Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is “in denial” about the scale of Labour MPs’ welfare rebellion writes the Guardian. Some cabinet ministers “are now said to believe the welfare reform bill has no chance of passing in its current form”, it adds. Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte grins at US President Donald Trump in a...
Steve Rosenberg Russia Editor Reporting fromSaint Petersburg Reuters While Moscow has talked up its partnership with Iran, the deal does not require Russia to come to Iran’s military aid When Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, officials in Russia described the current escalation in the Middle East as “alarming” and “dangerous.” Still, Russian media were quick...
The UK is expected to unveil new sanctions against Russia designed to “restrict Putin’s war machine” alongside other Ukraine allies on Tuesday. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the measures would increase economic pressure on the Kremlin to show Vladimir Putin “it is in his and Russia’s interests to demonstrate he is serious about peace”....
Ukraine and Russia have completed an exchange of dead bodies – the final stage of a deal to bring home fallen soldiers. Kyiv said Moscow handed over 1,245 bodies on Monday, bringing the total to 6,057 in the past few days. It said it was now verifying whether all the bodies were indeed of Ukrainian...
The bodies of 1,212 Ukrainian soldiers have been returned from Russia, Kyiv says, as part of a prisoner exchange agreement between the warring countries. In return Russia received 27 bodies, Moscow’s chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said. The prisoner exchange deal was the only tangible result of peace talks in Turkey last week, with both sides...
A prisoner exchange is under way between Russia and Ukraine, governments in Moscow and Kyiv have confirmed. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said the exchange would unfold “in several stages” over the coming days, adding that the wounded, seriously wounded and soldiers under 25 were being returned. Writing on Telegram, Zelensky said: “The process is quite...
At least two people have been killed and another 17 injured in the biggest Russian drone attack on Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv, the mayor says. Ihor Terekhov says that overnight Russia launched 48 drones, as well as two missiles and four gliding bombs. “We have a lot of damage,” he says, adding that three...
It has been reported Russia could withdraw from Uefa in favour of joining the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). In 2023, Russian Football Union (RFU) president Alexander Dyukov attended the AFC congress in Bahrain, in order to discuss the possibility of Russia switching from European to Asian football. But later that year the RFU voted not...
It’s hard to exaggerate the sheer audacity – or ingenuity – that went into Ukraine’s countrywide assault on Russia’s air force. We cannot possibly verify Ukrainian claims that the attacks resulted in $7bn (£5.2bn) of damage, but it’s clear that “Operation Spider’s Web” was, at the very least, a spectacular propaganda coup. Ukrainians are already...
Ukraine claims to have left more than 40 Russian bomber planes “burning” in a large scale drone attack” in the Murmansk region. The footage appears to show Russian warplanes on a runway being struck and bursting into flames. Sources from Ukraine’s security service, SBU, told the BBC “enemy strategic bombers are burning en masse in...
Members of the Western alliance Nato need to prepare for a possible attack from Russia within the next four years, according to Germany’s chief of defence. General Carsten Breuer told the BBC that Russia was producing hundreds of tanks a year, many of which could be used for an attack on Nato Baltic state members...
Two bridges have collapsed overnight in separate incidents in Russian regions bordering Ukraine, killing at least seven people and injuring dozens more. Footage from Reuters shows the aftermath after a road bridge came down in Bryansk, bringing several heavy trucks on to a moving passenger train late on Saturday, the regional governor said. Read full...
Russia says it will send a delegation to Istanbul on Monday for a second round of peace talks with Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow’s conditions for a temporary truce were being developed and would be discussed in Turkey. Ukraine has said it remains committed to dialogue but will not send a delegation until...
Vitaly Shevchenko Russia editor, BBC Monitoring Getty Images In the fourth year of its full-scale invasion, Russia is still making billions for its war on Ukraine by selling fossil fuels abroad Russia has continued to make billions from fossil fuel exports to the West, data shows, helping to finance its full-scale invasion of Ukraine –...
Trump’s Putin strategy has been a Rorschach test for as long as he has been in the political arena. Some people see a man who is enamored with a powerful wanna-be Czar, and who, in consequence, collaborates with him at worst or, at best, gives him latitude which he would deny others not to mention...