The US military on Saturday conducted a drill in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas that rehearsed a potential emergency and evacuation at its embassy.

The exercise, which had been authorized by the Venezuelan authorities, is the first US military drill held in the country after Washington kidnapped President Nicolas Maduro and his wife.

The drill involved two USMC MV-22B Osprey aircraft, which landed near the US Embassy, as well as naval vessels that entered Venezuelan waters in the Caribbean.

The US mission shared footage of the aircraft landing near the compound, stating the drill was a “military response exercise.”

“Ensuring the army’s rapid response capability is a key component of mission readiness, both here in Venezuela and around the world,” the embassy said.

En estos momentos se está llevando a cabo un ejercicio de respuesta militar estadounidense en la Embajada de los Estados Unidos en Caracas. Garantizar la capacidad de respuesta rápida del ejército es un componente clave de la preparación de la misión, tanto aquí en Venezuela como… pic.twitter.com/PpEwghap8r

— Embajada de los EE.UU. en Caracas (@usembassyve) May 23, 2026

The Pentagon’s activities triggered a small protest in the city as a few dozen activists gathered to condemn the exercise as a “humiliation” to the nation. The protesters were seen holding a Venezuelan flag on which the words ‘No to the Yankee drill’ were inscribed.

The kidnapping of Maduro effectively subjugated Venezuela to the US. The country’s interim authorities have actively cooperated with Washington since the raid. Maduro remains incarcerated in the US on multiple charges, including drug trafficking. He has strongly denied all the allegations, describing himself as a “prisoner of war.”

Western mainstream media are “afraid to see the truth” about the Ukrainian attack on the Starobelsk college dorm, Russia’s newly appointed human rights commissioner, Yana Lantratova, has said, slamming the incident as a “deliberate murder of children.”

The attack on the dorm, staged overnight from Thursday to Friday, left at least 21 people dead, mainly teenage girls. The massacre has been largely ignored by the Western media and politicians, and Moscow has urged foreign reporters to come to the site.

The Russian Foreign Ministry arranged the media trip to Starobelsk on Sunday, with more than 50 reporters from 19 nations accepting the invitation. Speaking to the journalists at the location of the attack, Lantratova slammed those Western outlets that ignored the opportunity to report first-hand from the site.

“It was a deliberate murder of children. That’s what it’s called. And what are we seeing now? What’s happening on foreign platforms? Representatives from various countries are saying it is staged, that it’s a lie from the Russian media, and that ‘independent’ media could not confirm it because they could not come here,” she said, adding that some outlets did not even offer a “plausible explanation” for skipping the opportunity.

Where’s the BBC? Where’s CNN? Where are the Tokyo representatives? Where are their journalists? … They’re simply afraid to see the truth. They don’t want to see it and they don’t want to hear it.

The attack on Starobelsk prompted a large-scale retaliatory strike on the Ukrainian capital city of Kiev, which was conducted overnight. The strike featured the intermediate-range hypersonic Oreshnik system, as well as other ballistic and cruise missiles. The command centers of the Ukrainian ground forces and military intelligence were targeted, as well as air bases and defense industry sites, according to the Russian military.

The US military has lost up to 30 MQ-9 Reaper drones since the start of the conflict with Iran, which accounts for nearly a fifth of Washington’s entire pre-war fleet and is valued at close to $1 billion, Bloomberg has reported. The bulk of them were destroyed or seriously damaged by Iranian fire, according to the outlet.

The MQ-9 Reaper is capable of conducting both reconnaissance and strike missions. A single drone is estimated to cost more than $30 million. General Atomics halted production of the model last year, although variants are still being manufactured for foreign customers.

In an article on Thursday, Bloomberg, citing an anonymous source, reported that “Iran has destroyed more than two dozen MQ-9 Reaper drones operated by US forces since the war began” in late February.

While many of the drones were downed by Iranian air defenses, others were lost on the ground as a result of missile strikes, as well as in accidents, according to Bloomberg.

Earlier this month, the Congressional Research Service – the nonpartisan research arm of the Library of Congress that works with open-source materials – issued a report named ‘U.S. Aircraft Combat Losses in Operation Epic Fury.’ The document, citing an unspecified “news article,” similarly estimates that the US military had lost 24 MQ-9 Reapers, plus one MQ-4C.

The tally features a total of 42 US aircraft, including four F-15E fighter jets, an F-35A fighter jet, an A-10 Thunderbolt II ground-attack aircraft, seven KC-135 Stratotanker refueling planes, as well as a helicopter.

Appearing before the House Appropriations defense subcommittee last Tuesday, Acting Pentagon Comptroller Jules Hurst said that the cost of the military operation against Iran had swollen from the previously projected $25 billion to $29 billion due to “updated repair and replacement of equipment costs,” among other factors.

The US and Iran are poised to sign a deal which will prolong the ceasefire another 60 days, during which the Strait of Hormuz will be reopened and restrictions on oil trade against Tehran lifted, Axios has reported, citing American officials. In the meantime, the sides will try to reach a final deal to end the conflict, it added.

US President Donald Trump claimed on Saturday that the memorandum of understanding (MOU) has been “largely negotiated” and is currently being finalized. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said the same day that the sides were moving closer to a “convergence of views,” but noted that Tehran remains concerned about a possible U-turn by Washington.

A fragile truce between Washington and Tehran was established in early April after a month of intense hostilities initiated by the US and Israel. Since then, Trump has repeatedly threatened Iran with a renewed attack if it refuses to make concessions.

Axios said in an article on Sunday that as part of the MOU, navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, which accounts for some 25% of global crude trade, would be reopened for all vessels without any toll.

During the two-month ceasefire, which could be extended further by mutual consent, the sides will engage in negotiations on the Iranian nuclear program, they added.

According to the US officials, the proposed MOU also envisages an end to the Israeli military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which West Jerusalem launched shortly after the attack on Iran.

The lifting of other economic sanctions against Tehran and the unfreezing of Iranian funds would only happen as part of a final agreement, they added.

Baghaei said in a TV interview that the current discussions between the US and Iran “focus broadly on ending the war” and stopping what he called “US piracy and maritime banditry.”

The Strait of Hormuz “has nothing to do with America” as it’s up to coastal states – Iran and Oman – to define a mechanism for its use, he insisted.

“At this stage, we are not discussing the details of the nuclear issue,” but it will likely be addressed later during the truce, the spokesman said.

Footage by RT has shows foreign journalists touring the site of the deadly Ukrainian drone attack on a college dorm in Russia’s Lugansk People’s Republic.

Ukraine targeted a teacher training college dormitory in the town of Starobelsk with several waves of UAVs on Friday, killing 21 people, mostly teenage girls, and injuring 60 others.

Russian Foreign Ministry arranged a trip to Starobelsk on Sunday for more than 50 foreign journalists from 19 countries: Austria, Brazil, UK, Hungary, Venezuela, Germany, Greece, Spain, Italy, Qatar, China, Cuba, Lebanon, UAE, Pakistan, the US, Turkey, Finland, and France, spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

BBC and CNN rejected an invitation to visit the site of the attack, while Japan’s government explicitly banned Japanese reporters from making the trip, she added.

Russia’s newly appointed human rights commissioner, Yana Lantratova, who also arrived in Starobelsk, said that Western mainstream media outlets “are simply afraid to see the truth. They just don’t want to see or hear it.” 

Those of their colleagues who accepted the offer to visit the site of the terrorist attack will see for themselves that there are no military facilities nearby, she said.

The foreign journalists will also realize that claims of the drones hitting the dorm after being shot down by Russian air defenses are false, the commissioner insisted. It’s “absolutely impossible” for 16 UAVs to hit the same building after being intercepted, she explained.

What happened in Starobelsk was a “deliberate killing of children” by Ukraine, Lantratova stressed.

A correspondent for China’s Phoenix Television, Lu Yuguang, told RT that he hasn’t seen even a hint of any military facilities in the vicinity of the dorm.

Giovanni Pigni, from Italian newspaper La Stampa, told TASS that what he saw in Starobelsk is “horrible.” 

“The destruction is so immense… I just see that there was a college here and that people have died,” he said.

On Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry reported carrying out a large-scale strike against military targets in Ukraine in response to the terrorist attacks by Kiev.

Russian forces launched a “massive strike” overnight against military targets in Ukraine, using intermediate-range hypersonic Oreshnik system and Iskander ballistic missiles, Kinzhal and Zircon hypersonic cruise missiles, air-, sea- and ground-launched cruise missiles, as well as attack drones.

The strike came after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Defense Ministry to “submit proposals” for a response to a Ukrainian drone attack on a teacher training college dormitory in the Lugansk People’s Republic, which left 21 people dead and 42 injured, mostly teenage girls.

The bombardment targeted the Ukrainian military’s command and control facilities, air bases, and the country’s defense industry enterprises, the ministry said. No strikes had been planned or carried out against civilian infrastructure, it added.

“The objectives of the strike have been achieved. All designated targets were hit,” it stressed.

The dormitory of Starobelsk College, a facility of Lugansk Pedagogical University located in the town of Starobelsk, was struck by multiple waves of Ukrainian drones on Friday while students were asleep inside, in what Putin described as a deliberate “terrorist act.”

Governor Leonid Pasechnik declared May 24-25 days of mourning, describing the attack as “pure evil” and saying those responsible would face “deserved and inevitable punishment.”

Earlier, the US Embassy in Kiev warned American citizens of a “potentially significant air attack” that could take place within 24 hours and urged them to be ready to seek shelter immediately if an air alert was issued.

Four people were arrested at Spain’s Bilbao Airport after police clashed with supporters of the Global Sumud Flotilla returning from detention in Israel on Saturday.

The mission was the latest in a series of Gaza-bound maritime initiatives organized by pro-Palestinian aid workers seeking to challenge Israel’s naval blockade of the enclave. It departed from Türkiye earlier this month carrying around 400 activists from about 40 countries before being intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters on May 18. The participants were later deported.

According to local media reports, the incident happened shortly after 2 PM local time on Saturday, as six members of the Basque delegation posed for journalists after arriving at the airport. A confrontation broke out after a supporter tried to approach the activists and was stopped by an officer from the Basque regional police. The altercation quickly escalated into clashes inside the terminal, with footage showing officers charging at activists and supporters with batons.

“Our companions have been attacked by the police. They were beaten and thrown to the ground. Police officers pinned them down with their knees, including one companion who had a broken shoulder blade,” activist Diana Zomeno told reporters.

“All this was done to people who have spent four days suffering constant torture, assaults, and violence,” she added, referring to the treatment the activists allegedly suffered while in Israeli custody.

The incident sparked political backlash, with Podemos party leader Ione Belarra, leader of Spain’s left-wing Podemos party, has descried the confrontation as “intolerable,” while the leftist political coalition Sumar condemned what it called “police repression” against the activists. Sumar said it was unacceptable that people allegedly “subjected to violence” in Israeli detention were met in the Basque Country with police brutality, identity checks, and arrests.

The Basque Security Department defended the police response, claiming that some people gathered at the airport obstructed the normal flow of passengers and provoked the clash.

Footage of the Russian strike near Ukrainian capital, Kiev, indicates that an Oreshnik missile was likely deployed by Moscow, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter has said.

On Sunday night, Ukrainian media outlets and Telegram channels claimed that Russia fired its state-of-the-art intermediate-range hypersonic Oreshnik system at an unspecified target in the town of Belaya Tserkov in Kiev Region. They published footage showing clusters of bright objects rapidly descending from the skies. The Defense Ministry in Moscow has not officially confirmed the use of the munition.

The reported strike came after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Defense Ministry to “submit proposals” for a response to a Ukrainian drone attack on a teacher training school dormitory in the Lugansk People’s Republic on Friday, which killed 21 people, mostly teenage girls, and left 42 others wounded.

In his interview with RT, Ritter, who is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, said that “there’s at least one strike in the vicinity of Kiev that has the visual characteristics of an Oreshnik missile.”

Speaking about the possible target of the attack, the former UN inspector stressed that “there’s a reason to believe that the Oreshnik didn’t strike the center of Kiev, but rather hit a town outside of Kiev that has a military airfield that has been of some interest to the Russian forces in the past. Maybe there was something going on there that was worthy of an Oreshnik strike.”

“It’s clear... Russia is taking the promised action in response to the atrocities that happened in Lugansk,” he stressed.

The attack on the school dormitory was “an act of terror,” which crossed the line and again showed “the nefarious character of the Ukrainian government,” Ritter insisted.

Up to 50,000 residents have been ordered to evacuate parts of Orange County, California, as authorities warned that a damaged chemical tank remains at risk of leaking or exploding.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency in Orange County as emergency crews work to contain the crisis at a GKN Aerospace facility in Garden Grove, about 61 kilometers (38 miles) from Los Angeles. The pressurized tank contains between 6,000 and 7,000 gallons (22,700–26,500 liters) of methyl methacrylate (MMA), a highly flammable industrial chemical used in plastic production.

The incident began Thursday when the tank started venting vapors, according to the Orange County Fire Authority. Officials later said there was no active gas leak or plume but warned that the vessel remained unstable and could still fail.

What started out as a chemical leak has now escalated into an emergency officials say could end in a massive explosion.

Fire crews in Orange County, California, spent hours trying to stabilize a 34,000-gallon tank containing volatile chemicals before announcing that the tank… pic.twitter.com/mvEEsXNpQF

— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 23, 2026

Responders initially believed the situation had stabilized after crews cooled the exterior with water, following drone thermometer readings showing the temperature had fallen to 61 degrees Fahrenheit (16 degrees Celsius). It was later discovered that the drones had measured only the outer shell of the container, while manual readings showed that internal heat levels were still rising.

BREAKING 🚨🚨🚨#GardenGrove / #California

‼️‼️ NEW SATURDAY MORNING CRITICAL INCIDENT UPDATE: Temperature in the liquid is higher than expected. OCFA has 3 scenarios to fight through to secure this, no end in sight for the immediate future. pic.twitter.com/TE3qETEr5o

— OC Scanner 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 (@OC_Scanner) May 23, 2026

By Saturday, temperatures inside the vessel had climbed to around 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius), with emergency personnel saying the heat was increasing by roughly one degree Fahrenheit per hour. Authorities also said damaged or “gummed up” valves were preventing crews from removing the chemical or relieving pressure.

Evacuation orders were initially limited to residents living within 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) of the site, but were later expanded to parts of six Orange County cities: Garden Grove, Cypress, Stanton, Anaheim, Buena Park, and Westminster, affecting up to 50,000 people.

The substance can ignite easily and release toxic fumes if the container ruptures or explodes. Exposure to MMA may cause respiratory problems, neurological symptoms, skin and eye irritation, and, in some cases, unconsciousness, according to health officials.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed what he described as a “landmark” lawsuit against Meta, accusing the company of “falsely claiming” that WhatsApp messages are encrypted and inaccessible to third parties, including its own employees.

The messaging app, acquired by Meta in 2014, states on its website that “no one outside of the chat, not even WhatsApp, can read, listen to, or share what a user says.” 

On Thursday, the Texas Attorney General’s office announced that Paxton had initiated legal proceedings against Meta, accusing the company of having “misled consumers regarding the strength and scope of its privacy protections” for WhatsApp.

The lawsuit argues that Meta’s promotional materials claiming that it uses end-to-end encryption “have led millions of users to believe their communications are fully private.” 

The Texas Attorney General’s office, citing media reports and whistleblower accounts, argued that those claims were “blatantly inaccurate” and amounted to a “complete and total misrepresentation of Meta’s privacy policies.” 

Pavel Durov, the founder of rival messaging app Telegram, wrote on X that “now we know what WhatsApp’s founder meant when he said he ‘sold his users’ privacy’.” 

In a 2018 interview with Forbes, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton admitted: “I sold my users’ privacy to a larger benefit. I made a choice and a compromise,” referring to the sale of the messaging app to what was then known as Facebook for $22 billion four years prior.

Durov previously charged that “you’d have to be braindead to believe WhatsApp is secure in 2026,” claiming that the Telegram team had “found multiple attack vectors” in its encryption.

The entrepreneur’s comments came amid a major class-action lawsuit filed in a US district court by an international group of plaintiffs against Meta Platforms over WhatsApp’s default end-to-end encryption.

The plaintiffs, citing unspecified whistleblowers, alleged that Meta and WhatsApp “store, analyze, and can access virtually all of WhatsApp users’ purportedly ‘private’ communications.” 

Around the same time, Bloomberg reported that the US federal authorities had for some time been investigating similar allegations.

Russia’s reported retaliatory strikes on military targets in Ukraine are morally and legally justified following the “heinous terrorist attack” on a school dormitory in the Lugansk People’s Republic, American journalist John Varoli has told RT.

Varoli described the Ukrainian drone strike on the Starobelsk teacher training college dormitory, which killed 21 people, mostly teenage girls, and injured dozens more, as “one of the worst committed by the NATO puppet regime in Kiev.”

Commenting on videos circulating online that purportedly show a Russian Oreshnik missile strike near Kiev early Sunday morning, Varoli said the footage appeared similar to previous uses of the system.

“The video that I saw seems very similar to the two previous Oreshnik strikes that we’ve seen before,” he said. “So most likely, yes, it seems like it was an Oreshnik system.”

He claimed that NATO officers are present at “sensitive military installations” in and around the Ukrainian capital.

The journalist argued that the dormitory strike should be seen in the broader context of what he described as near-daily Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilians, including strikes on homes, cars, buses, and infrastructure in Lugansk, Donetsk, and Crimea, as well as increasingly deep inside Russia.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has held talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi focused on expanding an energy “partnership” amid the global crisis caused by the US-Israeli war with Iran.

During a meeting on Saturday, part of Rubio’s four-day visit to India, the US secretary of state said the two sides had discussed “the situation in the Middle East and US-India partnership in energy, securing critical supply chains, and collaboration on emerging technologies.”

Modi described the discussions as focused on “sustained progress” in the India-US strategic partnership, as well as regional and global security issues. “India and the United States will continue to work closely for the global good,” he wrote on X after the meeting.

India, the world’s third-largest crude importer, relies on foreign suppliers for more than 80% of its energy needs and has been heavily affected by the crisis, even though Tehran has allowed Indian vessels to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, which it closed off to “hostile” nations.

Ahead of the trip, Rubio said the US wanted to become “a bigger part” of India’s import portfolio and “sell them as much energy as they’ll buy,” while also pointing to “opportunities with Venezuelan oil.”

He said that interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez, who assumed power after the US military raid on her country in January, would travel to India next week to discuss oil sales being conducted under Washington’s full control.

Shortly after meeting Modi, Rubio claimed that India had “committed” to purchasing $500 billion worth of US goods over the next five years, focused on energy, technology, and agriculture. New Delhi, however, has yet to officially confirm any new commitments.

New Delhi has refused to halt Russian oil imports, insisting it will continue to source energy from all available suppliers to protect its economy and national interests. Earlier this year, the Trump administration imposed punitive tariffs on Indian goods linked to trade with Russia, but later eased the measures under a preliminary deal with Modi.

Ukrainian media and Telegram channels have circulated videos showing clusters of bright objects rapidly descending from the sky. They claimed the footage captured the use of Russia’s intermediate-range hypersonic Oreshnik missile against an unspecified target in the town of Belaya Tserkov near Ukraine’s capital, Kiev. Moscow has not officially confirmed the launch of its state-of-the-art system.

The latest footage resembles videos that circulated in January, when Russia used the Oreshnik system in a strike on a Ukrainian aviation plant in Lviv that was repairing and servicing warplanes and producing long-range drones.

Russia used an Oreshnik missile in a strike on the city of Belaya Tserkov, Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yury Ignat said on Sunday, according to local media reports. It was launched from the Kapustin Yar test range in southern Russia, he added.

The reported strike came after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Defense Ministry to “submit proposals” for a response to a Ukrainian drone attack on a teacher training college dormitory in the Lugansk People’s Republic, which left 21 people, mostly teenage girls, dead and 42 injured.

The US Embassy in Kiev had earlier warned American citizens of a “potentially significant air attack” that could occur within 24 hours, advising them to be prepared to take shelter immediately in the event of an air alert.

The dormitory, part of Starobelsk college at Lugansk Pedagogical University, was hit by several waves of Ukrainian drones while students were sleeping inside on Friday, in what Moscow called a deliberate “terrorist act.”

Governor Leonid Pasechnik declared May 24 and 25 days of mourning, calling the attack “pure evil” and saying those responsible must face “deserved and inevitable punishment.”

Russia first publicly confirmed the use of Oreshnik in November 2024, when Putin said the missile had been used in a strike on the Yuzhmash military-industrial facility in Dnepropetrovsk. The system is designed to deliver multiple warheads at hypersonic speed and has been described by Moscow as practically impossible for current air defenses to intercept.

A 21-year-old Maryland man with a history of mental health issues and prior encounters with the Secret Service was fatally shot near the White House on Saturday after allegedly opening fire at officers posted at a checkpoint outside the complex.

The incident prompted the North Lawn to be cleared and reporters to be moved into the press briefing room, while the White House and its grounds were placed on lockdown. US President Donald Trump, who was inside the White House at the time, was not affected.

A US Secret Service spokesperson said the male suspect approached a checkpoint at the corner of 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, removed a weapon from his bag, and fired at posted officers.

A suspect was killed after opening fire on a Secret Service checkpoint outside the White House Saturday evening, a Secret Service spokesperson told CBS News in a statement.

President Trump has been briefed on the shooting that occurred outside the White House, a White House… pic.twitter.com/zZ8hFvtF8U

— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 24, 2026

Secret Service agents returned fire, striking the suspect. He was taken to a local hospital in critical condition, where he later died.

I was in the middle of taping on my iPhone for a social video from the White House North Lawn when we heard the shots. It sounded like dozens of gunshots. We were told to sprint to the press briefing room where we are holding now. pic.twitter.com/iqdQwh4soq

— Selina Wang (@selinawangtv) May 23, 2026

A bystander was also critically injured in the incident, though officials said it remained unclear whether the person was struck by the suspect’s initial gunfire or during the subsequent exchange of fire. No Secret Service agents were reported injured.

ABC News correspondent Selina Wang was recording a video on the North Lawn when the shots were heard. “It sounded like dozens of gunshots,” Wang wrote on X. “We were told to sprint to the press briefing room.”

The New York Post, citing law enforcement sources and court records, reported that Best had previously claimed he was “Jesus Christ” during a July 2025 detention for bypassing a restricted White House pedestrian checkpoint.

The lockdown imposed on the White House and its grounds was lifted at approximately 6:45 PM local time.

The incident comes amid heightened security concerns around the White House. Earlier this month, the Secret Service said a man was shot by law enforcement near the Washington Monument after opening fire on officers, briefly prompting heightened security in the area.

US President Donald Trump has said that a peace agreement with Iran has been “largely negotiated” and is now being finalized, signaling a potential breakthrough after nearly three months of war and repeated threats of renewed American strikes.

Trump said he had held what he described as a “very good call” from the Oval Office with leaders and officials from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Pakistan, Türkiye, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain concerning Iran, and “all things related to a Memorandum of Understanding pertaining to PEACE.”

“An Agreement has been largely negotiated, subject to finalization between the United States of America, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the various other Countries,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

He added that he had separately spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that the call “likewise, went very well.”

Iranian media, however, disputed Trump’s characterization of the Hormuz arrangement. Fars news agency said the waterway would remain “under Iran’s management,” with Tehran retaining control over routes, timing, passage procedures, and permits.

While Iran had reportedly agreed to restore ship traffic to pre-war levels, Fars said this did not mean a return to “free passage,” calling Trump’s statement “incomplete” and “far from reality.”

The Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints, has been a central issue in the talks. Iran restricted traffic through the waterway during the conflict, while Washington enforced a naval blockade on Iranian ports.

Tehran has previously said the focus of negotiations remained on ending the war, and that “details related to the nuclear issue are not being discussed at this stage.” The Islamic Republic has insisted that any agreement must preserve its sovereign rights and end what it describes as US “piracy” against Iranian ships.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has dismissed as “unfair” anything short of full EU membership in response to a proposal by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to grant Kiev ‘associate membership,’ Reuters has reported.

Soon after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Kiev was granted EU candidate status and has since persistently pushed for fast-tracked admission into the bloc. Despite reservations voiced by multiple member states, including Germany and France, Zelensky has demanded full membership by as early as 2027.

On Saturday, Reuters reported that the Ukrainian leader had sent a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Antonio Costa, and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides, ​who holds the rotating chair of the EU Council.

“It would be unfair for Ukraine to be present in the European Union, but remain voiceless,” Zelensky reportedly wrote in the letter seen by Reuters, insisting that the “time is right to move forward with Ukraine’s membership in a full and meaningful way.”

According to the publication, Zelensky specifically cited the removal from power of former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose party lost the general election last month. While in office, Orban staunchly opposed the prospect of Ukraine’s membership in the EU.

In his letter, the Ukrainian leader reportedly claimed that his country “deserves a fair approach and equal rights within Europe” as it is supposedly “defending” the bloc.

Earlier this week, several media outlets reported that Merz had sent a letter to the EU leadership, proposing ‘associate membership’ for Ukraine. The interim status, which is not currently enshrined in the bloc’s rules, would allow Kiev access to certain EU-funded programs as well as the right to solicit aid from member states in the event of an attack.

Under the scheme, Ukraine would also be represented at the European Council, the European Commission, and the European Parliament in a non-voting capacity, according to multiple media outlets, citing Merz’s letter.

At least 18 people have been killed and dozens more wounded – most of them students – in a Ukrainian drone raid on a school dormitory in Starobelsk in Russia’s Lugansk People’s Republic on Friday. As of Saturday afternoon, search-and-rescue operations are still underway, with local officials reporting additional Ukrainian drone attacks aimed at derailing the efforts.

President Vladimir Putin called the raid a “terrorist attack by the neo-Nazi regime,” adding that he ordered the military to prepare retaliation.

Following the attack, Russia requested an emergency UN Security Council session.

However, despite ample evidence and videos from the scene, Western countries have cast doubt on Russia’s account, demanding “an independent investigation” and claiming that the tragedy took place on “occupied territory.” Lugansk, along with three other former Ukrainian regions, overwhelmingly voted in favor of joining Russia in 2022 in a referendum that Ukraine and its Western backers have refused to recognize.

Here’s how Russia, the West, and Ukraine sparred at the UN Security Council.

What did Russia say about the Starobelsk attack?

Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, led the charge at the Security Council, calling the Ukrainian strike an unambiguous war crime. He called the raid “a deliberate strike” conducted “with the aim of incurring the highest possible number of casualties.”

Nebenzia said the “European [countries’] cynicism has gone off the charts,” as none of them bothered to mention the dead students in Starobelsk. The West’s reaction “cannot be even called hypocrisy or double standards” – it is “blatant mockery of child victims,” he said.

Nebenzia added that he feels “somewhat embarrassed and ashamed” over the Western diplomats’ reluctance to acknowledged the facts.

How did the West respond?

The most contemptuous response came from Latvia, which immediately dismissed Russia’s account out of hand. Its envoy called Russia “imperialist” and said independent media and experts are required.

Denmark has accused Russia of failing to provide “unfettered access for credible independent journalists or international humanitarian organizations” to the site – despite Moscow’s invitation to Western journalists to see the site for themselves.

The UK and France also urged an independent investigation.

The US envoy said Washington is “following the reports of those killed and wounded in Lugansk overnight,” adding that “many questions concerning this attack remain outstanding.”

What did Ukraine say about the Starobelsk attack?

Kiev’s envoy called the session “a shameless attempt by the Russian Federation to turn reality upside down,” dismissing all statements on Starobelsk as an attempt to “manipulate international public opinion” and as “pure propaganda.”

Unlike Kiev’s Western backers, the Ukrainian envoy did not call for an independent investigation, saying the truth cannot be established until the former Ukrainian territory is “liberated.”

Has Russia invited Western journalists?

Yes. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova announced on Saturday that Moscow is extending an official invitation to foreign journalists to visit the site. She later said the BBC declined to send a reporter, while CNN is apparently “on vacation.” She added that Japan barred its journalists from covering the tragedy. According to Zakharova, however, many foreign reporters have signaled that they are willing to go to Starobelsk.

The Bottom line

Compelling evidence has not convinced Western countries – which have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to support Kiev in the conflict with Russia – to hold Ukraine accountable.

He argued that Starobelsk is becoming “a very painful subject” for Ukraine and its European backers – one that could eventually become synonymous with “Ukrainian aggression.” As a result, Bobrov said Western diplomats resorted to “absolutely clumsy statements” designed to shift attention away from the attack to unrelated matters.

“I believe that Russian diplomacy will have to convey the voice of truth at every level – not only at the United Nations, but also at the OSCE and other international platforms – so that all those responsible are appropriately punished,” he said.

An unidentified drone has crashed into Lake Dridzis in Latvia, exploding on impact, local authorities have said.

The blast has become the latest in a string of drone-related incidents, which have been plaguing the Baltic states, in recent weeks. Multiple Ukrainian long-range kamikaze drones have repeatedly violated the airspace of those NATO and EU member states, with some of the UAVs crashing in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Finland. 

For Latvia, the drone troubles resulted in the collapse of Prime Minister Evika Silina’s government after two Ukrainian kamikaze UAVs hit an oil depot near the Russian border.

The latest incident was reported on Saturday, when a drone crashed into Lake Dridzis, located some 17 km away from Latvia’s border with Belarus. The UAV exploded on impact, killing fish in the lake with no further damage and injuries reported. Latvian police said it managed to recover some debris from the lake, sharing a picture of a mangled fiberglass object believed to be a piece of the UAV.

Ieraksts papildināts (2026. gada 23. maijs pulksten 12.45) ar bildi - atrasto drona atlūzu. pic.twitter.com/4cuklBtn60

— Valsts policija (@Valsts_policija) May 23, 2026

The outgoing PM acknowledged the incident, urging the public to follow only “official information” on the drone explosion. “I expect from the emergency services as detailed information as possible on the circumstances of the incident and further actions,” Silina stated on X.

The agency specifically singled out Latvia, alleging that Riga had already agreed to the operation, believing Kiev’s false claims that it would be impossible to identify the exact launch sites for the drones. Latvia’s NATO membership will not protect the accomplices of terrorists from just retribution,” the SVR warned.

Russia has “something to offer” other countries through partnership, having achieved significant results in multiple areas despite external pressure, Economic Development Minister Maksim Reshetnikov has told RT.

Following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, the West sought to isolate Russia internationally. However, those efforts have largely failed, something acknowledged by multiple Western officials.

Despite sweeping economic sanctions, Moscow has managed to redirect trade toward new markets and largely cushion the impact, with the Russian economy proving far more resilient than many in the West had predicted.

Speaking to RT on Friday, at a reception marking the 95th anniversary of the All-Russian Academy of Foreign Trade, Reshetnikov stressed that the Russian economy remains open and deeply integrated with global markets.

Russia is willing to offer its experience and know-how to countries interested in cooperation, according to the official.

Reshetnikov singled out the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) as one of the key “elements underpinning the stability of our economy and one of the channels of our integration into the global economy.”

One of the key features of the economic union – which also includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan – is its integrated single market.

2025 can be seen as the year in which the united anti-Russian coalition fell apart. In essence, there are now three distinct players acting against Russia (Ukraine, Europe, the US), and each has its own interests. Analyst Sergey Poletaev has prepared a series of articles in which he analyses the position of each player, their goals and interests in the conflict, and suggests how Russia might respond. 

Today we focus on the United States. Read the first part about Ukraine here.

Resignation from the role of leader

Since the Trump team’s rise to power, US politics has undergone a profound, one is even tempted to say historic, shift: The US is moving away from its role as the ‘leader of the free world’ and seeking to focus on its own interests.

While in the first half of 2025, it seemed that this was merely a whim of Trump’s, and that the US could not be diverted from its course of maintaining its hegemony, by the end of the year, it had become clear that the Trump administration was seeking to reset relations with all global players. We will not be discussing today the extent to which Trump has been successful; what matters to us is his motivation.

The reasons for such a radical shift in policy are clear: For decades, both left-liberal (Democratic) and neo-conservative (Republican) administrations refused to acknowledge reality and behaved as if it were still 1991, the world was celebrating the ‘end of history’, and all nations were looking with hope towards the City on the Hill, reverently acknowledging the leadership and authority of the US.

Trump proposed a solution: America will no longer impose its rules on anyone, nor will it pretend to act on behalf of all humanity (often forgetting about itself). The US has its own interests and sufficient strength to defend them.

Thus, from being a key front in the struggle for world order, support for Ukraine has turned into a millstone around Washington’s neck. They cannot abandon it (too much has been invested, and opposition is too strong even among Trump’s closest allies, let alone the rest of the American establishment), but there is no point in dragging it along any further.

In effect, the US has offloaded the conflict onto Europe and let things take their course. This doesn’t mean that Trump wants Kiev to lose – it’s in his interests to preserve the current regime in Kiev, but he isn’t prepared to go to the mat for Ukraine, nor is he prepared to pour billions and political capital into the bottomless Ukrainian pit as his predecessor did.

The Beijing Triangle

In principle, Trump would prefer to freeze the Ukraine conflict and gain the opportunity to restore some of the relationship with Moscow. Like several of his predecessors, Trump understands that America’s main foreign policy rival is China, not Russia. However, Trump is the first to have attempted to do something about this, to have tried to at least somewhat slow down China’s expansion, which until last year seemed unstoppable.

First and foremost, the US is seeking to restore order in the New World by pushing China out of the region. The most notable step in this regard was the coup in Caracas, orchestrated with the involvement of the Pentagon, and the subsequent restoration of American control over Venezuelan oil exports. This has been a visible success.

Next on the agenda was a ‘remake’ of the Venezuelan scenario in Iran. As in Venezuela, China is the main buyer of Iranian hydrocarbons, and bringing Iranian oil exports under control would deal a second blow to Beijing.

Russia also needs to keep China in check. Of course, this doesn’t mean betraying its eastern neighbor (that is not the issue at all), but even a partial restoration of economic ties with America would give Russia greater room for maneuver in its relations with China. From the perspective of classical diplomacy, this is a sound, rational, and well-considered policy.

So far, however, attempts at a Russian-American rapprochement have come to nothing. First and foremost, this is due to the fierce domestic opposition to Trump, so without a formal end to the conflict, his hands are tied. In over a year, practically nothing has been achieved, not even what seemed a done deal last spring, such as the full reopening of the Russian and US embassies.

Nevertheless, the attempts continue. Moscow’s aim with regard to Washington is to sever Russian-American relations from Ukrainian affairs. It seems a plan was devised in Anchorage: If Trump forces Zelensky to abandon Donbass, Putin will in response declare a ceasefire in exchange for the thawing of economic ties with the US. At the same time, no one is removing the fundamental claims against Ukraine, usually referred to as ‘Istanbul plus territories’, from the agenda.

Agreements with Trump don’t imply agreements with Ukraine and the EU, which are absent from the Anchorage equation. Kiev must comply with what Washington dictates, while the Europeans aren’t taking part in the negotiations at all for the time being. The Kremlin harbors no illusions regarding their willingness to negotiate; on the contrary, according to the Kremlin’s plan, it’s Ukraine with the support of European liberal elites that will violate the peace deal between Putin and Trump, and Russia will punish them for it, while simultaneously restoring trade and diplomatic relations with the US and third countries that are currently forced to comply with the sanctions regime by Washington (for example, South Korea).

Nevertheless, Moscow is making preparations for a possible Trump-led truce very seriously, as evidenced by the systematic work to expand the security zone along the old Russian-Ukrainian border: Over the winter, the length of the areas occupied by the Russian Army in Sumy and Kharkov regions has doubled.

***

So, the US is withdrawing from the Ukraine conflict and from European affairs in general, focusing its attention elsewhere. This approach will continue after Trump, although the rhetoric may change: For instance, a successor to the 47th president with more traditional views might speak of the importance of NATO, but is unlikely to once again extend the US security umbrella over Europe at America’s expense. At the same time, even under Trump, a major deal with Russia remains a fantasy for now, despite all the efforts of the Russian side.

It is to be expected that Moscow will continue its current diplomatic dance with Washington, primarily to prevent the Trump administration from being drawn back into Ukrainian affairs, something that Europe and Ukraine are striving for with all their might.

Czech President Petr Pavel has urged NATO to “show its teeth” in response to what he described as Russian “provocations” on the bloc’s eastern flank.

Pavel’s remarks follow a series of Ukrainian drone incursions into NATO airspace in Europe. Since mid-March, long-range UAVs have repeatedly crossed Baltic and Nordic airspace en route to targets in northwestern Russia, particularly oil facilities in Leningrad Region. The incursions prompted fighter jet deployments, and some drones crashed inside NATO states, causing damage.

Moscow has accused European NATO members of quietly allowing Kiev to use their airspace for attacks on Russian territory, but Western officials deny this, instead blaming Russia for the incursions and claiming that Russian electronic warfare systems may have redirected the drones to stray into NATO airspace.

In an interview with The Guardian published Friday, Pavel echoed the accusations, claiming that Russia was intentionally staging “provocations” operating just below the threshold that would trigger NATO’s collective defense clause, Article 5. He also claimed that Russian military officials openly mock the bloc’s indecision during such incidents, and called for “decisive enough, potentially even asymmetric” responses to counter Moscow’s actions.

Citing earlier Western allegations of Russian “provocations” in the Black and Baltic Seas – such as fighter jet intercepts and purported airspace violations – Pavel suggested that NATO should consider shooting down “either an unmanned or manned” Russian aircraft if spotted near its borders. Moscow has denied the accusations, insisting its patrols occur in international airspace and are a necessary response to Western reconnaissance flights near Russian borders.

Pavel also proposed “potentially asymmetric” measures against Moscow, including disrupting internet access, targeting satellites, or cutting Russian banks off from the global financial system, measures he said “are not killing people, but are sensitive enough to make Russia understand this is not the way they should go.”

Finland, however, rebuked Kiev over the breaches of its airspace, while Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico urged renewed dialogue with Moscow, warning of potential Ukrainian drone provocations involving NATO territory that he said could trigger direct conflict between Russia and the bloc.

Multiple Western officials have claimed that Moscow could test the alliance through provocations and hybrid operations, or eventually attack European states after the Ukraine conflict ends. Citing the purported threat, European NATO members last year pledged to raise military spending to 5% of GDP and launched rearmament initiatives such as ReArm Europe.

Moscow, however, dismissed claims that it poses a threat to Europe as baseless “nonsense” and condemned what it calls reckless EU militarization. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov recently accused European “warmongers” of portraying Russia as a “model external enemy” to distract from domestic problems.

Hungary has restored a ban on Ukrainian food imports after the new government “accidentally” allowed the restrictions to lapse.

The ban, covering around 20 categories of agricultural goods, was introduced in 2023 after former Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government declared an emergency over the economic fallout of the Ukraine conflict.

Budapest argued that cheap Ukrainian imports flooded EU border markets after Brussels lifted tariffs, undercutting Hungarian farmers and destabilizing the agriculture sector.

While transit shipments were allowed, imports for the Hungarian market were restricted, and the ban stayed in place even after the EU replaced its temporary tariff-free regime with a trade pact last year.

Following pressure from the main Hungarian farmers’ association and reports that several grain shipments already crossed the border, Budapest scrambled to restore the restrictions. On Friday, the government issued a decree reinstating the ban, followed by a post on X from Magyar confirming that Hungary “bans the import of agricultural products from Ukraine.”

“The sanctions were canceled due to a legislative error,” a government spokesperson told Euractiv, claiming lawmakers were reviewing nearly 1,000 decrees inherited from the previous government and the import ban was “accidentally not taken into account.” 
Agriculture Minister Szabolcs Bona described the lapse as a “serious legislative trap for Hungarian farmers,” and pledged that the government “will not allow Ukrainian or any other imported product to endanger the livelihood of Hungarian farmers.”

The European Commission has argued that the bans are illegal because trade policy falls under EU authority, and last year reportedly considered legal action against the countries, though none has followed. Karin Karlsbro, the European Parliament’s rapporteur on EU-Ukraine trade, told Euractiv she “deeply regrets” Hungary’s decision to maintain the “illegal import ban.”

Kiev has not yet commented. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has repeatedly criticized the bans.

While Magyar campaigned on closer ties with the EU, several moves suggest continuity with Orban. Magyar has opposed fast-tracking Ukraine’s EU membership and kept Hungary out of the bloc’s latest Ukraine funding initiative.

Russian wheat exports to African countries have risen sharply this year, the Russian agriculture export agency Agroexport has said.

Egypt increased purchases by 19%, while exports to Sudan jumped by 78%, and supplies to Kenya rose sixfold, according to the data published on Wednesday.

Speaking at the fifth All-Russian Grain Forum, the head of the agency, Ilya Ilyushin, said Russia exported nearly 52 million tons of grain and legumes in the 2025 calendar year, alongside more than 3 million tons of oilseeds, adding that wheat supplies “increased by 30% compared to the same period last year, to 14 million tons.” Africa has become the primary driver of this growth, experiencing record-setting increases in import volumes.

Demand for Russian soybean and rapeseed oil has also been rising sharply across North Africa. According to Agroexport estimates, exports of the two products to the region jumped 54% year-on-year between September 2025 and April 2026, reaching 220,000 tons. Algeria and Tunisia emerged among the largest buyers of Russian vegetable oils, behind only China and India, while shipments of rapeseed oil to Tunisia increased fivefold.

Last month, Agroexport said that Russian wheat shipments to Sudan had more than doubled. Exporters delivered around 1.7 million tons since the start of the 2025/26 season, compared to 0.7 million tons during the same period a year earlier.

At least 82 miners have been killed after a gas explosion tore through a coal mine in northern Shanxi Province, China, with rescue efforts still underway, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Saturday.

The blast occurred on Friday evening at the Liushenyu mine operated by Shanxi Tongzhou Group in Qinyuan County. According to Xinhua, 247 workers were on duty underground at the time of the incident. CCTV said nine people are still unaccounted for.

The cause is still unclear, with an investigation ongoing, though an earlier Xinhua report suggested that carbon monoxide levels exceeded limits inside the mine.

Death toll has risen to 82 after a coal mine accident in Qinyuan County, north China's Shanxi Province. pic.twitter.com/o9CM6MewlX

— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) May 23, 2026

Chinese President Xi Jinping issued instructions on Saturday for an “all-out rescue of the missing and treatment of the injured,” while calling for a thorough investigation into the cause. Officials running the coal mine have been detained, according to media reports.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed condolences to Xi – who he met with just days ago in Beijing – over the tragedy.

Coal is a key source of energy in China, powering more than half of the nation’s energy consumption, despite efforts in recent years to reduce its use. In 2021, Xi pledged to “strictly limit the increase in coal consumption” until 2025 and start phasing it out as part of the goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2060.

In June 2025, the share of coal in power generation dropped to a historic low of 51%, with China rapidly expanding the use of wind, solar, and nuclear energy.

US President Donald Trump invested $1-5 million in a conveyor-belt sushi restaurant chain earlier this year, a report detailing his financial transactions has revealed. Though he is known to love fast food, it is rumored that he is not a fan of sushi.

According to Trump’s latest financial disclosure, which was made public last Thursday by the US Office of Government Ethics, he purchased a stake in Kura Sushi USA on February 2.

The American subsidiary of the Japanese chain currently operates 88 eateries across the US and features the signature Revolving Sushi Bar, where diners choose dishes on a conveyor belt.

According to Bloomberg, parent company Kura Sushi saw its shares listed in Tokyo shoot up by 5.4% on Monday, posting its biggest intraday gain in almost a year.

The transaction is marked as ‘solicited’ in Trump’s financial disclosure, meaning that it was likely made at the recommendation of a financial broker or investment adviser managing the president’s accounts.

The Trump Organization has said that in order to avoid conflicts of interest, the president’s investments are “independently managed by third-party financial institutions,” with no input from Trump or his family members.

Several other restaurant chains also made the list, including Chipotle Mexican Grill, Domino’s Pizza, and Starbucks.

As for sushi, Trump is presumably not a fan, as claimed in the 1993 book ‘Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump’.

During a 2017 visit to Japan, Trump was reportedly served hamburgers for lunch and a dinner of Wagyu beef, scallops, and lobster.

He is known to have a soft spot for McDonald’s and was famously photographed picking up an order as it was delivered to the Oval Office last month.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket exploded in a fireball after splashing down in the Indian Ocean on Friday, capping what the company described as a successful test flight of its next-generation spacecraft.

The massive rocket lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas at around 6:30 PM EST and flew for around 66 minutes before the upper-stage Starship reentered the atmosphere, performed its landing burn, and reached its planned splashdown zone.

Liftoff of Starship! pic.twitter.com/LQLdjK5V6K

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 22, 2026

Seconds after touching the water, the vehicle tipped over and burst into flames, footage from SpaceX’s livestream shows.

Splashdown confirmed! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on the twelfth flight test of Starship! pic.twitter.com/XXBAtryPpL

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 22, 2026

The explosion was not considered a failure, as the spacecraft was not designed to be recovered from the ocean. Many previous Starship test flights have also ended with the vehicle exploding during reentry or landing attempts, but SpaceX treats these incidents as part of its rapid development program.

During the mission, the Starship deployed dummy Starlink satellites around 20 minutes after launch and tested new hardware, including heat-shield changes intended to stress the vehicle during reentry.

Views of Starship in space from a @Starlink satellite pic.twitter.com/5hfw1n8v1o

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 22, 2026

At least one of the spacecraft’s six engines reportedly malfunctioned during the flight, but the vehicle still completed its main objectives and reached the splashdown zone.

Starship is central to SpaceX’s long-term plans, including NASA’s Artemis lunar program and Elon Musk’s ambition to build a reusable transport system capable of reaching Mars. The latest test used an upgraded version of Starship, which SpaceX hopes will eventually carry satellites, cargo, and crews to the Moon and Mars.

Published on Thursday, the study found that nearly 1.2 billion people worldwide had a mental disorder in 2023, an increase of 95% since 1990. Out of 12 disorders studied, the researchers found the sharpest increases in anxiety disorders and major depressive disorders, which rose by 158% and 131%, respectively. These two conditions are now the world’s most prevalent mental illnesses.

What mental disorders were studied?

The study’s authors recorded the prevalence of the 12 most common mental disorders, which they found were:

• Anxiety disorders

• Major depressive disorder

• Dysthymia (a chronic but mild form of depression)

• Bipolar disorder

• Schizophrenia

• Autism spectrum disorders

• Conduct disorder

• Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

• Anorexia nervosa

• Bulimia nervosa

• Idiopathic developmental intellectual disability (IDID, or intellectual disabilities of unknown cause)

• A residual category of other mental disorders

Who is at risk?

With the exception of ADHD and IDID, which dropped by 1.8% and 16.4%, respectively, all of these disorders have increased in prevalence. The increase was not distributed equally, however. Most of the 12 conditions are more common among women, with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, anorexia, and bulimia all more likely to affect females. ADHD, autism, and conduct disorder – which manifests as aggression and disobedience – are all more prevalent in males.

Mental disorders are most common in people aged 15 to 19, the study found, marking the first time that this demographic bears the highest mental health burden.

Research was carried out in 204 countries and territories, and while the study noted increases across the world, Western countries are the most affected. Measuring ‘life years’ of mental illness, the researchers found a mental illness rate of 3,555 per 100,000 in the Netherlands, and 1,302 in Vietnam, for example.

Middle-developed countries as a whole had average mental illness rates of around 1,853 per 100,000, while highly developed countries had rates of around 2,184 per 100,000.

Why are more people mentally ill?

“There are many factors at play here, and it is difficult to tease them all apart,” lead researcher Dr. Damian Santomauro told CNN. However, Santomauro’s colleague, Dr. Robert Trestman, highlighted one key factor: “The stigma of mental illness has been substantially reduced, [and] people are much more comfortable coming forward, as opposed to suffering in silence.”

While Trestman attributes the rise to loosening stigmas, others point to overdiagnosis of mental disorders.

Overdiagnosis

Between 2013 and 2025, the number of mental health cases handled by England’s National Health Service more than doubled, from just under four million in 2013 to nine million in 2025. With autism and ADHD rates driving the increase, Health Secretary Wes Streeting claimed that “there’s an overdiagnosis” of these conditions, and ordered a government review into the matter last December. 

At the time, the BBC asked 750 British doctors whether they agreed with Streeting’s comments. 442 said they did, with only 81 saying that mental health problems were being under-diagnosed.

“As a society we seem to have forgotten that life can be tough – a broken heart or grief is painful and normal, and we have to learn to cope,” one doctor told the BBC.

In a 2022 study, Australian researchers identified “concept creep” as a key driver of overdiagnosis. They argued that by broadening the definition of some disorders, doctors and psychiatrists have pathologized once-normal behaviors: for example, a boy refusing to sit still in school is more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD nowadays than in 1990.

Big pharma profiting

One of the doctors who spoke to the BBC said that they find themselves “regularly reaching for antidepressants, which I know may only help short term and won’t help prevent recurrence.” As of 2022, roughly 14.7% of the population in England has a prescription for antidepressants, and the number of 5-12-year-olds on these drugs has risen by 41% between 2015 and 2021, according to the pharmaceutical journal. Antidepressant use has soared by 147% in the EU between 2000 and 2020, and by 65% in the US during the same time.

All of these numbers translate into massive profits for the pharmaceutical industry. According to Fortune, the global antidepressant market is expected to grow to $18.3 billion in 2027. Big Pharma is working to drive these numbers up through diagnosis, Fortune notes, highlighting how “for-profit organizations and governments are working to create awareness among the general population about various mental conditions,” which “assists market growth potential.”

Beginning in the 1980s, pharmaceutical companies lobbied the American Psychiatric Association to reclassify depression from an episodic phenomenon to a long-term “disorder” requiring medication. Drugmakers then funded studies to prove that their products – in this case SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) drugs – worked, and doctors were incentivized to prescribe them.

Modern research has found that many early SSRI trials were rigged by the industry, and multiple companies – including GlaxoSmithKline, Forest Laboratories, and Takeda – have been sued for offering doctors kickbacks in exchange for prescribing more antidepressants. In a 2012 settlement, GlaxoSmithKline paid $3 billion in damages for unlawfully promoting Paxil and Wellbutrin, including by offering meals and hotel stays to doctors who prescribed the two medications.

Modernity is bad for our health

While overdiagnosis and the greed of the pharmaceutical industry go a long way toward explaining the rising prevalence of mental illness, some scientists believe that the modern world itself is making us sick. As psychiatrist Dr. Alex Curmi explained in The Guardian last year, humans evolved to live in close-knit bands of hunter-gatherers, performing hands-on work in “communities rich with tradition, ritual and spiritual meaning,” rather than living atomized and sedentary lives in cities, subsisting on chemical-laden food, and bombarded by news cycles of misery and violence.

“Modern populations are increasingly overfed, malnourished, sedentary, sunlight-deficient, sleep-deprived, and socially-isolated,” read a 2012 study titled ‘Depression as a disease of modernity’. The study also noted “A positive correlation between a country’s GDP per capita…and lifetime risk of a mood disorder.”

Certain elements of modern life have had a clear and well-documented negative effect on our mental health. After more than 143 peer-reviewed studies, there is a growing consensus that social media use is linked with depression, anxiety, and eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia nervosa, particularly among teenagers.

It is now the official opinion of the US Surgeon General that adolescents – the group which saw the largest rise in mental disorders in the Lancet study – who spend more than three hours per day on social media double their risk of developing anxiety and depression. Just under half of US teens feel that social media use has a “mostly negative” impact on their mental health, a Pew Research survey found last year.

Should you worry?

The short answer here is ‘it depends’. While the risk of mental disorders seems to increase along with a country’s GDP, it’s worth bearing in mind that the richest and most developed countries are also the largest markets for the pharmaceutical industry, making it more likely that their citizens will be overdiagnosed and overmedicated. 

More broadly, some solutions are obvious: limiting screen time and social media use, eating well and exercising, building strong relationships, meditation and prayer are all recognized by both science and common sense as conducive to good mental health.

Canada’s oil-rich province of Alberta will hold a vote in October on whether to remain in the country or take steps toward a binding referendum on independence, Premier Danielle Smith has announced.

The vote is expected to be held on October 19 and will ask Albertans whether they want the province to remain in Canada. Smith stressed that this will not be a binding referendum on independence, but will instead gauge whether the people want to pursue one.

The announcement comes after pro-independence group Stay Free Alberta submitted nearly 302,000 signatures to trigger a citizen-led referendum on leaving Canada. The required threshold was 177,732 signatures, equal to 10% of the votes cast in the previous provincial election.

