Donald Trump says Xi Jinping wrote him a ‘beautiful note’ after rally shooting

US presidential contender’s reference echoes the ‘love letters’ he received from North Korea’s Kim Jong-un as he calls authoritarian leaders ‘smart, tough’ people

Donald Trump has said China’s president wrote him a “beautiful note” after the assassination attempt a week ago, as he continued to court leaders whom Joe Biden has criticised as dictators.

In his first campaign rally since narrowly escaping the attempt on his life in Pennsylvania, Trump told a crowd in Michigan on Saturday: “[President Xi Jinping] wrote me a beautiful note the other day when he heard about what happened.”

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Russian court sentences US journalist Evan Gershkovich to 16 years in prison

Reporter found guilty of spying in trial thought to have been rushed in preparation for prisoner swap

A Russian court has found the US journalist Evan Gershkovich guilty of espionage and sentenced him to 16 years in prison, after a trial widely described as a sham.

Gershkovich, 32, denied the charges and pleaded not guilty during the secretive court proceedings in Yekaterinburg, mostly held behind closed doors. His employer, the Wall Street Journal, described the verdict as a “disgraceful, sham conviction”.

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Does Evan Gershkovich’s quick trial suggest a Russia-US prisoner swap is close?

Russian court cases often drag on for months but speed of US journalist’s trial may be sign that long-discussed exchange is in the offing

The courtroom footage of a Russian judge announcing a 16-year prison sentence for Evan Gershkovich – mumbling his way through the verdict as the US journalist looked on impassively from inside a transparent defendant’s box – will be a chilling watch for the family, friends and colleagues of the 32-year-old Wall Street Journal correspondent.

But counterintuitively, the manner of the conviction and sentencing may be encouraging for Gershkovich’s supporters. In Russia’s fixed and politicised legal system, the result of the trial was never in any doubt. But Russian court cases often drag on interminably, with scattered hearings every couple of months. This one moved at lightning pace: after an initial hearing in June, the next court date was unexpectedly moved forward to this week. Evidence was heard in a few hours on Thursday afternoon, and the verdict and sentencing came on Friday.

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Zelenskiy to attend UK cabinet meeting in effort to disrupt Russian oil sales

Ukraine’s president will ask for more help to block Putin’s growing ‘shadow fleet’ of tankers carrying sanctioned crude to buyers

The Ukrainian president, Volodmyr Zelenskiy, will attend an extraordinary meeting of the British cabinet on Friday to bring fresh impetus to efforts to stop Russia evading sanctions on its oil exports.

Zelenskiy will be the first foreign leader to visit Downing Street since Keir Starmer was elected prime minister two weeks ago and the first foreign leader to address cabinet in person since the US president Bill Clinton in 1997.

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Trump has ‘detailed and well-founded’ plans to end Ukraine war, says Orbán

‘Likely outcome’ of Trump victory means EU should reopen diplomatic talks with Moscow, says Hungarian PM

Viktor Orbán has claimed that Donald Trump has “detailed and well-founded” plans for peace between Russia and Ukraine in a letter to a top EU body that is likely to inflame tensions about the Hungarian prime minister’s diplomatic freelancing.

Orbán, who met Trump at his Palm Beach compound last week, said in his letter to the president of the European Council, who organises meetings of the bloc’s 27 national leaders, that the Republican presidential nominee was ready to act as peace broker “immediately” after his election.

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‘I was sleepwalking through a horror’: Kyiv left reeling by deadly Russian attack on hospital

Last Monday’s strike brought terror to the Ukrainian capital, but also a renewed sense of solidarity in the face of tragedy

It was Monday lunchtime and Eka Grbich was waiting to see her doctor at a private maternity clinic in Kyiv. The news that morning was terrible. Ukraine was under a massive Russian attack. One cruise missile hit the capital’s main Okhmatdyt children’s hospital. Another destroyed a block of flats, killing and entombing many of those inside.

Grbich posted distressing images from the hospital on her Instagram account. She made a couple of work calls. And then, suddenly, her own world went dark. “There was a very loud noise. It happened in one second. There was smoke and I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t feel pain. I was thinking: ‘Am I alive?’. Somebody helped me to stand up.”

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Wednesday briefing: How Kyiv is handling the aftermath of a strike on a children’s hospital

In today’s newsletter: At least 30 have died after a missile hit the Okhmadyt facility in Ukraine’s capital – this is how the city continues to life under bombardment

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Good morning.

