‘We are ready. We warn partners,’ says Ukraine president, ahead of decision on membership application
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has predicted Russia will intensify its attacks this week, warning European partners that they too should be prepared for an increase in hostilities as Kyiv awaits a decision on its bid to join the EU.
The caution follows a European Commission recommendation to grant Kyiv candidate status to join – a diplomatic blow to Moscow.
Continue reading...Adviser to interior minister gives warning after Amnesty accused Russia of war crimes in country’s second largest city
Ukraine is losing territories and struggling to regain them since Russia began concentrating its military attacks on the country’s east, Ukrainian MP Ivanna Klympush-Tsintzadze has said.
Klympush-Tsintzadze told Sky News that she hopes the military situation in eastern Ukraine will change soon. “Unfortunately, at this particular moment, Russia has gathered all this military capacity in the in the east of the country.
Continue reading...Gains by new French left alliance and historic surge by far right cast uncertainty over Macron’s second term
Emmanuel Macron’s centrist grouping has lost its absolute majority in parliament, amid gains by a new left alliance and a historic surge by the far right in legislative elections.
After five years of undisputed control of parliament, the recently re-elected Macron, known for his top-down approach to power, now enters his second term facing uncertainty over how he will deliver domestic policies such as raising the retirement age and overhauling state benefits. His centrists will need to strike compromises and expand alliances in parliament to be able to push forward his proposals to cut taxes and shake up the welfare system.
Continue reading...Analysis: France’s new parliament likely to be less pliant as president tries to tackle a series of crises
Domestic difficulties are stacking up for Emmanuel Macron as his second presidential term begins in earnest this week after his centrists lost their absolute majority in parliament.
The newly elected president now faces uncertainty over how to strike alliances in order to push through key legislation this summer.
Continue reading...Oleksandr Goncharenko says unless the invaders are halted the eastern Ukrainian city will be razed and its people driven out
Thirteen miles from the Russian frontline lies Kramatorsk, a city at first glance eerily empty. The highway into the centre is deserted, with long, thin Ukrainian flags defiantly hanging above the street, held taut by wires.
If Russia’s revised goal is to seize Donbas, the last significant city Moscow’s forces will have to take is Kramatorsk, an industrial centre, that is 40 miles west of the fierce fighting at Sievierdonetsk.
Continue reading...One blaze has burned 25,000 hectares of Sierra de la Culebra, home to one of Europe’s largest wolf populations
Flames licked roads and coloured the sky orange as firefighters in northern Spain scrambled to contain dozens of blazes fuelled by one of the earliest heatwaves on record.
In the Sierra de la Culebra mountain range in the north-western province of Zamora, flames devoured more than 25,000 hectares, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of residents from 18 municipalities.
Continue reading...People’s party expected to repeat 2018 defeat of Socialists – but failure to gain absolute majority could lead to deal with far right
People in Andalucía have gone to the polls in an early regional election that the incumbent conservative People’s party is expected to win comfortably, in what would be a blow to Spain’s Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, before a national vote expected at the end of 2023.
More than 6 million people are eligible to vote in Spain’s most populous region, where temperatures were expected to cool slightly after a week of extreme heat that officials feared would reduce turnout.
Continue reading...Nato chief warns war could last years; Russia sends many reservists to Sievierodonetsk battle, says regional governor
Russia’s war in Ukraine could take years, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said. “We must prepare for the fact that it could take years. We must not let up in supporting Ukraine,” he said. “Even if the costs are high, not only for military support, also because of rising energy and food prices.”
Russia was sending a large number of reserve troops to Sievierodonetsk from other battle zones to try to gain full control of the besieged eastern city, the governor of Ukraine’s Luhansk region said on Sunday. “Today, tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, they will throw in all the reserves they have … because there are so many of them there already, they’re at critical mass,” Serhiy Gaidai said on national television.
A big explosion rocked an area near Sievierodonetsk on Saturday. Rodion Miroshnik, an official in the self-styled separatist administration of the Luhansk People’s Republic, posted a video of what he said was the cloud on the Telegram messaging app.
Five civilians were killed on Saturday in Ukrainian strikes on the eastern separatist city of Donetsk, according to local authorities. “As a result of the bombardment by Ukrainian forces, five people were killed and 12 others were wounded in the Donetsk People’s Republic,” the authorities said in a statement posted on Telegram.
Several Russian missiles hit a gasworks in the Izium district in eastern Ukraine, Kharkiv region governor Oleh Synehubov said on Saturday. “A large-scale fire broke out, rescuers localised the fire,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app. Reuters reported him adding that some other buildings had also been damaged.
Russian missiles destroyed a fuel storage depot in Novomoskovsk, a town in eastern Ukraine, on Saturday. According to the head of the regional administration, three people have been sent to the hospital.
The Pentagon is considering sending four additional rocket launchers to Ukraine, Politico reports. According to US defence department officials, speaking to the outlet on anonymity, the US may likely send four more high mobility artillery rocket systems, making their total number about eight. The decision would be “based on Ukrainian immediate needs,” the official told Politico.
Russia and Ukraine have carried out a prisoner exchange, the Kyiv Independent reports. Five captured Ukrainian individuals were returned to Ukraine on 18 June in exchange for five captured Russian individuals, according to the Ukrainian defence ministry’s intelligence directorate.
Yuliia Paievska AKA “Taira”, the Ukrainian captured paramedic who was freed from Russian captivity during the week, released a video thanking Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy for her release. “I always believed that everything would be exactly this, and everyone who is now on the other side, they know everything will work out,” she said.
Zelenskiy presented state awards to border guards in Odesa as he visited the troops in southern Ukraine on Saturday. “I want to thank you from the people of Ukraine, from our state, for the great work you are doing, for your heroic service,” the president said. “It is important that you are alive. As long as you live, there is a strong Ukrainian wall that protects our country.”