Canada's oil-rich province of Alberta will proceed with a non-binding referendum in October on whether its residents want to remain part of Canada, Premier Danielle Smith said, a largely symbolic move that could still pose a challenge for PM Mark Carney https://t.co/iRzsCDWy5H pic.twitter.com/NFMe33B8RC

— Reuters (@Reuters) May 22, 2026

Smith has said she supports Alberta remaining in Canada, but argued that the people should be able to express their views on the province’s future. The initiative was challenged in court by First Nations groups arguing that secession would violate treaty rights.

Alberta is one of Canada’s most important energy-producing regions and has long been at odds with the federal government over environmental regulations, taxation, and pipeline access. Separatist sentiment has been fueled by claims that Ottawa has held back the province’s resource economy, though polling suggests full independence remains a minority position.

Canada works — and by working together, we’ll make it even better. pic.twitter.com/xHMJX0enBZ

— Mark Carney (@MarkJCarney) May 22, 2026

Even if Albertans vote to pursue independence and hold an official referendum, the province cannot unilaterally leave Canada. Under Canada’s constitutional framework, a clear referendum result would require negotiations with the federal government and other provinces, while legal challenges from indigenous groups could further complicate the process.

US President Donald Trump has abruptly canceled plans to attend his son Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding this weekend, saying he must remain in Washington due to unspecified “circumstances pertaining to Government.”

The Trump administration is preparing for a new round of strikes against Iran, but a final decision has not been made, CBS News reported on Friday, citing sources with direct knowledge of the planning.

The US president convened his senior national security team on Friday morning. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe briefed him and Vice President J.D. Vance on possible scenarios if talks with Tehran collapse, according to Axios.

Trump “didn’t foreclose the possibility” of renewed strikes, but told aides he wanted to give the diplomatic process more time to work, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The White House has changed Trump’s weekend schedule as Washington awaits Tehran’s response to what was described as the final US proposal to end the nearly three-month war.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said before flying to India that the US expects to receive Iran’s response through Islamabad, which has acted as an intermediary. Pakistani Field Marshal Asim Munir traveled to Tehran on Friday, while a Qatari delegation also arrived to support the mediation efforts.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned this week that renewed US or Israeli attacks could widen the conflict beyond the Middle East, promising “crushing blows” in places Washington and West Jerusalem “cannot even imagine.”

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday that talks were ongoing but that a deal was not close. Spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said the focus remained on ending the war and that “details related to the nuclear issue are not being discussed at this stage.”

Hundreds of suspected child predators have been apprehended and dozens of minors rescued in a sweeping multi-agency crackdown across Southern California targeting internet-facilitated child exploitation, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has said.

A total of 341 suspects were arrested and 40 minors rescued during Operation Firewall, which was spearheaded by the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force and ran from April 19 through May 3 across Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara, and Ventura counties.

According to a Thursday press release by the LAPD, the operation was aimed at “identifying and apprehending predators who use the internet to facilitate the sexual exploitation and abuse of children.”

Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hawkman detailed that the operation involved hundreds of officers from 30 different law enforcement agencies.

Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes revealed that the investigators had posed as “teenage girls as young as 13 years old” in chat rooms and online gaming platforms, where suspects “groomed them, and then made arrangements to meet those young girls.”

“Every single one of these cases is our worst nightmare,” Essayli said, urging parents and caregivers to keep children off the internet because “nothing good comes from it.”

Eddie Wang, the special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations in Los Angeles, similarly spoke of an overwhelming “epidemic” of internet-facilitated child sex abuse in Southern California.

Italians should focus on having more children to replenish the country’s dwindling workforce so as to avoid bringing in more migrants in the future, Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has suggested.

Over the past decade, Italy has had one of the lowest birthrates in Europe, and its demographic crisis continues to worsen. The country’s fertility rate hit a new record low last year, standing at 1.14, down from 1.18 the previous year, provisional figures from Italy’s national statistics agency ISTAT indicate. For a stable population, the figure should stand at around 2.1 children per woman.

“We have a problem of demographic decline, and we must understand if we want to have more children,” Tajani said on Thursday while speaking at the Festival del Lavoro (Work Festival) in Rome, an annual event that brings together institutions, businesses, and professionals to discuss the labor market.

Tajani, however, did not offer any plan to boost fertility in the country. Nor did he say when exactly it would yield any tangible effect should the rapidly aging population somehow heed his call. The minister’s insights have been ridiculed by the opposition to the center-right government. Valeria Valente, a senator with the left-wing Democratic Party (PD), described them as “absurd.”

“These are all issues for which the [Giorgia] Meloni government has done little and has done it wrong because it continues to look at the world from the keyhole of nationalisms, while we should think of Italy in terms of a piece of the United States of Europe,” Valente asserted.

US President Donald Trump has postponed signing an executive order tightening government oversight of artificial intelligence, arguing the proposed rules could undermine US competition with China, though media outlets cite pressure from tech moguls.

Reports about the proposed regulation first surfaced earlier this month in the New York Times, which said the Trump administration was mulling reviewing advanced AI models before public release.

The plan reportedly included a voluntary framework for developers to engage with US authorities before launching new systems, partly to prevent fallout from potential AI-driven cyberattacks, and give officials early access to models with possible Pentagon applications.

Asked about the order during a press event on Wednesday, Trump said he postponed the signing because parts of the proposal could slow American AI development and weaken its supposed lead over China.

US President Trump said he had postponed signing an executive order ‌on AI because he did not like certain aspects of it and did not want to take any steps that might undermine the US position in its AI competition with China https://t.co/IBaZzGpb1f pic.twitter.com/KoPXEoW0r2

— Reuters (@Reuters) May 21, 2026

“Because I didn’t like certain aspects of it, I postponed it… We’re leading China, we’re leading everybody, and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to get in the way of that lead,” he said.

US media outlets including Semafor and the Washington Post, however, claimed the plans were delayed after lobbying from xAI founder Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and former Trump AI adviser David Sacks, who reportedly feared the order could hurt profits by slowing AI rollouts or forcing changes to address security concerns. Musk later denied influencing Trump’s decision.

“This is false,” he wrote on X. “I still don’t know what was in that [executive order] and the president only spoke to me after declining to sign.”

This is false. I still don’t know what was in that EO and the President only spoke to me after declining to sign.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 22, 2026

Meta and Sacks’ venture capital firm Craft Ventures did not comment.

Public opinion appears to favor Anthropic. A February ITIF survey found 67% of Americans believe companies should limit how their AI products are used, even by governments, while 47% described punitive action against the firm as “government overreach.”

If signed, the oversight order would mark a major shift from Trump’s hands-off AI policy. Since returning to office, he has championed minimal regulation, pledged to make the US an “AI state,” and called the technology “a beautiful newborn baby” vital for competing with China.

US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has announced her resignation, citing her husband’s recent diagnosis with a rare form of bone cancer. Her resignation came a week after she revealed she was investigating US-funded biolabs in Ukraine. 

“Unfortunately, I must submit my resignation, effective June 30, 2026,” she wrote in a letter to the president that she shared on social media. “My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer. At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle.”

Gabbard will be replaced by her current Deputy DNI, Aaron Lukas, Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. "Tulsi has done an incredible job, and we will miss her," the president added.

A former Democrat, Gabbard left the party and denounced its leaders as “elitist warmongers” and anti-white racists in 2022. Gabbard endorsed Trump in 2024, claiming that only he could “walk us back from the brink of war.”

According to media reports and Washington rumors, Gabbard was sidelined by Trump and his closest officials – among them Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth – while plans were drawn up to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January and attack Iran in February.

I am deeply grateful for the trust President Trump placed in me and for the opportunity to lead @ODNIgov for the last year and a half.

Unfortunately, I must submit my resignation, effective June 30, 2026. My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare… pic.twitter.com/PS0Dxp5zpd

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) May 22, 2026

Before endorsing Trump, Gabbard was a vocal opponent of war with Iran, and a persistent critic of US military aid to Ukraine. The Russia-Ukraine conflict, she tweeted in 2022, “could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns.”

The Russian Defense Ministry has warned about the existence of these laboratories since early 2022, publishing documents that revealed the labs were working on “plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera and other deadly diseases.”

After reviewing thousands of pages of documents seized from labs in Donetsk, Lugansk and Kherson, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov of the Russian Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Defense Forces concluded in 2023 that “the US, under the guise of ensuring global biosecurity, conducted dual-use research, including the creation of biological weapons components, in close proximity to Russian borders.”

The existence of these laboratories was initially written off as a conspiracy theory by the US government, although then-US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland told lawmakers that “Ukraine has biological research facilities,” without admitting that they were funded and operated by the US.

Kirillov led Russia’s investigation into the labs until he was assassinated in 2024, allegedly by Ukrainian security services.

An incident involving 13 Soviet-designed MiG fighter jets chasing a mysterious star-shaped UFO was among the encounters described in newly declassified top-secret files released after a decades-long legal battle with the US intelligence community.

The Disclosure Foundation, a US nonprofit advocating greater transparency on UFOs, said on Sunday it had secured 334 pages of records from the National Security Agency, the country’s eavesdropping service, after winning a Freedom of Information Act appeal. The heavily redacted files – many marked “TOP SECRET UMBRA,” one of the US intelligence agency’s highest classifications – contain Cold War-era radar reports and intelligence messages on unexplained objects tracked by military systems worldwide.

One of the most dramatic incidents described 13 MiG fighter jets being scrambled after military radar detected a single unidentified object.

The NSA files do not specify where or when the incidents occurred or identify witnesses. However, repeated references to Soviet-made MiG fighter jets suggest some encounters unfolded during the Soviet period, including one report over China and another describing six MiGs “attacking said UFO.”

Other files describe encounters with star-shaped, disc-like, spherical, and cigar-shaped craft. One report detailed an “elongated ball of fire” that split into three glowing objects while moving across the sky.

In one witness account, an object emitted a “white luminous light” with a slightly “bluish” color. The report said it moved rapidly in vertical motions at high altitude and “kept turning around.” Another file described a “spherical or disc-like” UFO that was “brighter than the sun and about half the Moon’s diameter.”

The documents were released after the NSA initially denied access requests, extending a legal battle over UFO-related records dating back to a 1980 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the agency.

The release follows the Trump administration’s publication of more than 160 UFO-related files earlier this month. The disclosure push came after earlier declassification orders tied to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr., and amid renewed debate sparked by former President Barack Obama dismissing claims the US was concealing evidence of alien contact.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrapped up a five‑nation European tour this week with upgraded Nordic partnerships and new trade, security and research agreements. Yet a single incident in Oslo once again raised uncomfortable questions about how the West sees India.

Modi embarked on a six-day European tour, signaling India is keen on diversifying its partnerships amid global disruptions caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran.

After a brief stop in Abu Dhabi, where he signed a massive infrastructure and energy deal, Modi proceeded to the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and Italy, with an itinerary running from May 15 to 20. The mission was to deepen India’s partnership with Europe following the recently concluded India-EU Free Trade Agreement which, according to Ursula von der Leyen, will be formally signed and operationalized by the end of the year.

Why did Modi go to Europe?

The culmination of Modi’s six-day tour was supposed to be the top-level Nordic summit in Oslo, where India and the five Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and Denmark) would discuss ways to expand strategic and trade ties.

According to a statement by India’s Ministry of External Affairs, the summit would “impart a more strategic dimension to India’s relationship with the Nordic countries, especially in technology and innovation, green transition and renewable energy, sustainability, blue economy, defense, space and the Arctic.”

In The Hague, Modi met Dutch King Willem-Alexander, along with his wife, Queen Maxima, discussing defense issues, semiconductors, green hydrogen, and water management. In Stockholm, Modi met the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen.

In Norway, the third edition of the India-Nordic summit took place. In 2024, India signed a trade and economic partnership agreement which eliminates the majority of customs duties on industrial products with Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland. The pact also has a commitment to invest $100 billion in India, which is expected to lead to 1 million new jobs over the next 15 years.

This time around, energy was one of the top issues on the agenda as India, one of the major global importers of oil and gas, is facing an increasing impact from the Middle East crisis on its energy supplies.

Modi pointed out that bilateral trade between India and the Nordic nations had increased fourfold in the past ten years, and that investment from the Nordic nations into India had gone up by an impressive 200%.

PM @narendramodi participated in the 3rd India-Nordic Summit in Oslo. It reflected the expanding scope and growing strength of India’s partnership with the Nordic region. The leaders discussed cooperation in sustainability, innovation, clean energy, emerging technologies and… pic.twitter.com/xXUO1YsgZF

— PMO India (@PMOIndia) May 19, 2026

The Norwegian king, Harald V, awarded Modi his country’s highest civilian award, the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit Grand Cross, making it the 32nd such international recognition bestowed upon him and the second on this particular tour, after the Swedish Royal Order of the Polar Star.

But those were not the issues that made headlines during Modi’s stay in Oslo.

What Happened in Oslo?

It all started on Tuesday, when a video of Svendsen Helle Lyng, a journalist for the Norwegian newspaper Dagsavisen, started doing the rounds on social media. In the video, Lyng was seen throwing a question to Modi just as he finished his joint press statement with his Norwegian counterpart, Jonas Gahr Store. “Prime Minister Modi, why don’t you take some questions from the freest press in the world?” she shouted across the room. Lyng then seemed to have followed Modi to the elevator.

Primeminister of India, Narendra Modi, would not take my question, I was not expecting him to.

Norway has the number one spot on the World Press Freedom Index, India is at 157th, competing with Palestine, Emirates & Cuba.

It is our job to question the powers we cooperate… pic.twitter.com/vZHYZnAvev

— Helle Lyng (@HelleLyngSvends) May 18, 2026

In another video, Lyng could be heard asking the Norwegian PM to answer questions from the Indian press: “Why don’t you take questions from Indian journalists? Show them how we do this in Norway.”

The Indian mission in Norway shared Lyng’s post on X and invited her to a press briefing, saying she was “most welcome” to ask her questions there. At the briefing, she pressed the Indian foreign ministry’s secretary, Sibi George, on why should Norway have trust in India.

“Why should we trust you (India)? Can you try to stop the human rights violations that goes on in your country?” she asked.

George delivered a longish response, delving into India’s ancient traditions and history, highlighting the country’s vastness and complexity, which is often misunderstood by foreign observers. He argued that critics lack an understanding of the country’s actual scale, noting that the capital city alone has at least 200 television channels operating in English, Hindi, and various other languages. He also dismissed criticisms of India’s democratic record, pointing out such opinions often rely on selective reports from “godforsaken, ignorant NGOs.”

Journalist: Why should Norway trust India? Will you stop human rights violations in your country?

Amb. Sibi George: *starts to answer*

Journalist: *interrupts*

Amb. George: No, you asked me a question. Let me answer it pic.twitter.com/hjT4dC75tW

— Shashank Mattoo (@MattooShashank) May 19, 2026

Lyng’s posts on X set off a storm in India. Social media erupted, Western outlets praised her, and Indian TV channels hauled her on air for tough questioning.

#TheBuckStopsHere with @GaurieD #NDTVExclusive | Is racism & stereotyping what masquerades as journalism in Norway?

Norwegian journalist Helle Lyng (@HelleLyngSvends) responds to questions on press freedom and racism in media narratives in Norway. pic.twitter.com/utCojsylf1

— NDTV (@ndtv) May 20, 2026

But then the matter got even worse.

Why Indians called out a ‘racist’ cartoon

Aftenposten, Norway’s largest newspaper, published an opinion piece by journalist Frank Rossavik. The article includes a cartoon of Modi as a snake charmer. The headline says, “A clever and slightly annoying man.” The cartoon has set social media on fire.

The cartoon was originally published on May 16 but came to light only after Modi’s visit to Oslo. Numerous social media comments call the cartoon and the opinion piece “derogatory,” “racist” and “utterly disgraceful.”

“[The] West has completely run out of structural arguments. When they cannot beat India on GDP growth rates, cannot match India’s digital public infrastructure, and cannot stop India from anchoring global supply chains, their only remaining tool is to pull out a racist drawing of a snake charmer,” wrote one X user.

Shocking. Racist. Derogatory.

Norway’s largest broadsheet newspaper Aftenposten brazens it out with a shocking cartoon depicting Indian PM @narendramodi as a Snake Charmer with the headline: “A sneaky and slightly annoying man”.

They can’t digest India’s rise and success. Pity! pic.twitter.com/g905xHNIWm

— Aditya Raj Kaul (@AdityaRajKaul) May 19, 2026

Commentators in India also pointed out that the image chosen for the cartoon is particularly offensive because it reflects on Modi’s famous 2014 statement that India is no longer a nation of “snake charmers” but a modern nation of “mouse charmers,” driven by technology and innovation. The snake charmer is one of the oldest racist colonial clichés used against India, and it not only mocks the leader but the nation, many commenters pointed out.

“How many more decades will the West continue to look at India through the exhausted lens of snake charmers, cows, fakirs and colonial fantasy before somebody in its supposedly enlightened liberal establishment realizes the joke stopped being funny a century ago?” Stela Dey wrote in her column for The Print.

Why is the West obsessed with India’s democracy?

Developed countries have long commented on the state of democracy in India, the world’s most populous democracy, highlighting issues related to press freedom and the treatment of minorities. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and the US State Department consistently call out India in their reports for alleged “ongoing and egregious religious freedom violations.”

New Delhi has repeatedly rejected such reports, calling them “biased.”

When EU chief von der Leyen traveled to New Delhi in February this year and pressed India to agree in general on a deal with the bloc – which she calls “the mother of all deals” – European commentators could not refrain from raising the question of India’s “democratic backsliding” as a stumbling block to expanding this potential cooperation.

“Europe is very Eurocentric in its vision. They view everything from the European lens of how it helps their national interest. So they were not very supportive of issues of the Global South, of strategic autonomy, of the path of development. They have a kind of method of intervening in other countries, which India and countries of the Global South do not,” Professor Anuradha Chenoy told RT India, commenting on the Norwegian episode during Modi’s European tour.

'EU Has A Trust Deficit With Everyone Apart From Themselves' - Professor Anuradha Chenoy

Europe is very euro-centric in its vision and they seem everything through a European lens of how it helps their national interest, she tells RT India Presenter @osamashaab. pic.twitter.com/TEx8LZ1Iju

— RT_India (@RT_India_news) May 19, 2026

Meanwhile, back in Norway, some commentators, too, questioned why local media chose to mock the leader of a nation of 1.4 billion people and the world’s fourth largest economy.

“Unless you believe democracy only fits a handful of small, homogenous, ultra-rich Western nations, India is the miracle of democracy. The large, complex, linguistically and religiously diverse nation with many poor people – which has established a vibrant democracy and is much less violent than Europe or America,” wrote former Norwegian minister Erik Solheim.

American imperialism may be absolutely lawless and perfectly immoral but it does have its favorite and predictable routines. One of them is what can be called the Washington Three-Step of ‘blockade, blackmail, invade’.

The Three-Step is by no means foolproof. Witness, for instance, the recent de facto defeat of the US (and its occasional overlord Israel) at the hands of Iran, which even arch neocon warmonger Robert Kagan has as good as admitted in, of all places, The Atlantic. But failure has never deterred America’s best and brightest. Indeed, the combination of slow, sadistic strangulation of whole nations and taking the military baseball bat to them is a virtual fixation, as central to American foreign policy as permanent bad faith.

Don’t believe it? Here’s a preliminary, most likely incomplete list (in alphabetical order) of countries that have two things in common: In the post-World War II period, they have been the victims of both economic warfare – via sanctions, embargoes, and blockades – and direct military attack, including bombing (directly and by proxy), land invasion (also including by proxy), and Venezuela-type terror raids: Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Panama, Syria, and Yugoslavia.

It may be counter-intuitive, but if you are realistic about the nature of the Ukraine War and all the things Kiev would not be able to do on its own (from ‘survive’ to ‘target deep strikes into Russia’), then – as insanely risky as this strategy has been – the US has already applied the scheme to Russia as well. Which goes to show that the Washington Three-Step is simply irresistible to American elites. Even the serious risk of escalating to World War III against Moscow, which has the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet, has deterred them only imperfectly.

Against this backdrop, you really cannot miss the real meaning of Washington’s latest messages regarding Cuba. First, conveniently anonymous ‘intelligence’ sources have told us that Cuba has around 300 drones and plans to use them for attacks on American targets, including the US base (and legal black hole as well as de facto concentration camp) at Guantanamo Bay and even Florida, that is, the American mainland. For good measure, Russia, China, and Iran have also been fingered as accomplices of those dastardly Cubans.

The cut-out for this particularly ridiculous piece of psychological warfare has been Axios, a publication that has recently been at the center of a scandal involving insider trading manipulations around US President Donald Trump and his assault on Iran as well as reporter Barak Ravid and his long background in Israeli intelligence.

That does not mean that America will necessarily make good on this threat-by-false-accusation. The Cuban authorities have, of course, denied the American smears. They have also accused Washington of building a “fraudulent case” for a military attack. And they have the facts on their side: The US assaults on Iraq (2003) and now Venezuela and Iran have demonstrated that, with Washington, brazen lies (WMDs, a nuclear weapons program, drug trafficking, a swarm of drones ready to pounce on Key West) may very well be the propaganda barrage preceding a full-scale military assault.

Or perhaps another Venezuela-style operation? The propaganda groundwork for that option has been laid with the second American threat regarding Cuba: With the US Justice Department charging former Cuban President Raul Castro over the downing of two small planes more than a quarter of a century ago, Washington has not only – in the words of the New York Times – added yet another “extraordinary escalation.” The Trump regime has also issued a threat to do to Cuba, in essence, what it did to Venezuela (where, incidentally, scores of Cuban security personnel were massacred), where it kidnapped President Nicolas Maduro.

The Caribbean island is, of course, a long-standing victim – even longer than Iran, which is a high bar – of fierce American economic warfare. Initially it came with extraordinarily crass assassination and proxy invasion attempts, too. But America’s main and most devastating weapon against Cuba has been decades of unrelenting economic warfare, recently escalating into a full-blown siege, depleting the country’s fuel and other reserves and subjecting its population to a brutal attack by deprivation and disruption.

You may disagree with the Cuban foreign minister categorizing this US attack-by-blockade a “genocide.” But it is certainly a great crime: The deliberate creation of a deep humanitarian crisis for purposes of regime change. Indeed, the US leadership has been perfectly explicit about this aim: Even its offer of “assistance” – made by no one other than the head of the CIA – is nothing but blackmail. It’s real, transparent meaning is: We are strangling your people and we will keep doing so, and only if you finally submit to us will we stop.

The reason for so much American cruelty and violence is, actually, not complicated: Since the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the island’s big, overbearing neighbor has never forgiven it for no longer submitting to US control. Forget the silly ideological cant about freedom (which doesn’t exist in the US), democracy (ditto), and human rights (ask ICE). Even the endless, greedy American and Cuban-exile demands for material restitution stemming from long overdue nationalizations after the revolution and the obsessive American animus against socialism (by which Washington means anything to the left of pure Robber Baron/Tech Titan capitalism) are not the key issues.

You may feel, by the way, about the current Cuban government – not “regime” – whatever you wish. Under no conceivable circumstances does the US have the right to inflict so much violence and pain on any country that has not attacked it. Debates about the Cuban economic system are also beside the point: We simply cannot know whether it would work or not or sort-of, since the Cuban economy has always been disrupted by massive US interference. And in any case, the existence of economic problems does not justify being invaded and regime-changed. If it did, the US with its exploding debt, manufacturing-base decline, and cost-of-living crisis would be a legitimate target, too.

Cuba may be able to resist this latest American attack or not. Its president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, has warned Washington that an invasion attempt would encounter massive resistance and produce a “blood bath.” Venezuela has fallen to American lawlessness and violence; Iran has not. Cuba’s fate remains open.

French authorities are investigating an alleged election meddling plot by an Israeli “information warfare” company targeting candidates critical of the Jewish state. The scheme – involving fake profiles and AI nudes – follows a familiar pattern.

Multiple intelligence agencies in France are investigating the work of BlackCore, an Israeli firm that allegedly carried out an interference campaign against three left-wing mayoral candidates in Marseille, Toulouse, and Roubaix in March, Reuters reported last on May 13.

All three candidates are members of France Unbowed (LFI), the party of left-wing presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon. In Marseille, Sebastien Delogu was accused of rape by a pseudonymous blogger named ‘Sophie’, while bogus Facebook profiles and QR code stickers plastered around the city boosted the story. AI-generated ‘nudes’ of Delogu were also circulated online, along with captions mocking his support for Palestine.

Bot-boosted profiles posted disparaging stories about Francois Piquemal in Toulouse and David Guiraud in Roubaix. One page accused Piquemal of pedophilia, while another site portrayed LFI as the party of “Sharia law” and “a more Muslim France.” Presented as a “voting guide” for Muslims compiled by an Islamist group, the site was aimed at turning non-Muslim voters against the party, Le Monde reported.

An investigation by France’s Liberation newspaper and Israel’s Haaretz revealed on May 18 that BlackCore was behind the influence operation. According to Reuters, French authorities are now trying to establish who hired the company to intervene in the elections.

Doesn’t BlackCore sound familiar?

According to its website, Black Cube specializes in finding “hard evidence otherwise impossible to obtain” in support of “high-profile litigations, arbitrations, and white-collar crime cases.”

Earlier this year, Black Cube interfered in elections in Cyprus and Slovenia, covertly recording associates of both countries’ leaders discussing petty corruption within their parties. Black Cube’s Cypriot operation led to multiple resignations and tarnished President Nikos Christodoulides’ reputation as Cyprus assumed the EU’s rotating presidency in January. Two months later in Slovenia, the company almost succeeded in tipping parliamentary elections against Prime Minister Robert Golob’s ‘Svoboda’ party, which held onto power by a mere 0.67% of the vote.

Black Cube has admitted to working against Christodoulides, and has not denied interfering in Slovenia. The company makes no attempt to hide the fact that its staff are “veterans of Israel’s elite intelligence units,” with its website boasting that these veterans are equipped to “craft unique, complex scenarios to capture evidence.”

Like many private detective firms, Black Cube operates in a quasi-legal gray area, with laws on covert recording varying from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In Slovenia and Cyprus, however, the EU’s GDPR regulations prohibit such recording.

BlackCore’s sinister methods

BlackCore, however, trades in fakery and manipulation. On its website – which was pulled offline after Reuters published its story – the company advertises itself as “an elite influence, cyber, and technology company built for the modern era of information warfare and digital competition.”