At least 38 civilians were killed and nearly 200 injured after Russian missiles struck cities across Ukraine in the early hours of Monday morning. In Kyiv powerful missiles hit Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital which is also its main treatment centre for children with cancer, demolishing the top two floors, shattering windows and destroying an entire ward. Another Russian strike later that same day hit a building in the capital where a maternity hospital is located, killing at least seven people. Images of bloodied children and piles of rubble sent shockwaves around the world.

UK politics | Suella Braverman has sparked a backlash after she attacked “liberal Conservatives”, saying she was angered by the flying of the Progress Pride flag in her department when she was the UK home secretary, and calling it a “monstrous thing”.

US election 2024 | The White House clarified that Joe Biden has not seen a neurologist outside of his annual physicals, after a heated exchange between the president’s press secretary and journalists seeking an explanation for a Parkinson’s disease specialist visited the White House eight times in as many months.

Work | Campaigners for a four-day working week are preparing a new pilot project on flexible working in the hope that the Labour government will be more receptive to such changes.

Water | Thames Water said it intended to tap investors for fresh funds as it would run out of money by next June without a cash injection, raising fears over its potential collapse.

Health | The amount of sugar consumed by children from soft drinks in the UK halved within a year of the sugar tax being introduced, a study has found. The tax, which came into force in April 2018, has been so successful in improving people’s diets that experts have said an expansion to cover other high sugar food and drink products is a “no-brainer”.

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Modi and Putin cement ‘bonds of friendship’ despite Ukraine tensions

Indian prime minister travelled to Moscow for two-day summit and ‘chit-chat’ amid diplomatic complexities

As India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, landed in Moscow on Monday, it was straight into the warm embrace of Vladimir Putin. Modi said the visit – his first since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – was to cement the “bonds of friendship” between the two countries, and later effusively described Russia as India’s “all-weather friend and trusted ally”.

The India-Russia relationship runs deep, dating back to the cold war, and Russia has long been the largest supplier of arms to India. Since he was elected in 2014, Modi has built up a much-publicised rapport with Putin, the two leaders having had more than 20 meetings.

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Viktor Orbán visits Vladimir Putin to condemnation from fellow EU leaders

Brussels disassociates itself from Hungarian PM’s Moscow trip, which he has tried to cast as a peace mission

Viktor Orbán, Europe’s most pro-Russia leader, arrived in Moscow on Friday for talks with Vladimir Putin, days after making his first visit to Kyiv, as the Hungarian prime minister attempts to position himself as a peace broker between Russia and Ukraine.

Orbán’s trip to Moscow has drawn strong rebukes from fellow EU leaders and comes in the week that Hungary took over the rotating EU presidency until the end of the year.

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India PM Modi to meet Putin in first trip to Russia since Ukraine war began

Trip scheduled for Monday, with Delhi a key trading partner for Putin since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine

Narendra Modi will visit Russia on 8 and 9 July and hold talks with Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin has said, in the Indian prime minister’s first trip to the country since it invaded Ukraine.

Modi and Putin will discuss “prospects for further development of traditionally friendly Russian-Indian relations, as well as relevant issues on the international and regional agenda,” the Kremlin said in a statement.

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Orbán to meet Putin in Moscow visit likely to anger EU

Hungarian PM ‘trying to mediate between Russia and Ukraine’ after Hungary took over rotating EU presidency

Viktor Orbán will travel to Moscow on Friday for talks with Vladimir Putin, sources said, days after Hungary’s prime minister made his first visit to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country.

Two sources in Budapest told the Guardian about the trip, saying it was planned as part of a package with the Ukraine visit after Hungary took over the rotating EU presidency this week.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Kremlin refuses to comment on Trump’s claims he would settle war – as it happened

This live blog is now closed, you can read more of our Ukraine war coverage here

Russia has taken control of village of Shumy in the Donetsk region, Russian-state media reports.

Citing the country’s ministry of defence, Russian state-owned news agency Ria reported on Saturday that the army had seized control of the settlement, which is near the city of Toretsk.

This is why we constantly remind all of our partners: only a sufficient amount of high-quality of air defense systems, only a sufficient amount of determination from the world at large can stop Russian terror,” he said.

