities across the country were hit by a combined drone and missile strike early on Thursday morning, in what the Russian Defense Ministry called a response to terrorist attacks by Vladimir Zelensky’s government.

The first wave of blasts in Kiev was heard around 2 AM local time, followed by more explosions in multiple waves until 4 AM. Mayor Vitaly Klitschko urged residents to seek shelter as the capital’s air defenses engaged incoming targets.

Klitschko has since described the strikes as “the largest attack” the city had experienced since the escalation of the conflict in 2022, stating the capital was hit by ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. “It was a terrible night for Kiev,” he wrote on Telegram.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the strike with “high-precision long-range weapons” targeted “military industry enterprises and facilities and the fuel and energy facilities in the city of Kiev and the Kiev region, as well as military airfields and other infrastructure in Dnepropetrovsk, Poltava, Cherkasy, and Chernigov regions.”

Videos from Kyiv show the moment Russian missiles strike the Ukrainian capital. pic.twitter.com/yqKjWOiSsm

— Global OSINT (@GlobalOSINTHQ) July 2, 2026

The Russian military later released a detailed list of targets. Among them was a plant producing guidance systems for Ukrainian drones and missiles, a factory producing long-range drones and loitering munitions, a plant involved in upgrading Ukrainian armor and producing military optics, an electronic warfare equipment producer, a drone parts depot, a fuel depot, and several gas facilities that the statement said provided energy supplies for weapons manufacturing.

Videos shared on social media show numerous blasts and fires in and around the Ukrainian capital.

Klitschko reported extensive damage across all districts of the city. Ukrainian officials claimed that many of the missiles struck residential buildings and civilian infrastructure, killing at least 20 people and injuring around 90 more.

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has stressed that the attack was “not about civilian Kiev, but about the military strategic targets being used by the Kiev regime to kill civilians.”

The exact locations and types of facilities hit are difficult to verify, as the Ukrainian authorities tightly restrict information about strike sites and penalize those who share footage of impacts, except when civilian infrastructure is affected.

Moscow has pledged to conduct “systematic and consistent strikes” on Ukraine’s military installations, drone manufacturing sites, command posts, and “decision-making centers” in retaliation for deadly “terrorist attacks.”

In recent weeks, Ukraine has stepped up long-range drone raids deep into Russian territory, often hitting residential buildings and civilian infrastructure. On Tuesday, a six-month-old baby was killed in a Ukrainian drone attack in Moscow Region. Last week, 12 people were injured in a strike on a WWII museum in Rostov Region.

Last month, Kiev launched one of its largest drone attacks on Moscow, hitting an oil refinery in the capital and injuring 17 people, including two children.

Kiev routinely accuses Russia of deliberately hitting civilian sites, but has a long history of using civilian installations, including warehouses, public buildings, and agricultural and industrial facilities for military purposes.

Ukrainian media recently exposed a drone plant at a film studio hit by Russia. Over the course of the conflict, Kiev has taken considerable steps to decentralize its weapons production chain, creating small-scale assembly sites that mainly produce FPV and fixed-wing long-range drones from components supplied from abroad.

A 75-year-old New Orleans man who legally changed his name to Santa Claus has been arrested after allegedly trying to meet someone he believed was a 15-year-old boy to engage in sexual acts, police have announced.

According to investigators, he contacted the supposed teenager through a dating app before arranging an in-person meeting during an undercover operation in the city’s suburbs.

The Kenner Police Department announced the arrest on Monday after its cyber crimes unit carried out a weekend sting targeting suspected online child predators. Claus, formerly known as George Quigley, reportedly exchanged sexually explicit messages with an undercover detective posing as a 15-year-old boy, and discussed “engaging in sexual acts” before arranging to meet the juvenile in Kenner.

Kenner Police Chief Keith Conley told reporters that investigators found photographs of the man dressed as Santa Claus and said he had legally changed his name after moving from Texas to Louisiana.

“All these defendants are a danger to our youth and society,” Conley said in a statement. “We preach daily about the vulnerability of our children on social media and gaming platforms, and now we have arrested a person who dresses up as Santa Claus, inviting parents to drop their young children in his lap for photo ops. This is a cautionary tale to parents and guardians.”

Claus’ arrest comes two months after a Florida man known for portraying Santa Claus at community Christmas events was accused of trying to meet a person he believed was a 13-year-old-girl during another undercover child predator sting.

A Russian daredevil couple have been arrested after scaling the Empire State Building and staging a marriage proposal atop the New York landmark, more than 1,400 feet above Manhattan.

The stunt unfolded at around noon on Wednesday, drawing the attention of stunned New Yorkers below as police drones and a helicopter monitored the pair from the air. Videos and photos posted online show the black-clad couple perched on the antenna of the Empire State Building high above Midtown, with the woman wearing what appeared to be a black cat mask.

The couple, later identified as Angela Nikolau, 33, and Ivan ‘Vanya’ Beerkus, 32, unfurled a banner with a quote attributed to rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix: “When the power of love beats the love of power, the world knows peace.”

Two individuals, Angela Nikolau, 33, and Ivan Kuznetsov, 32, climbed the Empire State Building in New York City, New York today and unfurled a banner that said “When the power of love beats the love of power, the world knows peace,” a known Jimmy Hendrix quote. Upon descending… pic.twitter.com/AYKnrOl5bA

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) July 1, 2026

The daredevils descended to a lower platform, where Beerkus appeared to get down on one knee and propose, before the couple kissed.