“We empower governments and political campaigns with cutting-edge strategies, advanced tools, and robust security to shape narratives, safeguard digital domains, and gain a decisive edge,” the description continues.

BlackCore claims that it has been active for 15 years, has more than 50 clients, and has a “100% success rate,” though how this success is judged is unclear. Unlike Black Cube, BlackCore makes no mention of its connections to Israel.

A trail leading to Tel Aviv

Haaretz’s investigation revealed that there is no legal entity called BlackCore registered in any country in the world, and that BlackCore’s website was registered anonymously last August, calling the company’s supposed 15-year history into question. Haaretz did discover that BlackCore shares its web infrastructure with Galacticos and SNI, two Israeli firms, owned by tech entrepreneur Guy Geyor and lawyer Doron Afik.

Both men denied any knowledge of BlackCore, but further investigation revealed that some of the tools used by BlackCore to generate fake social media accounts were created by Galacticos and hosted on an SNI server in London.

According to Haaretz, Geyor’s and Afik’s companies employ “people with a background in intelligence,” including at least one Galacticos employee who served in Unit 8200 – a clandestine intelligence unit within the IDF.

The investigation also tied BlackCore to Yigal Unna, the former head of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate. Speaking to Liberation, Unna claimed that he was approached by Afik about potentially working for an “OSINT [open-source intelligence] and social network startup focused on protecting commercial brands,” but declined the offer.

Israel’s interests

Additionally, Netanyahu’s government has tied export licenses for Israeli spyware – including NSO Group’s ‘Pegasus’ malware, Cytrox’s ‘Predator’, and a similar program developed by Paragon Solutions – to the end user’s support for Israel.

In France, BlackCore targeted LFI, a party highly critical of Israel. LFI considers Israel’s war in Gaza to be a “genocide,” and party leader Jean-Luc Melenchon has condemned President Emmanuel Macron for slow-walking Paris’ recognition of the Palestinian state, declaring last July that “we want victory over Netanyahu immediately, meaning the end of genocide and the punishment of war criminals and their accomplices.”

Melenchon, who is a contender to reach the second round of next year’s presidential election, has called on Macron to pass tougher legislation against foreign election interference. “We expect the upcoming election to be the scene of attacks of this kind,” his party said in a statement, with Melenchon adding “we need to be protected, and if we are, all the other [parties] will be too.”

Did BlackCore achieve its objectives?

Delogu withdrew from the second round of the Marseille election to avoid splitting the left-wing vote. Guiraud won in Roubaix, but Piquemal – who was arrested alongside Greta Thunberg aboard the Gaza ‘Freedom Flotilla’ last year – narrowly lost the Toulouse mayoral contest in a runoff vote. He has since filed to have the result annulled, and is waiting on a court decision.

These mixed results have come at a heavy price for BlackCore, which is now the subject of a criminal investigation. Speaking in parliament on May 20, French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez confirmed that the government will take “legal action” against the firm.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry denies any knowledge of BlackCore or its work. It remains unclear who hired Black Cube in Cyprus and BlackCore in France.

The UK has had eight Prime Minister’s this century, with most serving after Brexit and for an average of two years. Sir Keir Starmer is deeply unpopular and the public (and some in his party) want him to resign.

This is not the first challenge to Starmer, but Labour’s slump in recent local elections – to English councils, the Scottish Parliament, and Welsh Assembly – is especially bruising.

For the first time ever, Labour lost control of Wales, one of its traditional heartlands. Despite finishing joint second with Reform in Scotland, it was Labour’s worst ever result north of the border. In England, Labour lost almost 1,500 councillors in different parts of the country to parties on the left and right.

Calls for Starmer to resign intensified ahead The King’s Speech to reopen Parliament. A relatively unknown MP, Sarah West, offered to challenge Starmer if nobody else would. She ultimately backed down from her pledge, but around 90 of Labour’s 400 MPs called for Starmer to go or begin a leadership transition. Yet over 100 MPs publicly backed him.

So far, no leadership challenge has materialized, but potential rivals have made their moves. Wes Streeting has resigned as health secretary and, having no support to challenge Starmer himself, is now backing Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Manchester, who is planning to run for Parliament again. One MP voluntarily has given up his seat for Burnham to do so. More quietly, former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has also hinted at a challenge, and Labour’s left are urging former party leader Ed Miliband to run.

But why is Starmer surviving and why do Britons feel the urge to keep replacing their leaders? A few factors are important here.

First, there is no obvious alternative to Starmer within the Labour Party. Andy Burnham would lose an election to Parliament. Wes Streeting, on the party’s right, would lose a membership vote. Angela Rayner is not popular with the broader British electorate, and Ed Miliband has already lost an election as leader (with the British press incredibly harsh on him and his family).

The Green Party, challenging Labour from the left, underperformed in these elections. Much of that had to do with recent antisemitism within the party and its controversial leader, Zack Polanski. Although the separatists won in Scotland and Wales, it was not due to any appetite for independence. The SNP remains deeply unpopular in Scotland (perhaps more so than Labour), but the unionist party votes were very split.

On the right, Reform also underperformed and appear to have peaked. Whilst Reform won the most councillors and came second in Wales, its vote share was down from last year’s elections. Also, increased voter turnout seemed to work against Nigel Farage’s party. Reform only won in places that voted for Brexit and is yet to attract any new voters. In other parts of the country, their vote never reached above 10%.

Translated to a General Election, Reform would fall far short of a majority. Some estimates show that it would need to increase its vote share by 22 points to win any sort of governing majority. For that to happen, either the Conservatives or Labour (or both) would have to see their vote collapse, or voter fragmentation would need to be rife across the board.

Thus far, the Conservative vote has proven remarkably stubborn, as has the Liberal Democrats’. Labour is also clinging onto around 20% of the electorate, depending on the poll. As for the Greens, they did well primarily among students – a small slice of the electorate – and urban-based women.

That brings us to Britons themselves. Why, indeed, are Britons so impatient with their leadership this century? Their appetite for regicide is greatly misunderstood.

It is worth remembering that a hundred years ago, from 1900-1926, Britain also went through eight Prime Ministers in quick succession (from three different parties). There are some parallels, even though the times were very different. As Winston Churchill famously quipped about the early 20th century, “the market was free, slaves were free, and conscience was free. But hunger, squalor, and the cold were also free, and people wanted something more than liberty.”

In Britain today, people want something more. After the 2008 financial crash, austerity, Brexit, COVID-19, and recent cost of living crisis, the British public is tired and impatient.

But unlike then, there is no new intellectual thinking to tackle today’s economic problems (mostly generated by Brexit). Instead, there are demagogues and populists, shouting their empty promises and muddying the waters.

Starmer might be unpopular, but the sad truth is anyone else would be. Britain is close to going ungovernable because the population are too impatient. They are desperate to see government working in earnest, as Starmer promised it would.

Britain needs to have an honest conversation with itself about where it is going and how it will get there. To unite the kingdom, Britons need something more than the Football World Cup and the Amandaland TV show.

This article was forst published by Russia in Global Affairs.

The Taiwanese government has said it was unaware of any “adjustments” to US arms sales after a senior US official said they had been put on hold over the attack on Iran and Washington’s effort to replenish domestic stockpiles.

Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump said arms deliveries to Taiwan were “a very good negotiating chip” to deal with China, appearing to contradict Washington’s decades-old policy that legally binds it to provide the island nation with weaponry. At the time, Taiwan tried to downplay Trump’s remarks, with President Lai Ching-te hailing the sales as “the most important deterrent” against a potential conflict in the region. Beijing has long condemned close US military cooperation with the island, regarding it as a violation of the One-China policy and as meddling in its internal affairs.

The “pause” in arms sales was confirmed by US Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao during a Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing on Thursday. Asked about future sales to the island, Cao pointed at the US-Israeli attack on Iran and the need to make sure “we have everything” with the foreign arms sales set to “continue when the administration ⁠deems necessary.”

The US-Israeli attack on Iran is believed to have put a heavy strain on Washington’s stockpiles of weapons. Despite repeated assurances by top US officials that the Pentagon still has all the munitions it needs should the conflict reignite, independent assessments suggest Washington has used alarmingly high volumes of expensive sophisticated weapons, including interceptor missiles and high-precision munitions.

The Pentagon has reportedly warned its European allies, including the UK, Poland, Lithuania, and Estonia, to expect long delays in weaponry deliveries. According to a recent report by the Financial Times, the delays will affect munitions for mobile rocket launchers, as well as anti-aircraft systems. At the time, the Pentagon said it has been “carefully evaluating new requests for equipment from partners as well as existing arms transfer cases to ensure alignment with operational needs.”

At least ten people have been killed and 38 others injured in an overnight Ukrainian drone attack on a school in Starobelsk, about 90 km north of Lugansk, according to Russian officials. Fourteen children were among the injured and eight people were hospitalized, including three in serious condition.

On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the attack as a “monstrous crime,” while Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova condemned Kiev’s Western backers for being “brutally silent” on the tragedy.

Ukraine has routinely launched attacks on civilians and critical infrastructure, including using a double-tap method, hitting the same area again in a bid to increase casualties after first responders arrive, according to Russian officials. Moscow has described the strikes as acts of terrorism.

Big picture: How many Russian civilians have died in Ukrainian attacks?

Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Ukrainian attacks had killed more than 8,000 civilians as of April 2026 and injured almost 20,000 more, according to Rodion Miroshnik, who leads the Russian Foreign Ministry mission that tracks alleged Ukrainian war crimes.

In May, he said at least 100 civilians were killed and 667 injured in April alone.

Three civilians were killed and more than a dozen injured in a massive Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow and the surrounding region, with several buildings significantly damaged, according to the local authorities.

On April 29, three women were killed and eight people injured when a Ukrainian drone struck a passenger bus not far from the border village of Shebekino – which has become one of the most targeted settlements in the country over the past months.

Two days before, four civilians were killed and six others injured in attacks across Belgorod Region, according to the local authorities.

On April 25, three people were killed and two others injured in Solontsy, a village in the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), local officials said, adding that at least four homes had been destroyed.

One day later, three young people were killed in Bulgakovka, a small LPR village north of Severodonetsk, after a Ukrainian drone struck them near a house, regional head Leonid Pasechnik said. He identified the victims as two 18-year-old men and a 28-year-old woman.

Eight medical workers were killed and ten people injured when Ukrainian forces struck a medical facility in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), officials in Moscow said, adding that the attack was aimed at a premises housing more than 130 patients and about 50 medical personnel.

Four people, including a child, were killed in Ukrainian attacks on the DPR settlement of Gornyak, around 20 km from Donetsk, regional head Denis Pushilin said, adding that the strike had wiped out an entire family. Twelve civilians, including a teenager, were injured across the region that day, he added.

At least 24 people were killed and more than 50 injured when Ukrainian drones struck a cafe and hotel during New Year’s Eve celebrations in Khorly, a Black Sea village in Kherson Region. The local authorities said the venue was scouted by a reconnaissance UAV and later hit by three drones, with one apparently carrying an incendiary mixture.

RT has gained rare access to Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in the southern Iranian city of Minab, more than 80 days after US and Israeli strikes left the site in ruins and killed more than 170 people, most of them children.

The US has refused to accept responsibility for the strike, with the Pentagon again declining this week to acknowledge involvement despite investigations by multiple media outlets and a reportedly internal military probe concluding the school was likely hit by a US-made missile.

US officials initially offered conflicting explanations, while President Donald Trump at one point suggested the attack had been “done by Iran,” drawing accusations of “endless stalling” over what critics describe as “obvious” American culpability.

RT correspondent Saman Kojouri has visited the ruins of what was once an ordinary school but now lies in rubble, with part of the site turned into a memorial exhibition displaying belongings recovered from the debris. He spoke to families of victims and surviving teachers gathered at the school to demand accountability and ask why children became targets.

Here is the full report.

The African Union (AU) has agreed with India to postpone a planned summit in New Delhi, citing the Ebola outbreak, which has killed more than 160 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and one person in neighboring Uganda.

The fourth India-Africa Forum Summit had been scheduled to take place from May 28 to 31. In a joint statement on Thursday, India and the AU said they had exchanged views on the “evolving health situation” in parts of the continent and agreed that it would be “advisable” to hold the summit at a later date.

“New dates for the summit and its associated meetings will be finalized through mutual consultations and communicated in due course,” according to the statement.

India also expressed its “solidarity with the peoples and governments of Africa” and said it is ready to support efforts by the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) to address the Ebola crisis, “in line with the shared commitment to an Africa-led response.”

The summit, inaugurated in New Delhi in 2008, would have been convened this year for the first time in more than a decade. The last editions were held in 2011 and 2015. It is the main platform for high-level engagement between India and African states, focusing on trade, development cooperation, capacity building, technology, security, and South-South cooperation.

The authorities in DR Congo declared the outbreak on May 15, its 17th recorded Ebola epidemic since the virus was first identified in the country in 1976. So far, officials have reported more than 670 suspected cases and over 160 suspected deaths, mainly in Ituri and North Kivu, with new cases also emerging in South Kivu, where M23 rebels have seized territory during renewed fighting with the government.

On Friday, UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher announced up to $60 million in emergency funding to accelerate the Ebola response in DR Congo and “the wider region.”

The recent summit between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping sent another wave of panic through Western political and media circles. On both sides of the Atlantic, the growing partnership between Russia and China is habitually described as an authoritarian alliance plotting against the ‘free world’. Headlines drip with warnings about a new anti-Western axis. Think tanks speak in apocalyptic tones. Liberal commentators invoke a new Cold War.

But beneath the hysteria lies a simpler reality: The old world order is losing its grip.

The Russia-China partnership is not a crusade against the West. It is a revolt against unipolarity – against the idea that one civilization, one ideology, and one political model should dominate the entire planet indefinitely. Moscow and Beijing are not trying to destroy the international system. They are building alternatives to an order monopolized for decades by Western liberal power.

This distinction matters enormously. What Putin and Xi are advancing is the idea of a multipolar world: A world where civilizations, nations, and cultures can pursue their own paths without ideological supervision from Washington, Brussels, or transnational liberal institutions. Far from threatening Europe and America, this transformation could ultimately save them from their own political and civilizational exhaustion.

The cracks in the liberal world order

When Russia and China first issued a joint declaration on multipolarity in 1997, few in the West took it seriously. At the time, the Soviet Union was gone, American power appeared unstoppable, and liberal globalization seemed destined to swallow the planet whole. Francis Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ thesis captured the mood of the age. Borders were supposed to fade. National sovereignty was increasingly portrayed as obsolete. Globalization accelerated while NATO marched steadily eastward.

Yet Russia and China already sensed the weakness hidden beneath the triumphalism. Even at the height of American dominance, both powers understood that a world organized around a single ideological center would eventually generate instability, arrogance, overreach, and backlash. And that is precisely what happened. Endless wars, regime-change interventions, financial crises, deindustrialization, mass migration, censorship, social fragmentation, and cultural nihilism slowly eroded confidence in the liberal model itself.

Nearly 30 years later, Putin and Xi have returned to the same historical idea – only now from a position of far greater strength.

At their latest summit, the two leaders adopted a new joint declaration on the multipolar world order and the reform of global governance – a manifesto on sovereignty, shared security, openness, intercivilizational dialogue, and democratization of international relations. More profoundly, it rejects the belief that liberal modernity represents the only legitimate destiny for mankind.

In many ways, the Putin-Xi vision resembles a genuinely Schmittean Pluriversum: A world of sovereign civilizational states rather than a homogenized global marketplace administered by technocrats, NGOs, and supranational bureaucracies. In this world, nations are not expected to abandon their traditions, religions, or historical identities in the name of abstract universalism. Diversity among civilizations is treated not as a problem to be erased but as a reality to be respected.

Particularly striking was the declaration’s recognition of the constitutive and positive role of religion in civilizational development and renewal. At a time when many Western institutions treat Christianity and religious tradition as embarrassing remnants of the past, Russia and China acknowledged spiritual inheritance and cultural continuity as pillars of social cohesion and meaningful intercivilizational dialogue.

That message will resonate far beyond the two countries. Across Europe and the US, millions increasingly feel alienated by borderless economics, bureaucratic managerialism, cultural deracination, collapsing communities, demographic anxiety, and the aggressive moralism of liberal ideology. They are told that national identity is dangerous, tradition oppressive, religion backward, and sovereignty obsolete. Yet the more the liberal order promises liberation, the more fragmented and rootless Western societies become. Putin and Xi are speaking into that vacuum.

Sanctions, sovereignty, survival

The Ukraine conflict accelerated historical processes already underway. Western governments unleashed unprecedented sanctions against Russia, expecting economic collapse and political destabilization. Instead, Russia adapted. Its economy diversified, redirected eastward, and survived the largest sanctions regime in modern history.

China played a decisive role in that outcome, providing for trade expansion, deeper financial cooperation, increased technology exchanges, and new logistical and commercial corridors. Predictably, Western commentators portrayed this as Beijing enabling ‘Russian aggression’. But China’s calculations are far more strategic.

Chinese leaders understand that sanctions have evolved from exceptional measure into instruments of systemic coercion. Asset seizures, financial exclusion, and economic warfare create precedents that can eventually be used against any state unwilling to submit to Western political demands. And so, Beijing’s support for alternative financial systems doesn’t only help Russia – it is a defense of sovereign autonomy in an increasingly weaponized global economy.

Ironically, it’s liberal globalization itself that created this fragmentation. The same elites who once preached open markets and global integration now advocate censorship, sanctions, decoupling, industrial protectionism, and ideological conformity. The supposedly universal liberal order has revealed itself to be highly selective, punitive, and openly political.

Russia and China simply adjusted to reality faster than the West did.

The Eurasian rebalance

The geopolitical importance of Sino-Russian relations cannot be overstated. Together, Russia and China dominate the strategic core of Eurasia – the largest landmass on Earth. Their shared border stretches farther than any other in the world. Both are nuclear powers, permanent members of the UN Security Council, and civilizations with deep historical memory.

Hostility between the two would destabilize the entire continent. Partnership, on the other hand, creates a new Eurasian equilibrium. What many Western analysts still fail to grasp is that this partnership is not historically abnormal. If anything, it corrects decades of imbalance.

After the Cold War, Russia looked overwhelmingly toward Europe and the US. China became economically intertwined with America in what came to be known as ‘Chimerica’. Even today, despite rising tensions, China’s economic relationship with the US remains far larger than its trade with Russia.

The real geopolitical paradox here is that Western elites simultaneously pursued confrontation with both powers while expecting them not to align strategically. By opening a two-front struggle against Russia and China at the same time, the liberal establishment accelerated precisely the Eurasian partnership it feared most.

Europe has suffered the greatest consequences. As European governments severed ties with Moscow, China gained privileged access to Russian energy, raw materials, agricultural exports, and Arctic trade routes. Europe voluntarily surrendered strategic advantages while Beijing stepped into the vacuum. In many respects, Europe is financing its own geopolitical marginalization.

But this process is not irreversible. Future European leaders may eventually realize that permanent confrontation with Russia serves neither Europe’s prosperity nor its security. A stable Eurasian balance built on cooperation rather than ideological crusades would benefit the entire continent.

The greatest misunderstanding surrounding multipolarity is the belief that it means the destruction of the West. In reality, it may represent the only path toward Western renewal.

For decades, liberal globalism hollowed out the very foundations of Western civilization. National sovereignty gave way to supranational bureaucracy. Manufacturing disappeared. Borders weakened. Communities fragmented. Endless foreign interventions drained public trust. Cultural atomization replaced social solidarity.

Under liberal universalism, nations themselves were expected to dissolve into a borderless order.

Ordinary Europeans and Americans increasingly reject that vision. They want continuity, identity, security, tradition, and meaningful sovereignty – the same principles Moscow and Beijing now defend openly on the world stage.

This does not mean the West must imitate Russia or China. That kind of uniformity would go against the very idea of multipolarity. Civilizations should be free to develop according to their own histories, traditions, and moral frameworks without external ideological enforcement.

Russia, China, Europe, and even the US are not natural civilizational enemies. In many respects, they share a common adversary: Liberal globalism and the transnational class that weakened sovereignty, eroded traditions, shattered social cohesion, and subordinated nations to abstract universalist dogmas.

The Putin-Xi summit, therefore, symbolized the accelerating transition from a world organized around ideological uniformity to one grounded in civilizational plurality.

Western elites may resist this transformation for years to come. But history rarely reverses course. The unipolar era is ending, and it wasn’t Russia or China that destroyed it. Liberal globalism exhausted itself from within.

A balanced world of sovereign civilizations, distinct cultures, and multiple centers of power does not threaten Europe or America. It may offer the only viable path toward restoring their own civilizational confidence.

Protesters have set fire to an Ebola treatment center in conflict-torn eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo after being prevented from taking the body of a suspected victim for burial, according to officials.

The incident occurred on Thursday in Rwampara, Ituri Province, one of the epicenters of the latest outbreak. Footage shared on social media and purportedly filmed at the scene show flames and smoke rising from the facility, while gunshots can be heard nearby.

A witness told AP that local youths became angry after trying to retrieve the body of a friend believed to have died of Ebola. Police intervened but reportedly failed to defuse the situation, the witness said. An AP journalist reported seeing people enter the center and setting objects on fire, along with what appeared to be the body of at least one suspected Ebola victim. Aid workers fled in vehicles.

Government spokesman Patrick Muyaya said six patients who were reported missing during the unrest were found and are receiving care at Rwampara General Referral Hospital.

The authorities say the bodies of suspected Ebola victims must be handled under strict burial protocols because they can remain highly infectious.

🇨🇩 In the DR Congo they set fire to the center for treating Ebola patients.

The fire was started by relatives of one of the patients who died from the virus after they were forbidden to take his body, CNN reports. pic.twitter.com/hsJrFqXpWP

— RusWar (@ruswar) May 22, 2026

The DR Congo declared the outbreak on May 15, its 17th recorded Ebola epidemic since the virus was first identified in the country in 1976. Officials have reported 160 suspected deaths and 671 suspected cases, mainly in Ituri and North Kivu, with new cases also emerging in South Kivu.

The World Health Organization declared the Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak in DR Congo and Uganda a public health emergency of international concern on May 17, but said it does not meet the criteria for a pandemic emergency. The strain has no licensed vaccine or specific treatment, although early supportive care can improve survival.

A Ukrainian drone attack on a school in Russia’s Lugansk People’s Republic that caused a dormitory to collapse, killing and injuring people, was a “monstrous crime,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Peskov was commenting on an overnight strike in the town of Starobelsk that killed at least six people and injured 40 others, including 14 minors, according to the regional Health Ministry.

“As a monstrous crime, this is yet another crime of the Kiev regime. It was a strike on an educational facility where children and young people were present,” he said on Friday, adding that those responsible for the attack must be punished.

Commenting on the attack, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Kiev is deliberately targeting children while the West remains “brutally silent.”

“Terrorists are deliberately targeting children and taking pleasure in it,” Zakharova said, recalling the Nazi atrocities against schoolchildren in Kerch during World War II.

She added that Western countries remain silent while continuing to listen to Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s “fake claims” about children taken by Russia.

The Russian Investigative Committee said four Ukrainian drones were used in the raid, which the agency designated as a terrorist attack.

Somalia has condemned Somaliland’s decision to open an embassy in Israel, calling the move illegal and a threat to the country’s sovereignty. 

In a statement published on Wednesday, Mogadishu said any unilateral actions by the self-declared breakaway region “carry no legal effect whatsoever, and constitutes an unacceptable provocation to the Arab and Islamic worlds.” 

“Somalia strongly condemns the move by the northern west region of Somalia to inaugurate a so-called embassy in Jerusalem,” the Foreign Ministry stated.

In turn, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar welcomed the development, calling it “another significant step in strengthening relations between our countries and nations,” as quoted by The Times of Israel.

Somalia’s current political system developed after the collapse of the central government in 1991, when regions began forming their own administrations. In the northwest, Somaliland declared independence in 1991 and operates with its own institutions, though it is not recognized internationally. In the northeast, Puntland declared itself an autonomous region in 1998. Unlike Somaliland, Puntland seeks to be part of a federal Somalia and does not seek full independence.

Last December, Israel became the only country, and still remains such, to have formally recognized Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state.

In February, Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi appointed Mohamed Hagi as the territory’s representative to Israel. Two months later, Israel named Michael Lotem, a former ambassador to Kenya, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan, as its non-resident envoy to Somaliland.

The African Union also criticized Israel’s decision to appoint an envoy to Somaliland, reaffirming its support for Somalia’s unity and internationally recognized borders.

Fears of a US military operation against Cuba – or an outright invasion – have escalated after Washington indicted former Cuban leader Raul Castro, as the US continues to choke the island with an economic blockade.

What’s going on around Cuba?

On Wednesday, the Justice Department accused the 94-year-old Castro of ordering the 1996 shootdown of two American planes off Cuba’s coast, which killed four anti-Communist activists.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who has never concealed his aspirations for regime change, released a Spanish-language address to the island’s residents, advocating for a “new Cuba.” US President Donald Trump has echoed the sentiment, calling Cuba a “failed nation” and suggesting Washington could “take [it] over.”

How is Cuba responding?

Cuba has pushed back hard against the US pressure. President Miguel Diaz-Canel condemned the Castro indictment as a political ploy meant to “justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba,” and accused Washington of manipulating the history of the 1996 shootdown.

Who stands with Cuba and who doesn’t?

Brazil

Brazil has been one of the region’s most active voices in support of Cuba. In March, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva warned that Latin America faces the threat of a return to colonial rule.

“It’s not possible for someone to think that they own other countries. What are they doing with Cuba now? What did they do with Venezuela? Is that democratic?” he said, without directly naming Trump.

However, after meeting Trump in early May, Lula told reporters he believed the US was not planning to invade Cuba, and that Havana wants dialogue with Washington to end the oil embargo, which has led to unprecedented blackouts across the island.

Venezuela

Venezuela, traditionally one of Cuba’s staunchest partners and oil suppliers, responded with caution, mindful that in January Trump ordered an operation to kidnap President Nicolas Maduro. 

Still, the ALBA alliance – which groups Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and others – expressed “deep concern and firm rejection” of US threats to use force against Cuba, warning of growing tensions that jeopardize peace and stability across the region.