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Zelenskiy says Russia’s recent offensive shows pressure on Kremlin ‘not enough’

Ukrainian president signs military agreement with EU and says ‘fulfilment of every promise’ of support is important

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has told EU leaders that Russia’s spring offensive in Kharkiv showed that international pressure on the Kremlin was “not enough”, as he signed a military agreement with the bloc.

Vladimir Putin had tried to “expand the war” in May with a new offensive in eastern Ukraine, Zelenskiy said on Thursday, referring to relentless attacks on the Kharkiv region.

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Sunak defends decision not to take immediate action against Tories in betting scandal – as it happened

Prime minister faces claim Tories are ‘stealing the candlesticks’ on the way out of government

After a passage in his speech attack Labour on familiar grounds, Rishi Sunak also hit out at Reform UK.

[Reform UK] are not on the side of who you think they are.

Reform are standing candidates here in Scotland that are pro independence and anti monarchy.

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Nigel Farage attacks Mail newspapers over ‘Putin ally’ reports

Reform UK leader accuses group of trying to stop his party breaking through into parliament

Nigel Farage has launched a stinging attack on the Daily Mail group, accusing the newspapers of trying to stop Reform UK “breaking through into parliament” by publishing reports that suggest he is an ally of Vladmir Putin’s administration.

Farage said the newspaper, which has often been supportive of him in the past, was “collaborating with the Kremlin to protect the dying Conservative party”, also lashing out at Boris Johnson for joining condemnation of his comments about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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‘A return to the cold war’: Putin and Kim have joined forces as global delinquents | Andrew Roth

The defiant Russia-North Korea friendship pact raises big questions for Washington and Seoul – but also for Beijing

A quarter of a century ago, Vladimir Putin flew to Pyongyang to sign a ­“friendship treaty” with Kim Jong-il that helped revive Russia’s relations with North Korea without obliging the two sides to come to each other’s aid in case of a military attack.

With his visit last week, Putin has in effect gone further into the past, signing a deal with Kim Jong-un reminiscent of the 1961 security pact that existed under the Soviet Union during the cold war. But today Russia is engaged in a hot war in Ukraine that Putin has made his ­foreign policy priority, and a nuclear North Korea has become a crucial lifeline of munitions for his military.

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Farage doubles down on claim west provoked Ukraine invasion

Reform UK leader refuses to apologise after his remarks attracted widespread condemnation

Nigel Farage has doubled down on his claims that the west provoked the Russian invasion of Ukraine, refusing to apologise and insisting he is not an “apologist or supporter of Putin”.

The Reform UK leader had appeared on the BBC’s Panorama programme on Thursday night, drawing a link between Nato and EU expansion in recent decades and the conflict in eastern Europe.

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US ‘incredibly concerned’ over Putin’s threat to supply weapons to North Korea after Asia tour

State department warns such a move could destabilise the peninsula, as South Korea considers arming Ukraine

Vladimir Putin’s suggestion that Russia could supply weapons to North Korea is “incredibly concerning”, a senior US official has said, days after Putin and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, signed a defence pact that requires their countries to provide immediate military assistance if either is attacked.

Matthew Miller, a US state department spokesperson, said the provision of Russian weapons to Pyongyang “would destabilise the Korean peninsula, of course, and potentially … depending on the type of weapons they provide … violate UN security council resolutions that Russia itself has supported”.

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Putin arrives in Vietnam for state visit condemned by US

Russian president’s trip comes after he signed mutual defence pact with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un

Vladimir Putin has arrived in Vietnam for talks with its communist leaders on the final stop of his two-nation tour of Asia after signing a defence pact with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un.

The Russian president’s plane touched down at Hanoi airport where he was met on a red carpet by Vietnamese deputy prime minister Tran Hong Ha and top party diplomat Le Hoai Trung.

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Russia and North Korea sign mutual defence pact

Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un’s agreement raises western alarm about possible Russian help for nuclear programme

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, have signed a pact that includes a clause requiring the countries to come to each other’s aid if either is attacked, a move that has raised western concerns about potential Russian aid for Pyongyang’s missile or nuclear programmes.

The inclusion of a mutual defence clause in their comprehensive strategic partnership, which Kim described as an “alliance”, will add to the west’s alarm over growing economic and military ties between North Korea and Russia. The deal was finalised on Wednesday after hours of talks in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

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