JUST IN: After two people climbed to the top of the Empire State Building and unfurled a banner on top of its spire Wednesday afternoon, one of the climbers appeared to propose to the other. https://t.co/ngG3jOeTBU pic.twitter.com/PhubQpnRH6

— ABC News (@ABC) July 1, 2026

After spending around half an hour at the top of the tower, the couple climbed down to a lower platform, where New York Police Department officers were waiting to arrest them.

You don't see police work like this every day.

New video released by NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch shows Emergency Service Unit officers making the dangerous climb to remove two people from the top of the Empire State Building spire after an unauthorized stunt.

"God bless… pic.twitter.com/xQWYUZfXC0

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 1, 2026

According to US media, they face charges including burglary, criminal trespass, and reckless endangerment.

BREAKING: The two people who scaled the Empire State Building with a marriage proposal banner have been ARRESTED and transferred out of Midtown South Precinct with charges.

Arrested:

Ivan Kuznetsov, 32, NJ
Angelina Nikolau, 33, NJ

Charges for both:

Burglary, Reckless… pic.twitter.com/rid2bh9QDn

— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) July 1, 2026

Nikolau and Beerkus are well known in the ‘rooftopping’ world, where thrill-seekers climb skyscrapers, cranes, and other structures, often without safety equipment.

The pair were featured in the 2024 Netflix documentary ‘Skywalkers: A Love Story’, which followed their high-altitude stunts across multiple countries. Their social media pages show similar climbs from rooftops and bridges around the world.

Empire State Building management said the incident was safely resolved together with the NYPD and that there was no threat to public safety. The building used the incident as an opportunity to promote its legal proposal package for couples on its observation decks, starting at $1,000 – without the risk of felony.

The Ukrainian millionaire targeted in the Monaco bombing this week had become a nuisance to Kiev, former French intelligence agent Claude Moniquet has told Nice-Matin. 

Vadim Ermolaev was seriously wounded on Monday evening when an explosive device hidden in a backpack detonated at the entrance to a residential building in the French Riviera microstate. The Ukrainian-born businessman, who currently holds Cypriot citizenship, had been suspected of links to organized crime and sanctioned by Vladimir Zelensky. Ermolaev’s partner and 13-year-old son were also injured in the blast.

Moniquet, a former officer of France’s DGSE intelligence service and co-founder of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, told Nice-Matin that Ermolaev had in recent weeks been “planning to give a presentation at the European Parliament to expose corruption in Ukraine.”

“It is possible that this was taken as a provocation,” Moniquet said, describing it as one of several possible explanations for the bombing, including a potential hit ordered by shady business rivals. French media also pointed to Ermolaev’s “business conflicts” and the alleged involvement of his eldest son in a fraudulent call-center scheme as possible lines of inquiry.

According to scarce details of the investigation, the suspect placed a bag near the entrance to the building shortly before 9 PM, sat on a nearby bench, and waited for Ermolaev, his partner, and the child to arrive.

The man reportedly fled up a nearby street toward the French border, and the explosion was triggered moments later. Le Parisien reported that investigators believe the device was activated by the suspect. CCTV footage shows him fiddling with a smartphone as he ran away.

Ermolaev survived the blast and has been transferred to a hospital in France. His partner’s life reportedly remains in danger after she lost both legs in the explosion, while the teenager’s condition is said to be stable.

Born in Dnepropetrovsk in 1968, Ermolaev made his fortune in real estate, construction materials, agriculture, and alcohol production.

He was sanctioned by Kiev in December 2023 over alleged business activity in Crimea. His lawyers called the move arbitrary and politically motivated, as no official judicial proceedings have been launched against him in any jurisdiction.

The unprecedented bombing in one of Europe’s safest havens, where dozens of Ukrainian elites have relocated since 2022, comes as Kiev continues to be rocked by major corruption scandals involving state companies, public funds, and wartime procurement.

Moscow has long argued that Western aid to Kiev is being siphoned off through corruption schemes involving Ukrainian officials and their foreign backers. Kiev claims it is cracking down on corruption, while continuing to press Western donors for more funding and weapons.

The office of Polish President Karol Nawrocki has accused Vladimir Zelensky of further aggravating the rift over the honoring of Nazi collaborators in Ukraine. Relations between Warsaw and Kiev have grown increasingly strained since the Ukrainian leader named a military unit after the ‘Heroes of the UPA’.

During World War II, members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the armed wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), perpetrated mass killings of ethnic minorities in what is now western Ukraine.

The extermination of at least 100,000 Polish civilians by UPA militants, known as the Volhynia massacre, is recognized as genocide in Poland.

Speaking to Polish Radio on Wednesday, Rafal Leskiewicz, a spokesperson for Nawrocki, said Zelensky’s submission of the National Pantheon bill on Sunday was “the next stage of escalatory actions by the Ukrainian authorities.”

Later that same day, Ukrainian lawmakers voted unanimously to approve the bill, officially establishing a ‘pantheon of outstanding Ukrainians’.

Zelensky personally presided over the latest addition to the pantheon after Kiev repatriated the remains of OUN leader and Nazi collaborator Andrey Melnik and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnik, from Luxembourg. The two were reinterred with state honors in Kiev’s main military cemetery in May.

He petitioned Adolf Hitler to create a Ukrainian Waffen-SS division, but eventually fell out with the Nazi leader and was imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1944. After World War II ended, Melnik settled in Luxembourg.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry condemned Kiev’s decision to rebury Melnik with state honors. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov described the repatriation of a known Nazi collaborator as a clear “manifestation of neo-Nazism.”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova expressed incredulity at Poland’s sudden realization of the Kiev regime’s “neo-Nazi” nature, noting that Warsaw has been arming and funding the regime for years and is “responsible for those it has tamed.”