Mexico

Mexico – another close partner of Cuba – has been forced to walk a tightrope in the face of potential US retaliation. President Claudia Sheinbaum has pledged to continue providing humanitarian aid to Cuba, calling the US sanctions “unfair to the Cuban people” while describing Trump’s blockade “unjust” and insisting that her country had “every right to send fuel, whether for humanitarian or commercial reasons.”

Colombia

Colombian President Gustavo Petro clearly denounced the US policy, stressing that “a military aggression against Cuba… is a military aggression against Latin America.”

Former President Ernesto Samper Pizano issued a similar warning, saying that “if the United States gets involved in bullying Cuba, it will be mistreating all of Latin America. It’s time to stop the hegemonic excesses of Trumpism in the world.”

Nicaragua

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, himself under US sanctions targeting his sons and senior officials, has delivered some of the sharpest pushbacks. In late April, he labelled Trump “mentally deranged,” accusing Washington of planning to “dismantle” Cuba while recalling Washington’s operation to kidnap Maduro.

“The one in charge in the United States doesn’t care about what international organizations say, or even about US laws, or the role of his country’s Congress and Senate,” he said.

Argentina

Argentinian President Javier Milei – who is arguably Trump’s most ardent backer among Latin American leaders – expressed hope earlier this month that Cuba and Venezuela would soon achieve the “American Dream.”

Milei’s government has embraced a hard line towards Cuba, refusing to appoint an ambassador to Havana, with the president praising the US abduction of Maduro – whom he labeled “a terrorist and a drug-trafficker.”

The bottom line

Latin America’s response to the US crackdown on Cuba has mostly been a message of solidarity though short on practical measures that risk Washington’s wrath, including economic and political sanctions.

Still, some of the region’s leaders have made it abundantly clear: they view US pressure not as an attack on Cuba – but an attack on the whole of Latin America.

Ukrainian drone flyovers over NATO members’ territory could lead to uncontrollable military escalation if Western leaders continue to refuse direct dialogue with Russia, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has warned.

Since mid-March, Ukrainian long-range drones have repeatedly crossed Baltic and Nordic airspace, with several NATO states reporting UAV crashes on their territory. Moscow has accused NATO members of quietly allowing Ukraine to use their airspace to strike Russian targets, particularly energy facilities in Leningrad Region.

The latest major incident occurred in Latvia, where failure to intercept two drones that hit an oil storage facility on May 7 triggered the defense minister’s resignation and led to the collapse of Prime Minister Evika Silina’s government.

Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Fico suggested that Ukrainian drone operations could trigger a wider conflict, though he stopped short of explicitly accusing Kiev of planning a false-flag attack.

Fico warned that even a relatively small incident could escalate rapidly if communication between Russia and Western leaders remains frozen.

“What are we going to do when such a drone somewhere is a provocation and not just coincidence? A target is hit, then someone says NATO member state attacked and now let’s all go fight. That will be a terrible situation,” he said.

The Slovak leader also criticized what he called the “endless hypocrisy” of the West toward diplomatic contacts with Moscow, saying politicians publicly condemn his meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin while privately asking for updates about them.

Fico has long opposed Brussels’ stance toward Moscow, including military aid to Kiev and sanctions on Russia. He was the only EU leader to attend this year’s Victory Day commemorations in Moscow, where he warned against a “new Iron Curtain” and called for renewed dialogue.

Fico’s position on Ukrainian drone flyovers sharply contrasts with that of some NATO partners. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said on Thursday that NATO countries should actually help Kiev “direct” drone attacks “in the right directions.” Former Latvian Defense Minister Andris Spruds defended the operations, saying Ukraine “has every right to defend itself,” after a similar remark by Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna.

Ukraine has rolled out full state honors for the remains of a World War II Nazi collaborator who has been repatriated from Luxembourg and will be buried in Kiev’s main military cemetery. The controversial exhumation comes around a month after Vladimir Zelensky announced plans to establish a “pantheon of outstanding Ukrainians.”

According to the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, the coffins containing Andrey Melnik, the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnik, entered the country in a solemn ceremony – which involved a national choir and embroidered flags – in Uzhgorod, western Ukraine.

It was attended by Irina Vereshchuk, the deputy head of Zelensky’s office, as well as local officials, members of the clergy, and veterans.

The remains will be sent to Kiev, where they will be reburied at the National War Memorial Cemetery on Sunday – with more pomp and circumstance planned.

Zelensky said on Tuesday that Ukraine has a “moral duty” to bring home those who “defended the idea of independence,” adding that preparations are underway for the exhumation of other figures, including OUN founder Evgeny Konovalets.

Who was Melnik?

Andrey Melnik co-founded the OUN in 1929 and became the leader in 1938, following the assassination of its chief, Evgeny Konovalets, by Soviet intelligence. Around the same time, Melnik was recruited by Nazi Germany’s military intelligence service (the Abwehr) for espionage and sabotage operations ahead of the planned invasion of the Soviet Union, according to Nuremberg trial documents.

After the invasion of the Soviet Union, Melnik’s relations with the Nazis soured as Germany was in no hurry to give any semblance of independence to Ukraine. Melnik was placed under house arrest in mid-1941, then arrested by the Gestapo in January 1944 and held in Sachsenhausen concentration camp before being released that October as German forces retreated.

The OUN leader was not tried in the Nuremberg tribunal as it was mainly focused on major Nazi war criminals. The Western allies refused to hand him over to the Soviet Union for trial, arguing that he himself was a Nazi victim due to his time in a concentration camp.

How did Russia respond?

On Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Ukraine is seeking to assemble “Nazi collaborationists and human-hating scum” from around the world to glorify them.

Zakharova asked whether Zelensky forgot to mention that those being honored “killed people on ethnic grounds,” and predicted that Bandera – whose faction was linked to the mass killing of tens of thousands of Poles in Volyn – would be next in line for repatriation.

She suggested that Kiev is trying to divert the public’s attention away from growing war fatigue, the conscription campaign, and corruption scandals involving Zelensky’s inner circle.

At least 21 people have been killed in what President Vladimir Putin has described as a deliberate Ukrainian “terrorist attack” on a school dormitory in Russia’s Lugansk People’s Republic.

The attack on the main academic building and dormitory of the Starobelsk Professional College was carried out in three waves, with 16 drones launched at the same target by the “neo-Nazi regime in Kiev,” according to Putin.

Governor Leonid Pasechnik said some 86 students were inside the facility at the time of the attack, staged overnight from Thursday to Friday. The incident prompted a large-scale search and rescue effort, with first responders digging through the rubble for nearly two days. The operation was declared concluded late on Saturday, when the bodies of all the victims were recovered from the partially collapsed building.

Key developments:

• Nebenzia accused Western diplomats of “turning a blind eye” to the crimes of the “neo-Nazi Kiev regime,” blasting their statements as “mockery” and “dancing on the bones” of the dead children.

• Moscow expects the international community to condemn the Ukrainian attack, which “cannot be described as anything other than a war crime,” Russia’s newly appointed human rights commissioner, Yana Lantratova, told RT.

• President Putin said there were no military facilities near the college dormitory, adding that Russia “cannot limit itself to statements in such a situation” and ordering the Defense Ministry to present options for a response.

• Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the Western media of ignoring the tragedy, saying the BBC refused to travel to Starobelsk, which she called “proof of the West’s deliberate lies.” She also claimed that Japanese journalists were barred from covering the incident.

• Zakharova added that Moscow is arranging a visit to the site for foreign correspondents accredited in Russia, noting that “a large number” have already expressed interest.

Around 15 people still remain unaccounted for after a Ukrainian drone strike on a school dorm in the Russian town of Starobelsk, President Vladimir Putin has said, adding that he has ordered the military to prepare retaliation for the attack.

At least 39 people were injured in the strike and six were killed, according to Putin. He ruled out the possibility that the school was hit by accident, noting that 16 Ukrainian drones hit the same location in three waves, with no military sites in the vicinity.

The Russian president slammed the incident as a “terrorist attack by the neo-Nazi regime,” vowing revenge.

The strike hit the main academic building and dormitory of the Starobelsk Professional College, which teaches students aged 14 to 18. The head of the Lugansk People's Republic (LPR) Leonid Pasechnik said 86 students were inside the facility at the time of the attack.

The rescue operation was interrupted at least once due to the threat of a new Ukrainian strike, according to the emergency services.

According to Pasechnik, the school was not the only target in what he described as a broader raid on the town. Starobelsk is located around 80 km north of Lugansk, the regional capital of the LPR, which broke away from Ukraine following the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev and formally voted to join Russia in a referendum in 2022.

The governor said administrative buildings, shops, and private homes were also damaged, with at least one additional person injured. He published images showing several badly damaged buildings, including the school, some of them still on fire.

Kiev considers the LPR part of Ukraine. In April, Ukrainian forces struck the Starobelsk administration building, injuring two pedestrians who were passing nearby.

Russian officials have accused Ukraine of deliberately targeting civilians as part of what Moscow describes as a campaign of terror. Ukrainian officials have said economic damage is one of the main objectives of Kiev’s long-range drone strikes inside Russia, while also acknowledging that undermining public support for the government by affecting civilians is among their goals.

Riga’s City Council has revoked the mandate of Councilman Aleksey Roslikov, who had previously been barred from joining sessions remotely from Belarus, where he had moved after facing prosecution for speaking Russian in Latvia’s parliament.

Roslikov, the former leader of the For Stability! party, has been accused by Latvia’s State Security Service (VDD) of “providing assistance to the aggressor state” and inciting “hatred.” The accusations stem from an incident in June 2025, when he, then an MP, spoke Russian in parliament in protest against a declaration calling for combatting the consequences of the so-called “Russification” of Latvia.

He later left parliament and was elected to the Riga City Council while the investigation against him continued.

In early April, a Latvian court ordered his arrest, accusing him of violating pre-trial restrictions after he traveled to Belarus while returning from a meeting with his lawyers in Switzerland.

On Thursday, the Riga City Council voted to strip Roslikov of his mandate during an “emergency” session convened by Kleinbergs.

Roslikov maintains he is being persecuted for his political views, particularly his advocacy of “friendship and strategic relations” with Russia. “If I choose to return home, they’ll meet me with handcuffs,” he told the Belarusian Belta news agency in early April.

Riga has introduced travel restrictions targeting Russian citizens and imposed a mandatory Latvian-language test for long-term residents of Russian origin. Those who failed or refused the exam have been deported.

More than 23% of Latvia’s population identified as ethnic Russians as of 2025, while nearly 38% listed Russian as their mother tongue in 2022, according to government data.

Moscow has repeatedly denounced Riga’s policies as “blatant discrimination against Russians.”

State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin condemned the decision to revoke Roslikov’s mandate, saying the Baltic nations had apparently joined not only the EU but also “a gang of Russophobes led by the illiterate [EU top diplomat Kaja] Kallas.”

“Even talk about democracy and its fundamental principles have become a thing of the past in the EU,” the Russian official said.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has said NATO states should help Kiev “direct” its drone attacks “in the right directions,” blaming a string of Ukrainian UAV incursions into the airspace of the US-led bloc on Moscow.

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service said this week that Latvia allowed Ukraine to use its territory for potential drone attacks on Russia. Baltic officials have rejected the allegation, while insisting that Ukraine has the right to defend itself. However, they also asked Kiev to control its drones better.

Ukraine “must be more precise” with its drones, Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said on Thursday, echoing similar warnings from Estonia and Finland.

Asked about the comment at a joint press briefing with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, the Swedish prime minister accused Russia of trying to “give the impression that other countries are kind of doing things that are not legitimate.”

🇸🇪⚔️🇷🇺 Swedish Prime Minister Kristersson has openly stated that Sweden should do everything possible to help Ukraine direct its drones to strike Russian territory. pic.twitter.com/gtDTeKR2am

— DD Geopolitics (@DD_Geopolitics) May 21, 2026

“We should really not be open for the Russian narrative on this, but instead, of course, help the Ukrainians as much as we can to direct, to help them direct their attacks in the right directions,” Kristersson said.

Rutte also sought to place responsibility for the incidents on Moscow while answering a loaded question involving the claim that Russia jammed or redirected the UAVs. He replied that Ukrainian drones are violating NATO airspace simply “because of the full-scale Russian attack against Ukraine and Ukraine having to defend itself.”

Since mid-March, Ukrainian long-range drones have repeatedly crossed Baltic and Nordic airspace while en route to targets in northwestern Russia, particularly oil export terminals in Leningrad Region.

In Latvia, a failure to intercept a pair of drones that hit an oil storage facility on May 7 triggered the defense minister’s resignation, and the eventual collapse of Prime Minister Evika Silina’s government. Another drone alert on Thursday prompted NATO to scramble fighter jets.

Israel conserved its air defense interceptors during the Iran war while the US expended significant portions of its stockpiles, the Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing anonymous US officials.

US forces used more than 200 THAAD interceptors, around half of the total stockpile, and over 100 SM-3 and SM-6 missiles, three officials told the outlet. Israel, by contrast, reportedly used only 100 Arrow interceptors and 90 David’s Sling interceptors, some of them against less advanced missiles fired from Yemen and Lebanon.

“The United States absorbed most of the missile defense mission while Israel conserved its own magazines,” the newspaper quoted Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center think tank, as saying. The figures suggest a “lopsided dynamic,” the WaPo wrote, although the Pentagon and the Israeli government both defended the balance of resources used.

While America’s interceptor stockpiles have dwindled and new production cannot keep pace with demand, Iran reportedly preserved much of its offensive capabilities. It has retained around 70% of its mobile launchers and missile stockpile, and regained access to 90% of the underground military facilities damaged by US-Israeli bombings, according to earlier US media reports.

Tehran has confirmed that it is reviewing Washington’s updated proposals, but President Masoud Pezeshkian warned that “forcing Iran to surrender through coercion is nothing but an illusion.” Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said talks can succeed if the US ends its “piracy” against Iranian ships and agrees to release frozen funds, while Israel must end its war in Lebanon.

President Donald Trump has announced that the US will send 5,000 additional troops to Poland, citing his support for the country’s conservative president, Karol Nawrocki.

The move comes after the Pentagon abruptly canceled a planned rotation of 4,000 US troops into Poland last week, triggering confusion among Polish officials. Vice President J.D. Vance later described it as a delay rather than a reduction, saying the media “overreacted.”

“Based on the successful Election of the now President of Poland, Karol Nawrocki, who I was proud to Endorse, and our relationship with him, I am pleased to announce that the United States will be sending an additional 5,000 Troops to Poland,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday.

The White House and the Pentagon have yet to clarify whether the additional troops Trump promised are the same brigade whose rotation was paused or the troops being withdrawn from Germany.

Trump has repeatedly accused European NATO members of failing to pay enough for US “protection,” while treating troop deployments as a political reward. The White House has reportedly drawn up a “naughty and nice” list of NATO members based on their support for Washington’s policies, including the Iran war.

Reuters reported earlier this week that the Pentagon also plans to “significantly scale down” the pool of US forces and capabilities that NATO’s European members can rely on during a major crisis under the bloc’s NATO Force Model.

Moscow has condemned the growing militarization of Europe, arguing that Western governments are using a fabricated Russian threat to justify turning the EU into a military bloc and to distract from domestic problems.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has proposed granting Ukraine a limited “interim” status within the EU as a way to deal with its accession ambitions, according to media reports on Thursday that cited a letter by Merz to bloc leaders. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has repeatedly demanded full membership by the end of 2027.

Kiev was granted EU candidate status in June 2022, following the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Since then, it has pushed for fast-tracked membership while some bloc leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Merz, have described such demands as unrealistic.

According to the German chancellor’s new proposal, Kiev would be allowed to tap into certain EU-funded programs, as well as request aid from EU members under the “mutual assistance clause” in the event of an attack.

Ukrainian representatives would also be allowed to participate in meetings of the European Council, the European Commission, and the European Parliament, but would not receive voting rights, according to the letter, cited by multiple media outlets, including Reuters and Euronews.

“It is obvious that we will not be able to complete the accession process shortly, given the countless hurdles, as well as the political complexities of ratification processes in various member states,” the chancellor wrote, as cited by Euronews.

Last month, Merz also said Ukraine’s “immediate” accession was “not possible.” Zelensky has repeatedly rejected anything short of full membership. Speaking to journalists at an EU summit in Cyprus in late April, he insisted that Ukraine had already “earned” its place in the bloc and did not need any kind of “symbolic” status.

Moscow has argued that Brussels uses the prospect of EU membership as political leverage rather than a genuine promise. Back in 2023, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the EU promise as “a carrot [on a stick] put in front of a carriage.”

A Ukrainian naval drone found off a Greek island earlier this month could have sunk a civilian ship and led to mass casualties, Greek Defense Minister Nikos Dendias has said.

The unmanned surface vessel (USV) was reportedly a Ukrainian Magura V3 kamikaze drone, capable of carrying an explosive payload of up to 300 kg. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and senior government officials were reportedly briefed on the matter last week, according to CNN.

Speaking at a conference on Wednesday, Dendias refused to divulge the details of the investigation, but stressed that the drone could have caused immense damage.

“It was obviously something extremely dangerous… there is not the slightest doubt – I repeat, the slightest doubt – that this is a Ukrainian sea drone,” he said, adding that if a cruise liner crossed paths with the USV, the ship would have been at “the bottom of the sea.”

How many dead would we have mourned? And how permissible is this thing in the Mediterranean?

Dendias stressed that Kiev owes Athens “a very big apology,” as well as “the absolute assurance that something like this will not happen again in the wider region.”

Ukrainian UAVs targeting Russian infrastructure have also increasingly flown through the territory of other countries, such as the Baltic states and Finland, according to Moscow. Several Ukrainian drones have crashed in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland in recent weeks.

Russian Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu said in April that if these countries deliberately allow Ukrainian drones to pass through their airspace, they become “open accomplices in aggression against Russia.” In this case, Russia has the right to self-defense, he warned.

The US has urged the Palestinian envoy to the UN to withdraw his candidacy for a senior General Assembly post and threatened to revoke his delegation’s visas if he refuses, according to media reports citing an internal State Department cable.

The dispute centers on Palestinian efforts to expand their diplomatic standing at the UN, including a push for full membership and a vice-presidential seat in the General Assembly, despite opposition from US and Israel.

The internal cable issued this week reportedly instructed US diplomats at the American embassy in Jerusalem to tell Palestinian UN ambassador Riyad Mansour that his General Assembly bid “fuels tensions,” risks undermining US President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan, and would face consequences if it moved forward.

Mansour had already dropped a bid to become president of the General Assembly earlier this year following US lobbying, according to the reports. The Assembly is due to elect its next president and 16 vice‑presidents on June 2.

US diplomats were also reportedly instructed to remind Palestinian officials that they would make no progress on recovering tax and customs revenues withheld by Israel if they did not “engage in good faith.” Those funds make up much of the Palestinian Authority’s budget and have been largely frozen since the Gaza war began following the Hamas attack on southern Israel in October 2023.

The Palestinian Authority holds non-member observer state status at the UN and has no vote in the 193-member General Assembly. Although the Assembly backed its bid for full membership in 2024, any upgrade still requires Security Council approval, where previous efforts were blocked by US vetoes.

Under a 1947 headquarters agreement, the US is obliged to allow representatives of UN members and observers to travel to New York for official UN business. However, Washington has previously denied visas to some Iranian and Russian officials and to former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, citing national security concerns.

The US has indicted former President Raul Castro to have a pretext to invade Cuba and eventually dominate the entire region, American labor and human rights lawyer Daniel Kovalik has told RT.

The US Justice Department indicted Castro and five officials on Wednesday for conspiracy to kill US nationals in the 1996 downing of two planes with anti-Castro activists that reportedly breached Cuban airspace.

Four people were killed in the incident, which fueled diplomatic tensions between the two nations. Havanna said at the time that the planes were connected with the US Air Force, and were repeatedly warned to divert before they were fired upon.

Speaking to journalists, acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche said he cannot explain why the Justice Department chose to do it “now as opposed to two decades ago or 30 years ago” when the incident happened. The indictment came several months after US President Donald Trump warned that Cuba would be “next” after Venezuela was targeted for regime change.

Kovalik, who is currently serves as Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s attorney in the US, also noted that the indictment is “a pretext for invading the island at a minimum to kidnap Raul Castro if not to try to overthrow the government.” He stressed that the measure is “part and parcel of a plan of the US to fully dominate the region.”

See the full interview below

On May 20, 2019, Ukrainians were cheering the inauguration of Vladimir Zelensky, a political outsider who won the presidential election in a landslide on a promise to chart a path different from previous national leaders, who had been elitist, corrupt and divisive.

Zelensky promised sweeping changes, which he vowed to bring at the possible cost of his political career. In practice, he is now clinging to power under martial law, as his closest associates are mired in embezzlement and fraud scandals.

In his first speech as president, Zlensky promised to end corruption, secure peace, and unify the nation of clashing identities. He delivered none of it.

A new yet familiar face

Zelensky won 73% of the vote against incumbent Pyotr Poroshenko, who ran on a slogan of “Army, Language, Faith” – a platform of narrow militaristic nationalism that demanded constant loyalty affirmations from culturally Russian citizens.

Underpinning his successful campaign was Zelensky’s image as an everyman good guy, cultivated for years by playing the role of president in the popular TV series ‘Servant of the People’, after which his political faction is named. The real Zelensky was an occasionally bawdy comedian, whose show – propped up by oligarch Igor Kolomoysky – was not above delivering scathing attacks to further its patron’s interests.

Upon taking office, Zelensky tapped for his team talent from the Kvartal entertainment studio, many of whom are now indicted in corruption scandals, while supporters expected imminent prosecution of Poroshenko, as Zelensky hinted during debates.

Breaking the status quo

His election victory belongs to every Ukrainian, including Poroshenko supporters, a cleanly shaven neatly-dressed Zelensky declared at his swearing-in. He announced that it was Ukraine’s chance for change. Officials who cannot deliver should resign and make room for those who will, he stressed, announcing snap parliamentary elections.

“Not all of you like what I am saying? Too bad, because it’s the people of Ukraine and not me who are speaking. My election proves: citizens are tired of experienced system insiders, bloated politicians who in 28 years created a nation of opportunities for kickbacks, diversion of cash flows and pillaging of wealth.

All Ukrainians must reject graft, Zelensky urged. He called disgraceful the fact that corruption is broadly accepted as part and parcel of life in Ukraine and that this gives senior officials tacit permission to themselves engage in it.

Seven years later, and amid a slew of corruption allegations involving his inner circle, Zelensky’s closest associate, Andrey Yermak, was charged with money laundering to secure a multimillion dollar property outside of Kiev. The leader among the four partners, labeled R1 in the indictment, is reportedly Zelensky.

Ending war at any cost

The Ukrainian president-elect vowed that ending the armed conflict in Donbass – and by extension the tensions with Russia – would be his top priority. According to the International Crisis Group the hostilities claimed an estimated 14,000 lives between 2014 and early 2022, when they blew up into a much-deadlier direct war with Russia.

“I would do anything so that our heroes wouldn’t die anymore,” he pledged. “I am certainly not afraid to make hard decisions. I am prepared to lose my popularity, my approval ratings. If necessary, I will lose my office to bring peace.”

Poroshenko loyalists and Ukrainian nationalists branded any form of compromise with Moscow “capitulation,” staging mass protests in October 2019. Zelensky didn’t want to risk being ousted by force, as President Viktor Yanukovych had been in 2014 and tried to placate his heavily armed critics. “I’m the president of this nation. I’m 42. I am no schmuck,” he told a group of military vets during an on-camera parley.

Ultimately, Zelensky embraced perpetrating the slow-burning Donbass conflict, as Ukraine was building-up its military with NATO’s help. Some nationalist figures later became vocal supporters of his, allegedly swayed by luxury apartments in Kiev.

A nation divided

In his inauguration speech, Zelensky argued that national unity will be the answer to both corruption and the conflict with Russia. “We are all Ukrainians: no one is big or small among us, no one is true or false,” he said, including people in Donbass and Crimea whom Kiev sought to return under its control by force.

Zelensky urged everyone who considers themselves Ukrainian to help him build a better future. Worldwide, there are 65 million Ukrainians, and some could relocate from other nations, bringing with them “experience and mental values.”

The number of people living under Kiev’s sovereignty is less than 29 million, according to 2025 government data, compared to roughly 52 million when the nation declared independence in 1991.

Contrary to his promises to accept every Ukrainian, the Zelensky administration ratcheted up the Poroshenko-era measures aimed at eliminating the Russian language from public life. He also launched a crackdown on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), the largest religious denomination in the country, whose churches and monasteries are being forcibly transferred to a Kiev-backed rival. Similar to political rivals whom Zelensky sought to silence, the UOC was accused of secretly serving Russian interests.

Saved by martial law

By the end of 2021, just 17% of Ukrainians were telling pollsters they would vote for him again. Ukraine was also struggling to vaccinate people against Covid-19.

The escalation of the conflict with Russia in February 2022 turned Zelensky from a semi-lame duck into a wartime leader. He gained new authorities under martial law, while his domestic support was invigorated by the rallying around flag effect. Meanwhile, hundreds of billions of dollars worth of aid was provided by foreign donors for the nation that just months earlier was described as plagued by graft.

Zelensky gladly accepted the international limelight that came with the role of a Western proxy. Reportedly given assurances of personal safety by Russia, he started dressing up in military-style clothes and telling journalists how he had lost count of the number of attempted assassinations by Russia.

When the time came in May 2023 to transfer presidential authority to the speaker of the parliament, Zelensky chose to ignore the Ukrainian Constitution. Technically, he is delivering on his promise to be a one-term president – but with a catch.

Bacterial sexually transmitted infections (STIs) have reached record levels across Europe, with gonorrhoea and syphilis cases surging, particularly among homosexual men, according to new data released Thursday by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

The report for 2024 found that gonorrhoea reached its highest level since EU monitoring began in 2009, with 28 EU and EEA countries reporting 106,331 confirmed cases. Cases among men increased 7.9% in 2024, while infections among women fell 8.6%.

Syphilis infections more than doubled over the same period, reaching 45,577 cases, with rates more than six times higher among men than women. Chlamydia remained the most commonly reported STI, with 213,443 cases.

According to the ECDC, homosexual men accounted for most reported gonorrhoea (62%) and syphilis (69%) cases.

The ECDC linked the increase to failures in prevention and screening and unequal access to testing across Europe, noting that 13 of 29 reporting countries require patients to pay out of pocket for basic STI tests. The report did not specify which countries recorded the sharpest increases.