Continue reading...Czech police searching more stores on same delivery route while contacting overseas counterparts about shipment from Central America
Employees at a supermarket in the Czech Republic found 840kg of cocaine worth 2bn Czech crowns (£68m) inside boxes of bananas that were delivered to the store.
The delivery, which was sent to supermarkets in the towns of Jicin and Rychnov nad Kneznou in the northern region of the country, is believed to have been sent to the stores by mistake.
Continue reading...Six legislators call for return of cultural treasures held by British Museum ‘to their Athenian home’
More MPs and peers have expressed support for the repatriation of the Parthenon marbles to Greece as protesters in London mark the 13th anniversary of the opening of the Athens museum where they believe they belong.
Calls for the reunification of the antiquities, removed by Lord Elgin from the Acropolis in controversial circumstances more than 200 years ago – and regarded as vital to the nation’s cultural memory – mounted on Saturday with six UK lawmakers telling the Greek daily, Ta Nea, that restitution was the only proper thing to do. The British Museum acquired the sculptures from the diplomat in 1816.
Continue reading...Volodymyr Zelenskiy gives medals to Ukrainian troops in southern city as war with Russia grinds on in east
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said “Ukraine will definitely win” during a working trip to the southern city of Mykolaiv, as relentless fighting in the country’s east continued.
The president handed out medals and posed for selfies with the servicemen in what appeared to be an underground shelter, according to a video posted to his official Telegram account.
Continue reading...Relic of the murdered Republic of Congo leader will be returned to his family as Brussels confronts its bloody past in Africa
The Belgian government will return a tooth of Patrice Lumumba to his family this week, hoping to draw a line under one of the most brutal and shameful episodes in the country’s bloody exploitation of central Africa.
The relic is all that remains of Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, under its earlier name Republic of Congo, and an icon of the struggle against colonialism in Africa, who was murdered by separatists and Belgian mercenaries in 1961. His killers dissolved his remains in acid, though some kept teeth as macabre mementoes.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed – we will return in a few hours to bring you all the latest developments
Rockets hit a southern district of Ukraine’s central city of Kryvyi Rih on Saturday leading to at least two casualties, local authorities said in posts on messaging app Telegram.
The attack came as it was confirmed that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, had visited the southern city of Mykolaiv during a working trip to the region, Reuters reported.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson reaffirms commitment to provide long-term ‘strategic resilience’ to help expel Russian troops
Russian-Ukraine war: live updates
Boris Johnson has reaffirmed Britain’s support for Ukraine, cautioning against “Ukraine fatigue” as Russia’s invasion enters its fifth month.
Speaking to reporters on his arrival at RAF Brize Norton after his trip to Kyiv, the prime minister said: “When Ukraine fatigue is setting in, it is very important to show that we are with them for the long haul and we are giving them the strategic resilience that they need.
Continue reading...Sister-in-law hid one dedicated to Gauguin because of ‘anger at the French artist’s attacks on his former friend’
Shortly before Vincent van Gogh cut off his left ear and had a breakdown after quarrelling with his fellow artist, Paul Gauguin, in the French city of Arles in 1888, he created a pair of extraordinary paintings. One, Gauguin’s Chair, depicts a couple of books and a lit candle discarded on an ornate armchair. The other, Van Gogh’s Chair, shows a tobacco pipe and pouch on a rustic wooden chair and is instantly recognisable as one of the most famous paintings in the world.
Now, the mystery of how the diptych of paintings came to be split up – and why the picture of Gauguin’s chair was kept in the family collection while Van Gogh’s Chair was sold off – has finally been solved.
Continue reading...Comments come after Ukrainian criticism of organiser EBU’s decision to move contest to UK
Boris Johnson has said Ukraine deserves to host next year’s Eurovision song contest and that he hopes it will be able to do so despite the ongoing war with Russia.
The BBC is in talks with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) about hosting the event in the UK, which came second in the 2022 contest, after the body ruled it could not go ahead in Ukraine as planned.
Continue reading...Modern techniques to test traditional explanation that most bones from 1815 battle were ground into powder for fertiliser
It was an epic battle that has been commemorated in words, poetry and even a legendary Abba song, but 207 years to the day after troops clashed at Waterloo, a gruesome question remains: what happened to the dead?
While tens of thousands of men and horses died at the site in modern-day Belgium, few remains have been found, with amputated legs and a skeleton unearthed beneath a car park south of Brussels among the handful of discoveries.
Continue reading...Temperature could exceed 42C in parts of France as scientists warn heatwaves will hit earlier than usual due to climate change
France, Spain and other western European nations braced for a sweltering weekend that is set to break records and sparked concern about forest fires and the effects of climate change.
Temperatures already nudged over 40C (104F) in parts of France on Friday.
Continue reading...President claims Russia can ‘cope with any challenge’ in address delayed by cyber-attack, but largely avoids discussing Ukraine
Vladimir Putin has delivered a combative speech repeating his critique of the west and saying the sanctions “blitzkrieg” against Moscow never had any chance of succeeding.
“If they are exceptional, then that means that everyone else is second class,” the Russian president said of the US. “They live in the past on their own under their own delusions.”
Continue reading...Macron favours land routes to Romania from Odesa whereas Ankara wants to use shipping lanes through Black Sea
Rival plans to export Ukraine’s vitally needed grain have been drawn up by France and Turkey, as concern grows over the potential impact on the world’s poorest people of failures so far to get the grain out of the country.
The Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi, said it was vital a timeline to release the grain is prepared by the time the G7 summit starts next weekend. “A series of deadlines are fast approaching and the drama of a world famine naturally concentrated in the poorest parts of the world, especially Africa, is approaching,” he said following talks with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Thursday.
Continue reading...