The EU has long promoted LGBTQ rights through anti-discrimination laws, recognition of same-sex marriages for residency and free movement, and funding policies tied to protections for sexual minorities and gender identities.

Under Viktor Orban, Hungary adopted a 2021 law restricting the promotion of homosexuality and gender transition to minors, but after his election defeat, incoming Prime Minister Peter Magyar signaled a shift by pitching Judit Lannert – described by media as Hungary’s “first LGBT activist” – as education minister.

Russia, which has taken steps to promote traditional values, has banned “LGBTQ propaganda” and designated the movement as “extremist.” Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, have argued that Western-promoted LGBTQ agendas seek to “erode, erase, and subjugate” the values and identities of other countries.

The UK Defense Ministry has claimed that two Russian fighter jets “dangerously” intercepted a British spy plane over the Black Sea, and released footage that it said showed the encounter. Moscow has consistently maintained that Russian pilots act in strict accordance with international law.

The video published by the British ministry on social media on Wednesday appears to show two Russian jets flying close to the aircraft. One of the jets appears to maneuver alongside the British plane, while another flies ahead of it before moving away.

The British ministry claimed that a “Russian Su-35 aircraft flew close enough to trigger emergency systems” aboard the reconnaissance plane, while a Su-27 fighter was “flying as close as six meters” from its nose. Defense Secretary John Healey accused the Russian pilots of “dangerous and unacceptable behavior… towards an unarmed aircraft” while admitting that the British plane was able to continue its mission without any issues.

A @RoyalAirForce Rivet Joint aircraft operating in international airspace over the Black Sea was dangerously intercepted by Russian military jets – flying as close as six metres and triggering onboard emergency systems.

Despite these reckless manoeuvres, RAF crew completed their… pic.twitter.com/QyUP7dE4OJ

— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) May 20, 2026

The RAF Rivet Joint aircraft involved in the incident is equipped with advanced electronic surveillance systems. London said that the aircraft had been conducting a “routine flight” over international waters in the Black Sea. The region has seen heightened military activity throughout the Ukraine conflict, including Ukrainian drone and Western-supplied missile strikes targeting Russian infrastructure.

Moscow has not officially commented on the British claims.

British spy planes had already ramped up their activity in the Black Sea region before the Ukraine conflict escalated in February 2022. In 2021, they conducted flights in the area just days before a Royal Navy frigate attempted to sail through Russian territorial waters past Crimea in what was later revealed to be a deliberate provocation.

2025 can be seen as the year in which the united anti-Russian coalition fell apart. In essence, there are now three distinct players acting against Russia (Ukraine, Europe, the US), and each has its own interests. Analyst Sergey Poletaev has prepared a series of articles in which he analyses the position of each player, their goals and interests in the conflict, and suggests how Russia might respond. 

The first one concerns Ukraine.

The untamed lands

One of the scenarios long under consideration is the gradual disintegration of the Ukrainian state, turning it into a sort of Gaza on the Dnieper. As time goes on, the likelihood of this scenario is growing, so let’s examine exactly what it entails.

A fully-fledged state possesses an instinct for self-preservation. Apart from heart-warming victories over enemies, a state always has a host of concerns: the economy, demographics, infrastructure, the social sphere, and so on. By definition, a state is a superstructure built upon society, and, one way or another, it wages wars for the sake of the common good. Yet while at war, a state is always thinking about how it will survive afterwards and indeed, it’s forced to think of things like this. 

What matters is that even when such an organization controls a certain territory and is therefore compelled to perform state and public functions there, when faced with a choice between these functions and its own military needs, it will always choose the latter.

For the state, people are a resource for its own reproduction and development. For a military organization, people are a resource for war: in the form of fighters and human shields.

It’s possible to negotiate with a state. Before a war, one can threaten it, stage military maneuvers and drills, while at the same time offering various incentives. This approach works because a state considers the consequences. During a war, a state also weighs up the pros and cons and, as a rule, knows when to stop. 

Let’s be clear: we’re not talking about unique wars like the Eastern Front in the Second World War, where the only possible outcome was the annihilation of one side. We’re talking about typical, classic wars, the aim of which is to use force to influence the policies of the opposing power, for it accept the victor’s terms, but not to kill to the last man.

Such wars continue until it becomes easier for the losing side to accept the terms than to continue fighting. It’s easier to adjust policy than to lose lives. It’s easier to pay reparations than to cripple the economy. It’s easier to cede territory than to forfeit one’s future prospects.

A militant organization, especially one supplied from abroad, has nothing to lose. It will continue to operate as long as its ideals remain alive and there are sufficient resources to keep the fight going. It can be driven underground, but it will sprout from there like a weed.

Up the staircase leading down

Ukraine currently finds itself somewhere halfway between a state and a militant organization, which will inevitably evolve into a terrorist group. State functions are being carried out in the country, but only thanks to external funding. The non-war-related economy has virtually disappeared, and industry has fallen to a minimum due to energy shortages. More and more people are becoming alienated from the state, and the further things go, the fewer alternatives there are: either you integrate yourself into the military hierarchy in one way or another, or you find a way to flee the country, or you languish in poverty.

Consequently, Ukraine is becoming increasingly detached, not yet from the land itself, but from the people who inhabit that land. It is increasingly subordinating itself to the aims of war, and in so doing is losing the hallmarks of statehood. As long as the front holds more or less, this process isn’t obvious: from the outside, it seems that Ukraine is united and steadfast, just as it was on the first day of the special military operation. But the further we go, the more only a shell remains of pre-war Ukraine: transit military logistics, the bureaucratic and financial superstructures serving it, semi-artisanal basement-level military production (such as assembling drones from Chinese components), rear services and, most importantly, the front line, the collapse of which will bring everything else to an end within a matter of weeks.

It seems the turning point came last autumn. Whereas previously Kiev had seriously hoped for a ceasefire in exchange for Western (primarily American) security guarantees, after the Anchorage summit it came to terms with the fact that this was a pipe dream and bit the bullet. In October 2025, Vladimir Zelensky stated at a meeting with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk: Ukraine is prepared to fight for another two or three years (and ten, if necessary). For what? In fact, this is no secret. Ukraine has two options left: either endless war, or, if it manages somehow to force Russia into a ceasefire, accelerated militarization and preparations for a new war. If they manage to drag Western European troops onto Ukrainian territory, it’s excellent for them; if not, they’re ready to take their revenge without them.

The rest of the rhetoric has changed accordingly. Ukrainian children, even those in nurseries, must prepare for war. All Ukrainian men, and in principle women too, must go and fight. There is widespread discussion of lifting exemptions for students, critical infrastructure workers (including energy workers who desperately saved Ukrainian cities from freezing this winter), even doctors, and so on. Of course, this is linked to the acute shortage of personnel at the front, but the main point is that general mobilization, which was previously regarded as a temporary anomaly, is now being accepted as the new norm and is set to become even more widespread and permanent.

This is precisely how the Ukrainian state envisions its future; and this is what constitutes Ukraine’s transformation into a vast Gaza, or, if you will, into a second Ruin (following the example of the first Ruin, the period at the end of the 17th century when the then Hetmanate Ukraine fell into general decline, followed by its piecemeal absorption by its neighbors).

A terrible end

This doesn’t mean that Ukraine will be able to secure such a future for itself. By isolating itself from society, Kiev is losing its social base. The tighter the ranks of the fanatics, the more frenzied their slogans, the fewer of them there are. A combat organization is suitable for irregular operations, but to hold a front line stretching 1,500 kilometers, a complex and powerful state apparatus is required. Despite Western supplies, the Ukrainian army is facing a critical shortage of everything, from personnel to food.

A squadron of drone operators with Starlink isn’t an army. In a war of attrition, offensive operations must be conducted, yet the Ukrainian Armed Forces are de facto deprived of this capability. All they are currently capable of is a series of counter-attacks on one or two fronts, lasting no more than two or three weeks. Meanwhile, modern warfare dictates that for an offensive to succeed, one must painstakingly wear down a particular section of the front over weeks, or even months, exhausting the defenses, before seeping through the enemy’s ranks and forcing them to retreat with losses.

In this context, the remarks made by Valery Zaluzhny, the former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, a man one would be hard-pressed to accuse of pacifism, are particularly noteworthy. On May 7, he stated that, having ceded the initiative to Russia on the battlefield, Ukraine is forced to respond at the cost of heavy losses, which, in turn, is guaranteed to lead to defeat.

It would seem that there are still a million or two men of conscription age fit for service remaining in the country, who, given the current nature of the hostilities, would last for about ten years. But this is where the downside of turning the state into a military organization becomes apparent: the people of Ukraine are sabotaging the mobilization en masse, and it is safe to say that attempts to tighten it won’t lead to an increase in recruitment, but only to an even greater rift between the state and society.

In some ways, this is reminiscent of the Russian Civil War of 1918–1922. The White (anti-Bolshevik) movement controlled vast territories, where it established a bureaucratic system of varying effectiveness, collected taxes, implemented the budget, bought grain from peasants, and also received supplies from abroad and even had foreign interventionist troops in the rear (including not only British and French, but also American and even Japanese expeditionary forces), yet it faced constant and growing difficulties in recruiting for its own ranks. Despite famine and devastation, the population in the territories controlled by the Whites refused en masse to join the army, which ultimately led to their defeat.

An endless nightmare

The main scenario for the continuation of Russia’s military operation is to continue fighting at the current pace for as long as it takes to crush the Ukrainian army. In the event of a ceasefire, currently under discussion with the US, we should remain on full combat alert in anticipation of the more than likely resumption of hostilities. Judging by Vladimir Putin’s remarks at the press conference on May 9, he is confident that military defeat, followed by the collapse of the Ukrainian state, is just around the corner.

However, as the examples of Chechnya and the Caucasus show, the conflict may not end once the front line collapses; Ukraine may go underground, despite losing control of some of its former territory.

This scenario is clear. But what if, for some reason, a permanent ceasefire is established? What happens next? Ukraine is a devastated country, whose government and economy are entirely focused on a single goal. And we must assume that Ukraine will inevitably begin preparing for a new war. Not because it hopes to win, but because it has no other options: the prospect of peaceful post-war reconstruction is virtually out of the question for Ukraine as it stands.

The extent to which these preparations are successful and far-reaching depends on external players, first and foremost on Ukraine’s Western European support base. Of course, there is a chance that Ukraine will be cut off from EU support, and that internal instability will bring about what could not be achieved on the battlefield, but one should not count on this; so no truce, no ceasefire will remove the problem of a large hostile formation on Russia’s borders, and this means that a resumption of the conflict is more than likely.

***

By refusing to change its policy towards Russia and choosing the path of war, Ukraine as a state has condemned itself to destruction. As long as Russia exists in its current form, the restoration of statehood and any constructive nation-building within Ukraine’s borders is possible only on the basis of loyalty to Russia.

This is beyond doubt; the only question is whether this can be achieved by reformatting the current Ukraine (read: a coup and subsequent break with Western Europe), or whether it will have to go through the complete collapse of the state, years of ruin, followed by piecemeal absorption by its neighbors.

RT has gained rare access to the Strait of Hormuz, where hundreds of vessels are backed up waiting to pass through one of the world’s most critical shipping chokepoints.

The waterway has remained largely shut since the US-Israeli attack on Iran in February and Tehran’s subsequent standoff with Washington.

Earlier this month, Iran announced the creation of the Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA), a new body tasked with overseeing transit through the strategic passage, which carries roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil and LNG. Tehran said that vessels seeking passage would need PGSA permits and declared a sweeping zone of control stretching from its coastline toward waters near the UAE.

According to RT correspondent Saman Kojouri, “the scale of the maritime congestion here is immediately visible” with hundreds of vessels in the area, many awaiting permission from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to pass.

Tehran has maintained that the measures are in place “to prevent further escalation” and preserve regional stability in the Middle East, he added.

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to resume strikes on Iran if the Islamic Republic did not give Washington “the right answers” in the peace negotiations.

Watch RT's full report from the Strait of Hormuz below.

The US has denied entry to an Air France flight carrying a passenger from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) over tightened Ebola-related restrictions, forcing the aircraft to divert to Canada.

The plane was traveling from Paris to Detroit on Wednesday but was redirected to Montreal after US authorities said the Congolese passenger should not have been allowed to board.

“Due to entry restrictions put in place to reduce the risk of the Ebola virus, the passenger should not have boarded the plane,” a US Customs and Border Protection spokesperson told CBS News. 

Air France confirmed that there was no medical emergency on board. 

The incident came as Washington tightened Ebola-related travel measures on Monday. Under the updated rules, travelers arriving from the DR Congo, South Sudan, and Uganda, are only permitted to enter the US through Washington Dulles International Airport.

The latest Ebola outbreak linked to the Bundibugyo strain in the DR Congo has resulted in at least 139 suspected deaths and 543 suspected cases, according to the country’s Health Ministry. Scientists believe the virus is naturally carried by fruit bats and can spread to humans through contact with infected animals before being transmitted between people via bodily fluids. 

There is currently no approved vaccine or targeted treatment. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the outbreak a global public health emergency.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday that reports of Ebola outbreaks in the DR Congo and Uganda were “a cause of concern” and expressed hope that local authorities, together with international organizations and partner countries, would quickly contain the spread of the disease, adding that Russia would provide “every possible assistance and support” in combating the outbreak.

The existential crisis that recently engulfed the British Labour Party has intensified over the past week, and it is now clear that the party is facing political extinction.

Two weeks ago, British voters showed their contempt for Labour, after enduring two years of scandal-ridden and ineffective government. The party lost almost 1,600 local council seats; ceded control of the Welsh parliament for the first time ever; and performed very poorly in Scotland.

The Labour Party has responded to this unprecedented electoral drubbing by engaging in an unseemly orgy of political infighting that will continue for months to come.

Within days, some 90 MPs announced that they no longer had faith in Keir Starmer as prime minister – and five cabinet members resigned, including Wes Streeting, the health secretary, who had been maneuvering to depose the unpopular Starmer for some time.

Streeting, however, declined to challenge Starmer for the leadership because he could not muster the support of the necessary 81 MPs to do so.

A week later, Streeting delivered an extraordinary speech in which he announced that he would contest the leadership when Starmer was eventually challenged, described Starmer’s ascension to Labour leadership as “dishonest” and astonishingly urged Britain to re-join the European Union – thereby reviving the divisive Brexit issue that has poisoned British politics for over a decade, and had previously split the Labour Party.

Streeting, by injecting Brexit into the Labour leadership contest, has ensured that it will become much more divisive and bitter that it otherwise would have been. One Labour minister has already condemned Streeting for “re-opening the Brexit wars.”

Other potential challengers – Angela Rayner and Ed Miliband – have also declined to challenge Starmer at this stage, and the unpopular Starmer appears determined to remain prime minister for the present.

This strange political impasse then provoked the ambitious mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, to launch a prospective challenge against Starmer. Burnham, however, cannot challenge at present as he is not in parliament – because earlier this year Starmer refused to endorse him as a candidate in a by-election in a safe Labour seat, that was subsequently won by the Greens.

This is the Machiavellian plan concocted by the apparatchiks that currently control the Labour Party – and Streeting, Rayner, and Miliband have, for the time being, acquiesced in it, no doubt expecting to be suitably rewarded with cabinet appointments if and when Burnham becomes prime minister.

There are, however, numerous, insuperable difficulties confronting this high-risk strategy.

Burnham is by no means certain to win the by-election that has been gifted him. He is currently a very popular mayor of Manchester, but at the recent council elections Reform won every ward in the Makerfield electorate – and voters may well take a dim view of their local member being edged out so as to allow Burnham to make a bid for the prime ministership.

In 1965, Prime Minister Harold Wilson engineered a similar piece of by-election spivery when Patrick Gordon Walker, who was slated to become foreign secretary, surprisingly lost his seat at the general election that brought Wilson to power a year before. Wilson subsequently arranged by-election in a safe Labour seat – in which voters refused to elect Walker.

Makerfield is a white working-class electorate that voted overwhelmingly in favor of leaving the EU at the Brexit referendum in 2015 and is staunchly anti-immigrant. Josh Symons won the seat at last year’s election with a majority of 5,300 votes over the Reform party candidate.

Reform leader Nigel Farage has promised to “throw the kitchen sink” at Makerfield, and the party will campaign on the key issues of Brexit (thanks to Streeting) and immigration. Burnham – who is previously on record as wanting to reverse Brexit, and has this week been branded “open borders Burnham” by Farage – is vulnerable on both of these issues.

Even if Burnham wins in Makerfield he may not win the leadership contest – Streeting and perhaps others will be candidates – that will ultimately be decided by Labour Party members, rather than the elected Labour MPs or the party’s ruling cadre.

More importantly, even if Burnham wins the by-election and becomes prime minister, does anyone believe that voters will not punish Labour for the lengthy, divisive and self-indulgent leadership contest now in train that resulted in him becoming prime minister?

The absurdity inherent in the plan to make Burnham prime minister was highlighted this week when David Lammy, the deputy prime minister, announced that both he and Starmer would campaign for Burnham in Makerfield.

The plan to install Burnham as prime minister also seriously underestimates the rage and contempt that British voters have for politicians in general, and Labour politicians in particular – and voters are more than capable of derailing it.

The unsavory political infighting that Labour has engaged in over the past few weeks, which can only intensify over the next few months, has, in my view, already condemned the party to political oblivion – in much the same way that the tawdry and protracted leadership contest that resulted in Liz Truss becoming prime minister signaled the demise of the Conservatives as a viable mainstream party.

More to the point, does anyone really believe that Labour is capable of formulating and implementing a political program that would carry it to an election win in 2029?

If Streeting’s foolish suggestion that Brexit be reversed – surely a political gift to the Reform Party that not even Farage could have anticipated in his wildest dreams – is indicative of Labour’s new policy direction, then the party is beyond saving.

Burnham’s economic views mirror those of Jeremy Corbyn – and Corbyn’s economic agenda was decisively rejected by the electorate at the 2019 general election, won in a landslide by Boris Johnson, and again in 2024 when Starmer won a large majority on an explicitly anti-Corbynite program.

By what miraculous process is Burnham going to persuade the electorate to vote for a big spending economic agenda that it has resolutely rejected at the last two general elections?

And how, one might ask, does Burnham propose to convince the more than 250 MPs who are still committed to Starmer’s cautious technocratic agenda to embrace a program based upon reindustrialization, nationalization, and increased government spending? Even if Burnham were to win Makerfield by a large margin, this would not have given him a mandate to implement a radical political program of this kind.

But Burnham’s difficulties do not end there.

Burnham’s crude working class persona may play well with voters in Greater Manchester – but he does not have the same appeal to the disenchanted British electorate at large, or, indeed, to many displaced workers in the north (Burnham’s own constituency) who have been voting for Reform in ever increasing numbers in recent years.

Burnham may be “the King of the North” but he is an unimpressive political messiah – even though his career may well end in his electoral crucifixion – and Labour’s desperate plan to install him as prime minister is, in my view, a gross political miscalculation based upon wishful thinking.

Starmer could have resigned with a modicum of dignity, and a new leader could have been appointed without the need for a protracted and divisive election process. The party could have drafted a genuinely reformist political program, implemented it – with its massive majority in the Commons – over the next three years, and had at least some chance of being re-elected in 2029.

The current Labour Party leadership was, however, incapable doing any of these things – in large part because Starmer and those ambitious politicians who are now seeking to depose him are completely lacking in political judgment, and the party itself is utterly bereft of credible ideas and basic political proficiency.

In this regard, Labour has come to resemble the moribund Conservative Party, and, in my view, is doomed to suffer a similar fate.

In a recent interview, political commentator Peter Hitchens described the Conservative and Labour Parties as “corpse parties” – an apt description of the two ailing major mainstream political parties that once dominated British politics.

With the Labour Party’s imminent demise – which will be pathetically played out over the next few months – that era is now coming to a chaotic and ignominious end.

The final episode of Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ represents not just the end of Colbert’s career, but the final nail in the coffin of the ‘Orange Man Bad’ activist comedy of the early Trump years. 

CBS cited declining ad revenue and changing viewer habits as reasons for the decision, but in an ironic twist of fate, Colbert also fell victim to the same partisanship that he stoked every weeknight on CBS. The announcement came after CBS’ parent company, Paramount, merged with Skydance Media and paid a $16 million defamation settlement to Trump. Skydance CEO David Ellison’s family are close friends of the president, and with another Trump supporter – Bari Weiss – installed as head of CBS News, the writing was likely on the wall for Colbert the moment the deal was signed.

Looking back at some of Colbert’s ‘highlights’, however, it’s clear that the laughs died long beforehand.

Colbert’s Russiagate romance

Colbert’s ratings took off following Trump’s first election win, with his show becoming the highest-rated late-night talk show for the 2016–2017 season. The ‘Russiagate’ hoax was gaining traction at the time, and to liberal audiences seeking validation for their conspiracy theories, The Late Show became “the home for reasoned, but incisive, discussion, on the perceived overreaches of the White House,” critic David Sims wrote in The Atlantic.

In reality, audiences were treated to nightly tirades about “collusion,” “Russian interference,” and in one infamous monologue, a tale of gay romance between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “The only thing your mouth is good for,” he addressed Trump, “is being Vladimir Putin’s cock holster.”

Colbert’s audience cheered on command, but what Sims called “reasoned discussion,” all but the most die-hard Russiagate believers saw as seething Trump Derangement Syndrome. “Homophobia for the right cause, with the right targets, is good homophobia, apparently,” journalist Glenn Greenwald said in response.

Don’t cheer!

Colbert’s job wasn’t just to make his audience laugh –  it was to tell them what to think. Minutes after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in 2017, Colbert broke the news to his studio audience during his opening monologue. The audience erupted in cheers, presumably because liberals at the time believed that Comey’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email servers cost her the election the year before.

Taken aback, Colbert corrected the crowd, telling them that Comey is “investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia,” and his firing was actually a bad thing. They immediately switched to boos.

In another off-script moment in 2024, the studio audience erupted in laughter when Colbert praised CNN journalist Kaitlan Collins for “just report[ing] the news as it is.”

“Is that supposed to be a laugh line?” Collins responded. “It wasn’t supposed to be,” Colbert replied.

That unexpected laugh is one of the best unintentionally funny and telling moments in the history of TV.

They know!!! Even Colbert's audience know. pic.twitter.com/fip6XeY5lc

— Konstantin Kisin (@KonstantinKisin) August 13, 2024

The Vax-scene

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Colbert switched tack, becoming an enthusiastic promoter of lockdowns and vaccine mandates. Laid off workers protesting the lockdowns were described as “a handful of idiots,” and vaccine mandates, he declared, had “a proud patriotic history in this country.” However, the nadir of Colbert’s vaccine evangelism came in 2021 when he introduced a recurring and now famously unfunny segment to the show: “the vax-scene.”

The segment, in which a grinning Colbert danced with showgirls dressed as hypodermic needles, has been described as “cringe,” “dystopian,” and “propaganda,” although it would not be the last Covid-related cringefest featuring Colbert. Two months after the first ‘vax-scene’ clip aired, Colbert was filmed dancing with New York Senator Chuck Schumer in Central Park at an event “celebrating the resilience of New York City” amid the pandemic.

Backstage antics pic.twitter.com/3v2Ge3E9zM

— Bill Neidhardt (@BNeidhardt) August 21, 2021

Regime-approved comedy

Colbert’s dance-off with Schumer illustrated his hand-in-hand relationship with the Democratic Party, as did his roster of guests, which included liberal journalists, anti-Trump comics such as John Oliver and Jon Stewart, and government officials like Comey, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. After campaigning for Joe Biden in 2020, Colbert opened a bottle of champagne when the election results came in and, with tears in his eyes, declared that “finally, after four years, Americans can exhale.”

Biden’s officials were regular guests over the next four years, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken selling the audience on the necessity of backing Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, Covid czar Anthony Fauci made three appearances to push vaccines, and USAID Administrator Samantha Power discussed the Biden administration’s efforts to promote “democracy” around the world. 

Trump was out of office, but Colbert doubled down on the partisanship. Ratings slid, and in a sign of the times in mid-2022, the Late Show was overtaken by Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld – a supporter of Trump and the most popular late night host of the Biden years.

“Colbert took a long-running institution and destroyed it with his own personal politics,” Gutfeld said on Tuesday. “The main issue with Colbert and his ilk is that they were kiss-asses who weren’t even trying to be funny. He did nothing but safe comedy, ridiculing the approved targets his team hated.”

So close was this relationship that Democrat Senators Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff demanded that CBS be investigated, to determine whether Colbert “was canceled for political reasons.” Both had been guests on the Late Show.

Trump has refused to take credit for Colbert’s cancellation, but the president has reveled in the demise of the Late Show. “Everybody is saying that I was solely responsible for the firing of Stephen Colbert from CBS, Late Night. That is not true! The reason he was fired was a pure lack of TALENT,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform last year. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Trump said that he would share more thoughts on Colbert “at a later date.”

Trump has also called for the firing of Jimmy Kimmel from ABC and Seth Meyers from NBC, both of whom have spent the last decade mocking him.

However, even without intervention from the president, the future looks bleak for Kimmel, Meyers, and fellow late-night liberal Jimmy Fallon. Along with Colbert, all three have watched their ratings tumble over the last decade, with Kimmel and Fallon both pulling in just over half of the viewers that they did in 2015.

Ultimately, audiences are growing tired of the same old ‘Orange Man Bad’ routine, and getting sick of being told what to think. Colbert may be the first big name to fall, but he almost certainly won’t be the last.

Russia’s Defense Ministry has released new footage from its joint nuclear exercise with Belarus, showing troops training to equip an Iskander ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead.

The bilateral nuclear-sharing arrangement, which Moscow has compared to similar practices within NATO, was launched in 2023. Russia and Belarus said at the time that the move was a response to what they described as growing hostility from the US-led military bloc.

Several short-range Iskander missile systems have been stationed in Belarus. Matching “special munitions,” the Russian military term for nuclear payloads, are stored separately at a secure facility.

The video published by the ministry on Thursday shows a drill involving the “delivery of nuclear munitions to field storage locations at the position of a missile brigade of the Republic of Belarus.” The footage includes both nighttime and daytime handling of a warhead. Troops receiving the delivery proceeded to “discreetly move to an area designated for test launches.”

A separate video highlighted key components of Russia’s nuclear triad taking part in the larger exercise. It showed ground-mobile launchers for intercontinental ballistic missiles being escorted by security units, the deployment of the Imperator Aleksandr III nuclear submarine in the Pacific Ocean, and preparations for a test flight by a MiG-31K jet carrying a nuclear-capable Kinzhal hypersonic missile.

Moscow said this week’s maneuvers are intended to prepare Russia and Belarus to act “in the conditions of aggression” by foreign states. European NATO members have been sharply increasing military spending and rearmament efforts, citing what they claim is a potential threat from Russia. Moscow has repeatedly denied any intention to attack the bloc.

Earlier this week, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys urged NATO to stage a demonstration of force to show its ability to “raze” military infrastructure in Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave. The Kremlin described the comment as “borderline crazy.”

Washington needs to reimpose its presence in Greenland, US special envoy Jeff Landry has said, as the administration of President Donald Trump seeks to expand its military and strategic footprint on the Arctic island.

The Republican governor of Louisiana arrived in Nuuk on Sunday at Trump’s assignment to “find a lot of new friends.” The visit followed months of tensions stirred by Trump’s calls for an American takeover of the autonomous Danish territory and sparked controversy after it emerged that Greenlandic authorities reportedly had not officially invited Landry.

“I think it’s time for the US to put its footprint back on Greenland,” he told AFP on Wednesday during his first visit to Greenland since taking up the post in December 2025, adding that the US is looking at boosting military operations and reviving former bases on the island.

Recent media reports suggested that Washington is in talks with Denmark and is seeking to open three new bases in southern Greenland.

“I think you’re seeing the president talk about increasing national security operations and repopulating certain bases in Greenland,” Landry told the outlet.

Under a 1951 defense agreement with Denmark, updated in 2004, the US is already permitted to expand troop deployments and military infrastructure on the island, provided Copenhagen and Greenlandic authorities are notified in advance.

Landry questioned whether Greenland currently had sovereignty at all when asked by Danish broadcaster DR whether an expanded US presence on the island would respect Greenlandic self-rule, while insisting Washington had always respected sovereignty, “even in places where we have had to go in and liberate.”

At the same time, he dismissed fears of a US takeover, saying Greenlanders “should not be afraid.”

Declassified US military documents showed Washington viewed Greenland as vital to American security as early as 1946, prompting a $100 million offer to buy the island and even discussions about swapping part of Alaska. Denmark rejected the proposals, and the issue was later shelved after Copenhagen joined NATO and agreed to host US military bases in Greenland.

Trump renewed the push to bring the mineral-rich Arctic territory under greater US control, claiming that the island risks falling into the hands of China or Russia.

Nigerian anti-narcotics authorities have dismantled a methamphetamine cartel with Mexican links, arresting a suspected drug baron, three foreign nationals and six alleged local collaborators in what officials described as the country’s largest-ever seizure of the drug.

The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) said on Wednesday that it had seized 2,419.48 kg of chemical materials, including finished and liquid methamphetamine, precursor chemicals and industrial solvents. Its Special Operations Unit carried out “well-coordinated, simultaneous strikes” in Ogun and Lagos states after months of intelligence gathering.

The raids targeted a remote farm in Abidagba forest, in Ijebu East Local Government Area of Ogun State, which the agency said was being used as a “massive, highly dangerous clandestine methamphetamine laboratory” by the trafficking organization of Nigerian drug baron Anochili Innocent.

NDLEA chief Mohamed Buba Marwa put the international market value at $362.9 million. Marwa said the network “did not just traffic drugs” but was “actively manufacturing industrial-scale quantities” of illicit substances in the West African country.

“The arrest brings to ten the total number of cartel members” in custody, the NDLEA chief said, warning cartels that Nigeria is “a hostile territory for their business.” 

Marwa said the latest raid came barely two weeks after it announced the takedown of another drug trafficking lab headed by Simon Amadi in a multi-country operation involving US, Swiss, French, and Greek law enforcement agencies.

In 2016, the NDLEA arrested four Mexicans and four Nigerians over a methamphetamine laboratory in Delta State. Last November, the agency reported the seizure of a 1,000 kg cocaine consignment worth about $235 million at Tincan Island Port in Lagos. Earlier that year, officials also arrested a 59-year-old businessman accused of ingesting 81 wraps of cocaine before attempting to board a flight from Lagos to Paris.

Europe is facing an “energy crisis tsunami” following a series of political earthquakes, Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev has warned. The forecast comes as energy shocks caused by the US‑Israeli war on Iran continue to destabilize supplies across the region.

Since the beginning of the US‑Israeli military campaign in late February, global crude benchmarks have surged by roughly 50%, forcing retail fuel and wholesale natural gas prices to historic highs. The Middle East conflict has further exacerbated a critical situation in European states, which had already drastically cut Russian energy imports since the 2022 escalation of the Ukraine conflict.

“More to come as the energy crisis tsunami hits the EU/UK imminently,” Dmitriev stated on X, responding to a Swedish journalist who noted that Germany’s right-wing AfD party was nearly as large as the CDU and SPD combined in the latest poll, calling the shift “a political earthquake.”

Traditional mainstream parties across Europe have increasingly lost ground to far-right or center-right coalitions over the past years.

Several officials across the EU have called for restoring energy ties with Russia to tackle the crisis. However, the European Commission has stated that there will be no return to Russian energy imports and it will continue to pursue a full phase-out of Russian fossil fuels by 2027.

Earlier this year, Dmitriev said that the EU would “inevitably beg” for Russian gas, as energy prices are projected to further increase. He has also stated that the bloc is the last in line among Russian energy consumers as Moscow expands projects with other countries.

The world has entered a holding pattern ahead of what increasingly looks like a second round of confrontation between the United States and Iran. Officially, diplomacy is still alive: public statements continue to reference the possibility of a deal, while intermediaries in Pakistan, Qatar, and Türkiye are attempting to keep both sides engaged in negotiations. But judging by developments over the past several days, it is becoming increasingly clear that this is less about reaching a durable compromise and more about buying time before the next phase of escalation. The talks in Islamabad in April did not stop the conflict – they merely underscored how inevitable it may be. No breakthrough emerged, while disputes over the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear conditions remain at the core of the standoff. US President Donald Trump himself recently stated that he had planned to strike Iran on May 19 but backed off at the request of Gulf monarchies.

At first, there were legitimate reasons to believe that Washington – especially under Trump’s current political circumstances – had little interest in prolonging the conflict with Iran. First, fatigue with Middle Eastern wars is growing inside the US, alongside mounting criticism of unconditional support for Israel. Second, a prolonged war with Iran would carry political costs for Trump personally, undermining his image as a leader capable of quickly “ending” conflicts rather than getting dragged deeper into them. Third, policymakers in Washington clearly understand the limits of military force: airstrikes can damage infrastructure, hit military targets, and raise the costs for Tehran, but they cannot instantly dismantle Iran’s political system. The Iranian regime is not something that can simply be “taken down” in a single military campaign; it is deeply embedded within a complex network of institutions, security structures, ideological mechanisms, and regional alliances.

That is why, even after the Islamabad talks, there was still cautious hope for a political settlement. But within roughly a week, it became obvious that neither side was moving toward compromise. Instead, both began locking themselves into increasingly rigid and fundamentally irreconcilable positions. One revealing moment came when Tehran demanded compensation for the damage caused by US strikes and emphasized Iran’s special status regarding the Strait of Hormuz.

Reports indicated that Iran’s counterproposal demanded compensation from the US while stressing Tehran’s sovereign rights over Hormuz – or, more precisely, demanding US recognition of Iranian dominance over the strait, something that would amount to a major geopolitical victory for Tehran. For Washington, such terms are effectively unacceptable, since accepting them would look not like the capitulation Trump appears to expect from Iran, but rather like a strategic retreat by the US in one of the world’s most critical energy corridors.

Iran, by all appearances, is using this pause not to prepare a comprehensive peace agreement, but to restore internal coordination, assess the damage inflicted, regroup its forces, and prepare for another round of confrontation. The US, meanwhile, is preserving a diplomatic channel in order to continue issuing ultimatums while simultaneously keeping the military option on the table should negotiations finally collapse.

In this conflict, the Strait of Hormuz has long ceased to be just a narrow shipping lane on the map. For Iran, it is its single most powerful leverage point – the card Tehran continues to play instead of resorting to more direct forms of escalation. Fully shutting down the strait would hit everyone at once: America’s Gulf allies, Israel, and global oil markets alike. For Washington, meanwhile, freedom of navigation through Hormuz is fundamentally about who sets the rules of the game in the Middle East.

That is precisely why the positions of both sides are fundamentally incompatible. The US demanded the full reopening of the strait and the removal of highly enriched uranium from Iran. In practice, these are not negotiating terms – they are surrender terms dressed up in diplomatic language. Accepting them would require Iran to publicly acknowledge defeat while voluntarily giving up its two main tools of leverage. No Iranian leadership could realistically agree to that.

Trump, meanwhile, does not appear to be steering negotiations toward a sustainable compromise. Instead, he seems to be laying the political and diplomatic groundwork for another round of war. Formally, both Trump and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio continue to speak about negotiations and the possibility of a new agreement in the near future. But the substance of Washington’s demands suggests otherwise: the US is not offering Tehran an equal bargain, but rather a framework for capitulation – fully aware that the Iranian leadership would struggle to accept it without serious domestic political fallout. That is the key logic driving the current moment: impossible demands can serve not only as pressure tactics, but also as a way to preemptively shift blame for failed negotiations onto Iran.

In reality, the framework proposed by Washington does not envision any meaningful lifting of sanctions pressure on Iran. More importantly, the demand that enriched uranium be handed over to the US would represent not merely a technical restriction on Iran’s nuclear program, but external control over its most critical component. Politically, such a scenario is nearly impossible for Tehran to accept, since it would be perceived domestically as capitulation under pressure and a direct erosion of national sovereignty. That is why the American position looks less like a proposal designed to secure rapid agreement and more like an intentionally hardline negotiating framework – one that would allow Washington to later claim diplomacy had been exhausted once Iran rejected it.

From the outset, it was also clear that Washington had no serious intention of discussing compensation for the damage caused. For the US, acknowledging such responsibility would create an extremely undesirable political and legal precedent, effectively amounting to an admission of responsibility for the military phase of the conflict. Equally revealing is the vague wording surrounding the demand to end conflicts across multiple fronts, including Lebanon: there is no concrete enforcement mechanism, no firm security guarantees, and no clear understanding of who would be responsible for de-escalation or how it would be implemented. According to Reuters, Iran, by contrast, has attempted to link any settlement to a complete cessation of hostilities across all fronts, the withdrawal of US forces from areas near Iran, and compensation for damages.

As a result, Tehran has effectively been told that its own conditions are not considered a legitimate basis for bargaining. In this form, the negotiating process increasingly resembles not an attempt to find common ground, but an effort to impose a settlement model overwhelmingly favorable to Washington. For Iran, such a framework is unacceptable not only in practical terms, but symbolically as well: it would mean restrictions on its nuclear capabilities, the partial continuation of sanctions, and abandonment of compensation claims without receiving comparable concessions in return.

Under this logic, the probability of another round of confrontation remains high. The central question is no longer whether a new phase of strikes is possible, but when it may begin, how large-scale it could become, and what strategy Tehran will choose in response: a limited retaliation, a drawn-out proxy conflict, or an attempt to raise the stakes around the Strait of Hormuz and regional infrastructure. In practice, the current diplomatic process increasingly resembles not a mechanism for preventing war, but diplomatic preparation for its next stage.

The first phase of the conflict resolved none of the core issues. Iran’s political system remained intact; the nuclear question was not settled; the previous security architecture around the Strait of Hormuz was not restored; and no mutually acceptable framework for de-escalation emerged. On the contrary, both sides came out of the first phase believing that concessions would be interpreted as weakness. And in such situations, negotiations rarely become a path to peace – more often, they serve as the diplomatic formalization of a pause between two rounds of conflict.

The main conclusion is that the current moment is not a stable ceasefire, but a strategic pause. Both Iran and the US are already thinking in terms of the next phase of confrontation. Tehran is inflating its demands in order to avoid appearing defeated and to buy time. Washington is signaling openness to negotiations, while remaining unable to accept terms that would undermine its regional position. That is why the growing sense of an approaching second round of war stems not from isolated remarks by Trump or figures within the IRGC, but from the very structure of the conflict itself: neither side is prepared for genuine peace, nor willing to accept defeat – and both are therefore preparing for what comes next.

The joint Russia-China declaration opposing any hegemony is “music” for many Africans seeking greater political and economic independence from the West, former South African MP and African People’s Convention President Themba Godi has told RT. 

His comments came after talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing on Wednesday, after which the two nations signed 42 agreements and joint documents.

“That declaration, it’s music to our ears in Africa,” Godi said, arguing that many countries on the continent have historically experienced external pressure and attempts to impose foreign political models.

“We’ve seen how China and Russia have positively impacted the prospects of Africa’s development,” he said.

Godi argued that China and Russia increasingly represent an alternative model of international relations for African countries seeking greater sovereignty.

“China and Russia are the two key alternatives from the West that we [Africa] have had,” he said.

Investigative journalist Modibe Modiba told RT that many African countries are turning toward closer cooperation with Russia and China.

Western powers never saw Africans as equal partners, Modiba noted, accusing the US of exploiting the continent’s resources. “They’ve been behind many coups around the African continent,” he added. According to the journalist, Africa now wants partnerships based on equality rather than dependence on foreign assistance.

Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg, Siphamandla Zondi, said China’s decision to extend zero-tariff access to African countries offers the continent an alternative to Western trade policies.

The administration of US President Donald Trump is looking to sell more energy resources, mainly oil and LNG, to India, which has been hit by the disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. US Ambassador Sergio Gor told Bloomberg that India “has been receptive to diversification” of its sources of energy imports, which means “buying more American energy.”

“People have been very receptive to buying from the United States, and we’ve been very happy with that,” Gor said, according to Bloomberg.

Gor’s comments come days before Secretary of State Marco Rubio is due to visit New Delhi next week. The US has long tried to pressure India to stop oil imports from Russia, which has been the nation’s largest energy supplier since 2022.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration imposed punitive tariffs on Indian goods, linking them to trade with Russia. The tariffs were later removed as part of a deal announced by Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Under a preliminary trade agreement, the US cut tariffs on Indian goods from 50% to 18% in exchange for India halting purchases of Russian oil.

The Indian government has been under pressure to secure energy imports amid disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz caused by the US-Israeli war against Iran. New Delhi is considering a series of measures, including a fuel price hike and restrictions on non-essential spending, to shield its foreign exchange reserves from soaring oil prices linked to the conflict.

Responding to a question about pressure on India as a result of the war, Gor blamed Iran for closing the strait. “The blame is not on the United States,” he told Bloomberg, adding that the US Treasury Department has allowed India to buy Russian oil, which would otherwise be subject to sanctions.

India, the world’s third-largest oil buyer, relies on imports for around 85% of its oil needs, making it vulnerable to rising energy prices and disruptions to supplies through the Strait of Hormuz.

Paris Mayor Emmanuel Gregoire has launched a special inquiry into the city’s childcare system amid a growing scandal involving allegations of sexual abuse against children as young as three, French media reports.

He repeatedly apologized and acknowledged the “systemic risk” to children, announcing a €20 million ($23 million) emergency reform plan including staff training, surprise inspections, and a ban on adults being left alone with children.

Former Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo tried to keep the complaints out of public view. Gregoire, who was elected in March, has pledged transparency, revealing last month that 78 after-school workers had been suspended in 2026, including 31 over suspected sexual misconduct.

The scandal has shocked France after reports that some victims were aged as young as three. The Telegraph, which interviewed parents of affected children, reported they were allegedly locked in rooms, sexually abused, and threatened with death if they spoke. Parents, activists, and unions say the crisis exposed systemic problems in childcare: Chronic understaffing, precarious contracts, and poor vetting. They also accuse City Hall of transferring problematic workers instead of terminating them.

The announcement came the same day investigators from the Paris Juvenile Protection Brigade carried out a major operation linked to the scandal: 16 people working in after-school programs at a school in the 7th Arrondissement were detained during coordinated raids. Prosecutors said the suspects, aged 18 to 68, include kindergarten assistants, city education supervisors, and activity leaders employed by City Hall to supervise children before and after classes. Allegations range from rape and sexual assault to sexual exhibitionism and violent behavior.

The issue gained national attention in January when France 2’s Cash Investigation aired undercover footage showing verbal abuse and sexual misconduct in a Paris nursery, prompting suspensions of twelve workers.

The Russian authorities have begun demolishing an illegal occult compound described as a ‘Satanic Temple’ in Moscow Region, which long outraged local residents with animal-bone rituals and swarms of acolytes.

The demolition work began after a local court ruled that the three-story building – which served as the headquarters of the ‘Empire of the Strongest Witches’ sect – was built illegally.

Demolition crews moved in on Wednesday at the Zaytsevo village site near the town of Zaraysk around 120 km south of Moscow, after the Zaraysk City Court ruled that the 280-square-meter structure, which was styled as a ‘Temple of Saturn’ – was built without a permit on land zoned for farming.

According to media reports, residents repeatedly petitioned the authorities to clear the site, describing the compound as a “witch’s lair” and a “Satanic Temple,” citing unsettling “magical rituals” on the premises.

Sulikova – who styled herself as the “chief witch of the Kremlin” – claimed that she appeared on ‘Battle of the Psychics’, a Russian reality show in which self-proclaimed clairvoyants competed for prizes. However, the producers denied that she was ever on the show.

She also engaged in esoteric-related businesses, including managing the now-defunct ‘International University of Magic and Witchcraft’ (nicknamed ‘Hogwarts’ in the media) in Moscow Region, which in practice had little to do with education.

In 2025, Sulikova was sentenced to two years in a penal colony after she pleaded guilty to charges of distributing extremist materials inciting violence against Russian Orthodox clergy and posting online content that insulted Christians.

The demolition of the temple also came after it drew the attention of State Duma deputy Vitaly Milonov, a staunch supporter of “traditional Russian values.”

“I know about this satanic place,” he said last year. “I have long been waging war with this crazy lady. We managed to get her jailed, and now we’ll demolish her temple too – a reminder of her dark deeds: Deception, fraud, and insulting the feelings of believers.”

Milonov and Sulikova have feuded for years. He accused the occult leader of fraud and demanded that psychics be legally equated with prostitutes – prompting her to countersue for defamation. The self-styled witch said she won the lawsuit but demanded compensation of one ruble.

The US intends to build up an icebreaker fleet larger than Russia’s, as the current gap in Moscow’s favor is “ridiculous,” President Donald Trump has said.

Speaking to US Coast Guard graduates in New London, Connecticut, on Wednesday, Trump highlighted an agreement signed with Finland earlier this year to build 11 icebreakers.

“We’re going to learn the craft and we’re going to have so many icebreakers,” Trump said. “You know, Russia has 48 and we have one very old one, that’s ridiculous.”

He claimed the US would eventually operate 55 such ships, overtaking Russia and strengthening the American presence in the Arctic.

The agreement with Finland was finalized in February. Seven of the ordered vessels are expected to be constructed at US shipyards. The deal falls under the trilateral ICE Pact, which also includes Canada and was launched by then-President Joe Biden in July 2024.

The Yakutia, a 160-meter Arktika-class vessel able to break through ice up to three meters thick, was the latest ship to enter service with Rosatomflot, Russia’s state-owned maritime nuclear operator. Three more icebreakers of the same class are being built and are expected to replace older vessels, including the Taymyr and Vaygach, shallow-draft ships constructed for the Soviet Union by Finland.

Russia also operates the Viktor Chernomyrdin, the world’s most powerful diesel-electric icebreaker, with 25 megawatts of propulsion. The US Coast Guard’s gas-turbine Polar Star, currently America’s only operational heavy icebreaker, is admittedly more powerful at 44.7 megawatts. It is also far older, having entered service in the 1970s.

Moscow considers its icebreaker fleet a strategic asset, both for sustaining its Arctic presence and for keeping the Northern Sea Route open for as much of the year as possible. The route offers a shorter shipping link between Asia and Europe than the traditional passage through the Suez Canal. The US-Israeli war with Iran, which disrupted supplies of key goods from the Persian Gulf and raised safety concerns over Red Sea traffic, has renewed interest in the Russian alternative.

The Strait of Hormuz – a critical chokepoint accounting for 20% of seaborne oil trade prior to the US-Israeli war against Iran – remains effectively blocked despite the tentative ceasefire. The traffic has ground to a halt due to the risks posed by mines, recurring attacks, and ship seizures, as well as insurers’ reluctance to step in.

The US maintains its own blockade on Iranian ports, with NATO countries reportedly considering taking on a role in escorting ships in the area.

Despite the severe disruption, media reports suggest a slight uptick in traffic through the strait, with Iran reportedly offering a Bitcoin-based scheme to provide insurance to shipping companies.

Here are the most recent developments in the Strait of Hormuz.

NATO Hormuz intervention?

On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported, citing a senior official, that NATO is mulling the possibility of escorting ships if the strait is not reopened by early July, though the idea does not yet have unanimous backing in the US-led military bloc.

It is unclear how NATO would be able to step in even if a consensus is reached, Bloomberg noted, given that the US has not been able to establish control over the strait.

Iran develops shipping insurance

On Monday, Fars news agency reported that Iran launched a Bitcoin-based shipping insurance service – ‘Hormuz Safe’. The government says the scheme will provide “fast, verifiable digital insurance” while generating an estimated $10 billion in revenue.

CoinDesk expressed skepticism, citing factors complicating passage, as well as the possibility of US sanctions on companies that accept the offer. According to Iranian media, the insurance would cover detention, inspection, and cargo confiscation, but not damage from weapons.

A previous US attempt to guarantee insurance for shipping companies ended in failure. Early in the conflict, Trump announced that he ordered the US Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to provide up to $40 billion in reinsurance for all shipping through the Gulf, with Chubb, AIG, and Berkshire Hathaway named as backers.

Has traffic through the Strait of Hormuz increased?

While the current traffic through the chokepoint remains a fraction of that before the war, Lloyds List reported on Monday that at least 54 vessels – including ten Chinese-linked vessels – transited through the strait last week – more than double than a week prior. Before the war, around 3,000 vessels crossed the strait every month, compared to 191 in April.

On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported, citing a source familiar with the matter, that India – which imports around 55% of its oil from the Gulf – is preparing to send vessels through the strait to load up energy cargoes. According to the agency, the plans are in the final stage.

Is the Strait of Hormuz still dangerous?

Last week’s modest traffic uptick was accompanied by renewed violence. On May 14, a Honduras-flagged ‘floating armory’ named Hui Chuan, which stored weapons and ammunition for security companies and anchored near the port of Fujairah, was seized by unauthorized personnel and towed to Iranian waters.

Around the same time, an Indian-flagged livestock barge, Haj Ali, was struck by a “major explosion” – likely caused by a drone or missile attack – and sank off the coast of Oman, with all crew members rescued.

In total, as of last week, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) reported 49 incidents in the region, with 27 classified as attacks.

What crucial cables lie in the Strait of Hormuz?

The stand-off in Hormuz could also impact global telecom networks. Iranian military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaghari warned this month that Tehran “will impose fees on internet cables.” Iranian media also signaled that the measure would include licensing fees and annual “protection payments” from major tech companies including Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft. These companies, however, are obliged to follow US sanctions that prohibit them from engaging in business with Iran.

At least eight major telecom cables lie on the strait’s bed, with many of them spanning thousands kilometers from Europe to China, and are owned by dozens of international companies, according to submarinecablemap.com.

Will the US and Iran be able to reopen the Strait of Hormuz?

The outcome of the crisis ultimately depends on whether the US and Iran are able to bridge their numerous differences, and so far they seem to be as far from a deal as ever.

On Monday, Axios reported, citing sources, that Iran submitted a new peace proposal, but the White House considered it insufficient: “We are really not making a lot of progress… We need some real, sturdy, and granular conversation [regarding the nuclear program]. If that’s not gonna happen, we will have a conversation through bombs, which will be a shame,” an unnamed US official told the outlet.

“For Iran, the clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them,” he warned.

Iran – which has denied that it seeks to develop nuclear weapons – has insisted that a peaceful settlement should include the cessation of hostilities against both Iran and Hezbollah, a US military withdrawal from the region, the lifting of all sanctions, and reparation for damages.

The US has demanded that Iran dismantle its nuclear program, surrender its stockpile of enriched uranium, and lift any restrictions on traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

The German Interior Ministry is considering offering Syrian refugees up to €8,000 ($9,300) to return home voluntarily, Focus magazine reports, citing government sources. The proposal comes as support for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which has been campaigning heavily on migration concerns, reaches record highs.

Germany was one of the main destinations for Syrians fleeing the civil war during the 2014-2015 migrant crisis, after then-Chancellor Angela Merkel adopted an open-door migration policy.

More than 951,000 Syrians were living in Germany as of August 2025, according to the Interior Ministry’s data. Over 500,000 hold temporary residence permits tied to refugee or subsidiary protection status, while the number voluntarily returning to Syria remains relatively low, Focus reported on Wednesday.

Roman Poseck, the interior minister of the central German state of Hesse, argued that even tens of thousands of euros given to each refugee to go home would be worth it in the long run since otherwise, much more would have to be spent on accommodation in Germany. Under the current system, voluntary return payments average around €1,000 ($1,163).

Berlin is now rejecting 95% of all new asylum applications by Syrians, German media reported last month. Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in March that up to 80% of Syrians living in Germany could return home over the next three years, later attributing the claim to Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, who denied making the statement, calling the figure exaggerated.

Merz, who was recently rated Europe’s most unpopular leader, is facing growing pressure from the right. The AfD has emerged as Germany’s most popular party, surpassing the chancellor’s Christian Democratic Union in terms of public support, according to a poll last month. The right-wing party came out on top despite a boycott by all mainstream parties and accusations of extremism by its critics.

Samsung Electronics has reached a last-minute tentative wage deal with its largest labor union, temporarily averting an 18-day strike that threatened to hit the global memory-chip supply chain at a time of already tight AI-driven demand.

The agreement was reached after government-mediated talks just hours before 48,000 workers were due to walk out, Yonhap reported on Thursday. Union leaders said they would put off the 18-day strike while members vote on the tentative deal from May 22 to 27, meaning the immediate threat has been delayed rather than removed.

The dispute centers on how Samsung’s AI-era windfall should be shared with workers. The union had demanded that 15% of Samsung’s annual operating profit be allocated to employee bonuses and called for the removal of a cap on wage bonuses.

The planned strike drew global attention because Samsung is not just South Korea’s biggest company but one of the world’s most important memory-chip suppliers. The company accounts for around 36% of the global DRAM market and 28% of the NAND flash market, according to TrendForce figures, making any disruption at its Korean plants a potential shock for AI servers, data centers, smartphones, laptops, and other electronics.

The stakes were also high for South Korea’s economy. Samsung is a pillar of the country’s export machine and financial markets, with reports estimating that a prolonged walkout could have cost the company up to 1 trillion won, or around $660 million, per day and reduced South Korea’s GDP growth by as much as 0.5 percentage points.

Russia-India relations, underpinned by their status as a privileged strategic partnership, are emerging as a benchmark for bilateral cooperation between major powers. The rapid growth in mutual trade and the ambitious goal of reaching a total volume of $100 billion by 2030 indicate a significant new phase.

However, the sustainability and depth of such growth in the long term will be determined not only by trade flows or joint infrastructure projects but also by the ability to create a shared educational and scientific-technological space.

The development strategy for the Russian Far East holds particular significance, representing a point of mutual interest for both Moscow and New Delhi. Russia sees this region as a strategic priority due to its enormous natural resources, its role as the main logistics hub in the Asia-Pacific region, and the importance of strengthening its eastern borders.

India, in turn, views the Far East as a promising direction for investment and expanding its economic influence in Asia. However, despite mutual interest, many promising intergovernmental agreements, including the Program of Russian-Indian Cooperation in Trade, Economic, and Investment Spheres in the Far East of the Russian Federation for 2024-2029, and the agreement on cooperation principles in the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federation, signed by ministers from both countries, lack notable successful implementation examples. 

Attracting foreign workers represents the main solution to this workforce shortage. The existing influx of labor migration of Indian citizens to Russia, which has grown from 8,000 to 36,200 work permits in recent years, is predominantly low-skilled and does not solve the problem of personnel shortages for high-tech segments. Solving this requires moving beyond targeted labor migration toward a comprehensive system of training and subsequent retention of specialists whose competencies meet the specific demands of the Far Eastern economy.

Academic exchange between Russia and India needs fundamental restructuring. Despite an impressive 58.9% growth in the number of Indian students in Russia from 2022 to 2024, there is a serious structural imbalance. More than 95% of students are majoring exclusively in medicine. After completing their education, the majority of graduates return to India without integrating into Russian society and the economy, which minimizes the long-term effect of this educational export.

Paradoxically, entire fields that are hugely popular among Indian applicants in the US, EU, and Australia are virtually unrepresented in Russia. These include critically important areas for technological development such as new materials production, transport engineering, medical chemistry and instrumentation, and information technology. This imbalance is exacerbated by a poorly developed network of inter-university agreements. Compared to the well-established partnerships with Chinese universities, including numerous joint programs and even institutes, interaction with Indian universities appears less intensive. This highlights a strategic weakness in how Russian education is positioned in the Indian market and the absence of targeted, industry-oriented offerings.

This information gap slows practical cooperation in agriculture, logistics, and other areas despite existing political will and framework agreements.

Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) has been contributing to the process of bridging this gap. It emerged as a unique platform that combines academic traditions of the Oriental Institute, founded in 1899, with the demands of modern economic diplomacy and technological development. As the largest university in the macro-region and a recognized leader in Asian studies in Russia, FEFU serves as a strategic operator for implementing state policies in these fields. 

A pilot model for diversifying scientific and educational cooperation between Russia and India could be the integration of science, education, and production in the agro-industrial complex, which can serve as a benchmark for other sectors. The Far East’s potential in agriculture is enormous: beyond crop production, it includes the development of greenhouse farms and the fishing industry, which saw a 7% increase in transportation in 2025. However, realizing this potential is impossible without modern biotechnologies and specialists skilled in deep processing methods, bioengineering, and aquaculture. FEFU has developed a unique model in partnership with industry leaders, where real manufacturing cases are incorporated into curricula and students can take up internships and participate in joint R&D.

Thus, the strategic priority for the Russian-Indian partnership today is moving beyond trade and isolated projects toward sustainable collaborative ecosystems, with education at their heart. The development of a network of specialized joint educational programs, especially in priority areas for the Far East (agriculture, IT, construction, logistics, tourism), is a direct path to solving the personnel deficit, diversifying the flow of Indian students and, most importantly, forming a common generation of professionals. These specialists will not only possess modern competencies but also serve as living bridges connecting the economies and societies of the two countries.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was furious after a tense call with US President Donald Trump over a new proposal to end the war with Iran, Axios reported on Wednesday, citing three sources familiar with the matter.

One US source briefed on the conversation said Netanyahu’s “hair was on fire” after the call, which took place after Trump delayed a “very major attack” on Iran, saying Gulf leaders asked the US to give diplomacy more time.

The US president has since said the US and Iran are “right on the borderline” between a deal and renewed war.

Netanyahu is “highly skeptical” of the negotiations and wants to resume the war in order to further degrade Iran’s military capabilities and weaken the country by destroying critical infrastructure, Axios reported.

Trump, however, claimed that Netanyahu “will do whatever I want him to do” on Iran, while insisting he has a good relationship with the Israeli leader.

Tehran has confirmed that it is reviewing an updated proposal. However, the Foreign Ministry has said negotiations are continuing on the basis of the 14-point plan previously rejected by the US.

President Masoud Pezeshkian said this week that “dialogue does not mean surrender,” adding that Iran will not retreat from “the legal rights of the people and the country.” Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said talks can succeed if the US ends its “piracy” against Iranian ships and agrees to release frozen funds, while Israel must end its war in Lebanon.

Israeli forces intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters as it approached Gaza on May 18, preventing the vessels from reaching the enclave and detaining more than 400 activists from around 40 countries.

The mission set out from Türkiye to challenge Israel’s naval blockade and draw attention to Gaza’s humanitarian crisis. Those detained included citizens of Italy, the UK, Canada, Türkiye, Greece, France, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Ireland, and New Zealand.

The controversy escalated after Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir released videos showing detained activists zip-tied and kneeling with their foreheads to the ground while he walked among them, mocked them, and described them as supporters of terrorism.

The US has no obligation to give Israel anything and should cut off all aid, conservative American journalist Tucker Carlson has said. America’s association with Israel’s “many crimes” has damaged its global reputation, he argued.

Speaking to Israeli Channel 13 in an interview aired on Tuesday, Carlson said he is “disgusted by the way that Israel treats Arabs, like animals or subhumans,” and argued that the Jewish state has “lost its morality.”

“I think we should stop all aid to Israel, all special deals for Israel. Tomorrow,” he said, adding that the US has no obligation “to lend its moral authority” to Israel.

Because of the US-Israeli war against Iran, Washington’s relationship with West Jerusalem, while well-intentioned, “is hurting the US very badly,” Carlson said.

Tucker Carlson on Israeli Channel 13:

I don't think the United States owes Israel anything. I don't think the United States should give Israel anything.

I think we should stop all aid to Israel, all special deals for Israel tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/npc1ZGKetY

— Clash Report (@clashreport) May 20, 2026

“We can’t afford it, and our standing in the world has declined, and we’re implicated in some of the many crimes Israel has committed,” he said.

Carlson previously described the president’s true religion as “Israelism,” after Trump released a series of controversial religion-themed social media posts and feuded with Pope Leo XIV over the war against Iran.

Despite being a staunch Trump supporter during his reelection campaign, the prominent conservative commentator has increasingly criticized the president on foreign policy. He has joined a growing list of disillusioned MAGA supporters such as ex-congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, commentator Candace Owens, and radio show host Alex Jones.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has wrapped up a two-day state visit to Beijing, during which he and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, hailed “unprecedented” bilateral ties, describing the relationship as a stabilizing force amid growing global turbulence.

The two leaders held nearly three hours of talks in the Great Hall of the People on Wednesday, covering the full spectrum of cooperation – from trade and energy to international security.

Both Putin and Xi emphasized that the strategic partnership is not directed against any third country, but remains “self-sufficient” and serves as an example of how states should build ties in the modern world.

The summit concluded with the signing of more than 40 intergovernmental and corporate agreements covering energy, transport, industrial cooperation, nuclear technology, education, science, artificial intelligence, and media. Moscow and Beijing also announced joint Years of Education for 2026-2027 and agreed to extend their visa-free travel regime until the end of 2027.

Among the key documents adopted were a joint declaration on deepening the comprehensive strategic partnership and a separate statement backing a multipolar world order based on equality, mutual respect, and international law.

Putin and Xi also addressed major international issues, saying that the root causes of the Ukraine conflict should be resolved in line with the UN Charter. They also said the US-Israeli strikes on Iran violate international law and undermine stability in the Middle East.

Moscow and Beijing pledged to oppose hegemony, unilateral pressure, and what they described as the “law of the jungle” in global affairs, arguing that no country or group of countries should dominate international affairs.

Putin confirmed plans to attend the APEC summit in Shenzhen later this year and invited Xi to visit Russia in 2027.

RT captured some of the most memorable moments from the visit, from the ceremonial welcome in Beijing, featuring an honor guard, military orchestra, and children waving Russian and Chinese flags, to Putin’s meeting with Chinese engineer Peng Pai, whom the Russian president first met during his 2000 visit to China, when Peng was a child.

RT’s crew carried out its special coverage of President Putin’s high-profile visit from a fitting setting – Beijing’s Aman Summer Palace. It sits just beyond the East Gate of the Summer Palace, separated from the imperial gardens by a single wall. Originally used to host guests awaiting an audience with Empress Dowager Cixi, the venue still carries the atmosphere of the late Qing era while naturally coexisting with contemporary China.

The palace, which was built in 1750 and badly damaged in 1860 but later restored, is widely regarded as a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design and is included in UNESCO World Heritage list.

The hotel has 51 rooms and suites arranged around courtyards, drawing on the architecture of the surrounding imperial garden area, with guestrooms drawing inspiration from the spirit of the Ming and Qing dynasties.

It also boats a 5,000-square-metre spa with multiple treatment rooms offering herbal compresses, moxibustion and other subtle methods of traditional Chinese medicine. The hotel also has a 25-metre indoor pool set like a piece of jade.

The indictment of former Cuban President Raul Castro by the US Justice Department marks the latest escalation in Washington’s pressure campaign against Havana. Is President Donald Trump trying to repeat the Maduro playbook?

What was Raul Castro charged with?

Unsealed on Wednesday, the indictment accuses Castro of ordering the shooting down of two American planes off the coast of Cuba in 1996. Castro and five of his officials are charged with conspiracy to kill US nationals, destruction of aircraft, and four counts of murder, one for each of the Cuban-Americans killed in the shootdown.

Castro, who was Cuba’s defense minister at the time of the incident, “participated in a conspiracy that ended with Cuban military aircraft firing missiles at those civilian planes and killing four Americans,” acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a press conference in Miami on Wednesday.

What happened in 1996?

On February 24, 1996, Cuban fighter jets shot down two light aircraft which Havana said were violating its airspace. The planes – two Cessna 337 Skymasters – were operated by ‘Brothers to the Rescue’, a group of anti-communist Cubans and Americans led by CIA operative Jose Basulto. The group’s official purpose was to help dissidents to leave Cuba, and to “support the efforts of the Cuban people to free themselves from dictatorship through the use of active non-violence.”

However, one of the organization’s former pilots, Juan Pablo Roque, defected to Cuba two days before the planes were shot down and claimed that Brothers to the Rescue was involved in smuggling weapons on to the island to be used by anti-government guerillas.

In a statement on Tuesday, Cuba’s embassy in the US claimed that the organization’s aircraft committed “more than 25 serious, deliberate and systematic violations” of Cuban airspace between 1994 and 1996. With the US refusing to heed Havana’s written warnings, Cuba had “no choice but the direct defense of its borders,” the embassy added.

Ever since the incident, Basulto has pressed the US government to file criminal charges against Castro.

Will Castro ever see a US courtroom?

There is no indication that Castro, who is now 96 years old, will ever appear in an American court. Cuba has limited diplomatic relations with the US, let alone an extradition treaty, and the Cuban government is highly unlikely to hand over Castro, a former president and revolutionary hero, to the US, where he would face the death penalty if found guilty.

Asked about the likelihood of Castro facing trial in the US, Blanche told reporters that “we expect that he will show up here by his will, or by another way.”

How has Cuba responded?

The indictment “only reveals the arrogance and frustration that the representatives of the empire feel toward the unyielding resolve of the Cuban Revolution,” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said in a statement on X. “This is a political maneuver, devoid of any legal foundation, aimed solely at padding the fabricated dossier they use to justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba.”

.@DiazCanelB

The purported accusation against Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, just announced by the U.S. government, only reveals the arrogance and frustration that the representatives of the empire feel toward the unyielding resolve of the Cuban Revolution and the unity and… https://t.co/jWbV1zDauk

— Cuban Embassy in US (@EmbaCubaUS) May 20, 2026

Is the US planning regime change in Cuba?

Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have made no secret of their desire to overthrow Cuba’s communist government. After indicting and abducting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January, Trump warned that Cuba was “ready to fall” next. In an interview with NBC News the day after the Maduro operation, Rubio stated “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned.”

Three days earlier, US spies told Axios that they believe Cuba has acquired more than 300 military drones in preparation for an attack on the US military base at Guantanamo Bay and targets as far afield as Key West in Florida. Havana ridiculed the claims, accusing the US of fabricating a “fraudulent case” for military intervention.

While it is unclear whether Trump intends to order such intervention, the Pentagon announced on Wednesday that the USS Nimitz carrier strike group had entered the Caribbean. With more than 60 combat aircraft on board, the Nimitz is ideally placed to and equipped to launch military strikes, should they be ordered. Asked by reporters whether he planned to follow the indictment with military action, Trump replied “I don’t want to say that.”

“The potential for an invasion is much higher than it was 24 hours ago,” Daniel Shaw, a professor of Latin American Studies at City University of New York, told RT. “They’re searching for some kind of legal and media justification to go in there, to take out some of these top leaders, and hoping then that the Cuban people will come into the streets so they can justify further penetration.”

Doesn’t this sound familiar?

The Trump administration followed a similar pattern before kidnapping Maduro in a special forces raid on his Caracas residence in January. After threatening to depose Maduro “the easy way or the hard way,” Trump blockaded Venezuelan waters, deployed the USS Gerald R. Ford to the region, and unsealed an indictment against the Venezuelan president moments before the raid. 

While the Justice Department had charged Maduro with drug trafficking in 2020, the superseding indictment unsealed on the day of the raid added his wife and son, and ‘Tren de Aragua’ cartel boss Nino Guerrero to the list of those charged.

In a social media post on Monday, Diaz-Canel warned that any military action against his country would result in “a bloodbath with incalculable consequences” for the US.

What does the US want from Cuba?

The US has demanded that Cuba cut ties with Russia, China, Iran, and pro-Palestinian armed groups. Last month, a US delegation visiting Havana reportedly urged Cuba to transition from socialism to a market-based economy and open the country to foreign investment. In short, Washington is seeking a complete dismantling of Cuba’s communist system and of its foreign partnerships.

In a Spanish-language video address on Wednesday, Rubio offered Cuba $100 million in aid, and, despite the US blockading the island, blamed Cuba’s government for shortages of electricity, food and fuel. Rubio said that Washington will not allow the Cuban government to distribute the aid, and promised to help Cubans “build a better future,” presumably after the overthrow of the government.

🇺🇸🇨🇺 pic.twitter.com/nwEePVJ1lX

— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) May 20, 2026

Cuba’s embassy in Washington accused Rubio of lying “repeatedly and unscrupulously,” while subjecting the country to “cruel and ruthless aggression” via the ongoing blockade.

Shaw, who just returned from a month in Cuba, told RT that he witnessed “hunger, despair, and malnutrition” on the island as a result of the blockade, which he compared to “the tightening of the colonial noose around the neck of the Cuban people.”

Russia is spearheading an international effort to save 80 descendants of the so-called “cocaine hippos” once owned by Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, Global Union of Zoological Institutions (GUZI) head Svetlana Akulova has said.

Colombian authorities plan to euthanize the animals, which they see as a growing invasive threat.

Akulova, who is also the director of the Moscow Zoo, described the effort as an “unprecedented international campaign” to save the animals.

Escobar imported four hippos from Africa for his private zoo in the 1980s. After he was killed in 1993, the animals were left behind on his abandoned estate and eventually escaped into the surrounding countryside, where they multiplied unchecked.

The herd has swelled to nearly 200 animals and could explode past 1,000 within a decade, according to local authorities. They say the hippos are tearing up riverbanks, disrupting local ecosystems, and increasingly coming into conflict with nearby communities and fishermen.

Environment Minister Irene Velez has defended the planned cull as necessary to protect Colombia’s ecosystems.

Authorities have long argued that relocating the animals was unfeasible, while animal rights activists have fiercely opposed the euthanasia plan. Senator Andrea Padilla called the move “cruel,” writing on X that “massacres will never be acceptable.”

India’s Vantara, one of the world’s largest animal rescue and rehabilitation centers, has joined the Russian-led effort and offered to relocate the hippos to a specially designed sanctuary.

”These 80 hippos did not choose where to be born, nor did they create the circumstances they now face,” Anant Ambani, Vantara founder said in a statement. “They are living, sentient beings, and if we have the capacity to save them through a safe and humane solution, we have the responsibility to try,” he added.

GUZI said it was also working on a “fair distribution” of the animals among accredited institutions to tackle genetic problems caused by the herd’s limited gene pool.

A former AI engineer at Google DeepMind has accused the US tech giant of unfairly dismissing him over protests against the company’s deals with Israel, The Guardian reported on Wednesday. The man described the decision to fire him as discriminatory and filed a claim with a British employment tribunal.

Google’s ties with the Israeli government, including a $1.2 billion AI and cloud computing contract signed jointly with Amazon, have repeatedly sparked employee protests. In 2024 alone, the company fired dozens of dissenting staff members.

According to the engineer, he was called into a meeting with a manager that led to his dismissal after distributing flyers around DeepMind’s London office reading: “Google provides military AI to forces committing genocide” and “Is your paycheck worth this?” He also reportedly sent emails to his colleagues and called on them to unionize.

In October, several media outlets reported that the 2021 agreement Google and Amazon signed with Israel barred the companies from restricting West Jerusalem’s access to their services even in cases it violated their terms of use. The deal also reportedly included clauses explicitly preventing the two tech giants from breaking ties with Israel under pressure from employees, shareholders and activists.

Israel’s contracts with US tech companies have come under increased scrutiny amid accusations that its military campaign in Gaza following the 2023 Hamas attack amounts to genocide. In 2024, Gaby Portnoy, head of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, credited the Google-Amazon Nimbus Project with enabling “phenomenal things” in combat that he said “constitute a significant part of victory.”

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has summoned Israel’s ambassador in Rome after condemning the treatment of pro-Palestinian activists detained during Israel’s interception of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.

In a sharply worded statement on Wednesday, Meloni described footage showing Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir taunting the detainees as “unacceptable.”

“It is inadmissible that these demonstrators, including many Italian citizens, are subjected to this treatment that violates human dignity,” she wrote.

While Meloni was among Israel’s strongest EU supporters after the October 2023 Hamas attacks, she has become increasingly critical of its actions in Gaza, describing the humanitarian situation as “unacceptable” and warning that Israel has gone beyond “the principle of proportionality.”

The Israeli ambassador will be asked to provide “formal clarifications,” while Rome demands the immediate release of Italian citizens arrested by Israel, according to the statement. Meloni also demanded an apology over the treatment of the demonstrators and “for the total contempt shown toward the explicit requests of the Italian Government.”

The diplomatic row erupted after Israeli forces intercepted a convoy of vessels that departed from Türkiye carrying humanitarian aid for Gaza. Around 430 activists from more than 40 countries were detained, some for days.

Ben-Gvir posted a video on X on Wednesday showing detainees kneeling with their hands bound. In the footage, the far-right minister appears to mock the activists while urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow them to remain imprisoned “for a long, long time.”

Netanyahu later sought to distance himself from the incident, saying Ben-Gvir’s conduct toward the activists “is not consistent with the values and norms of the State of Israel.” Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said Ben-Gvir “caused harm” to Israel with his “disgraceful display.”

In response, Ben-Gvir doubled down and accused Sa’ar of submitting to “supporters of terrorism.”

Israeli officials nevertheless defended the interception, describing the flotilla as a “PR stunt at the service of Hamas.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump could meet on the sidelines of the APEC summit in China in November, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov has said, while stressing that no talks are currently planned. 

Putin, who has just concluded his official two-day visit to China, told Chinese President Xi Jinping that he plans to attend the APEC summit in Shenzhen on November 18-19. Trump, who also traveled to China last week, has reportedly signaled that he intends to take part as well. 

“Our president has confirmed that he will come to the APEC summit,” Ushakov told reporters on Wednesday. “I think that, in any case, if both leaders are in China, they will probably cross paths and hold some kind of meeting,” he said. 

The Russian presidential aide added that “so far this has not yet been agreed, but given that such a prospect exists, it is unlikely that anyone would refuse it.”  

A potential meeting in China would follow the August 2025 summit between Putin and Trump in Alaska – the first and only face-to-face meeting between Russian and US leaders since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. The meeting ended without a ceasefire deal but was described by both sides as productive.   

Since returning to the White House, Trump has alternated between criticizing Putin over the lack of progress toward a Ukraine peace deal and praising their personal relationship. The two leaders have held several phone calls focused on the Ukraine conflict and other major international issues, including the US-Israeli war with Iran. 

Russia has maintained that any peaceful settlement is predicated on Kiev withdrawing from the remaining areas of Donbass that are still under its control.

Former Cuban President Raul Castro has been indicted by the US Justice Department. The indictment came months after US President Donald Trump warned that Cuba would be “next” after Venezuela was targeted for regime change.

Handed down on Wednesday, the widely-expected indictment accuses Castro of ordering the shootdown of two American planes operated by anti-communist Cuban exiles off the island’s coast in 1996. Cuba said at the time that the planes were connected to the US Air Force, and were warned to divert before they were fired upon.

The indictment was handed down shortly before a ceremony in Miami commemorating the incident. 

The 94-year-old Castro and five of his officials are charged with conspiracy to kill US nationals, destruction of aircraft, and four counts of murder, one for each of the Cuban-Americans killed in the shootdown.

In a statement earlier on Wednesday, Trump said “America will not tolerate a rogue state harboring hostile foreign military, intelligence and terror operations just ninety miles from the American homeland.”

Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have repeatedly threatened Cuba with military action this year. After abducting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January, Trump imposed a near-total energy blockade on Cuba, before declaring that “Cuba is next” on his list of regime-change targets. 

Earlier on Wednesday, the Pentagon announced that the USS Nimitz carrier strike group arrived in the Caribbean, mirroring the military buildup that preceded the operation against Maduro.

The Justice Department also indicted Maduro before US special forces kidnapped him in a raid on his residence in Caracas.

May 30 marks the 124th anniversary of Cuba’s independence from Spain. In a Spanish-language video marking the occasion, Rubio offered to send $100 million in aid to Cuba, provided it is distributed by “the Catholic church or other trusted charitable groups,” and to help build “a new Cuba,” presumably after the overthrow of the government.

In response, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez called Rubio a “mouthpiece of corrupt and vengeful interests,” referring to anti-communist exiles “concentrated in South Florida.”

In mid-May 2026, the dispute between Greece and Türkiye again moved from diplomacy into the more dangerous world of maps, laws, and military warnings.

Turkish officials confirmed that work is continuing on a new law on maritime jurisdiction areas, while Greek officials immediately treated the initiative as an attempt to give legal form to Ankara’s Blue Homeland doctrine. The message from Athens was that a unilateral Turkish move concerning maritime zones in the Aegean would be rejected as legally meaningless and politically provocative. Türkiye, meanwhile, says it is not attacking anyone but protecting its maritime rights and organizing state policy in the surrounding seas.

The Blue Homeland doctrine, Mavi Vatan in Turkish, is built around a simple but emotionally powerful idea. Türkiye must not think of its sovereignty only through land borders, because the seas around it are also part of its security, economic, and regional future. The Aegean, the Black, and the Eastern Mediterranean seas are filled with trade, naval movement, undersea infrastructure, and geopolitical competition. If Ankara does not defend its interests there, supporters of this doctrine argue, other actors will draw the maps for it.

Talk moves into law

The Blue Homeland concept emerged from Turkish naval and strategic circles, and its intellectual architects are usually identified as retired admiral Cem Gürdeniz and retired rear admiral Cihat Yaycı. Gürdeniz is widely associated with the birth and popularization of the phrase Mavi Vatan in the mid 2000s, while Yaycı helped transform the idea into a more concrete geopolitical and legal doctrine.

Gürdeniz gave the concept its broader strategic language, turning the sea into a central element of Turkish geopolitical imagination. Yaycı, in turn, worked to give this imagination a more technical and cartographic form. He linked maritime zones, continental shelves, island disputes, and the Eastern Mediterranean into a single strategic picture. In a sense, Blue Homeland is a response to a deep Turkish anxiety that the country was being pushed away from the seas that surround it.

This origin also explains why the doctrine cannot be reduced to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s personal foreign policy. Blue Homeland came from a tradition that saw Türkiye’s future as dependent on becoming a serious maritime power, and was later absorbed by politics and became part of a broader national narrative. That is one of the reasons it has survived different tactical phases in Turkish politics. It speaks not only to Islamists, nationalists or naval officers, but to a wider feeling inside Türkiye that the country has been constrained by a regional order designed by others.

This is where the controversy over 152 small islands, islets, and reefs becomes so sensitive. In Turkish nationalist and strategic discourse, these formations are often described as territories whose status was not clearly defined by international agreements. Greece rejects this argument and insists that the sovereignty of its islands is not up for discussion.

The memory of the 1996 Imia/Kardak crisis still hangs over both countries. That confrontation began around small uninhabited islets, but it nearly pushed Greece and Türkiye into open conflict. In the Aegean, escalation can begin with a patrol boat, a helicopter, a fishing vessel, a television broadcast or a nationalist post on social media. When geography is tight and political nerves are exposed, escalation can move faster than diplomacy.

The current situation is especially fragile because the dispute is moving from rhetoric into legislation. A speech can be corrected, and a military exercise can end, but a law has a different political weight. If Ankara codifies Blue Homeland, it will not automatically change international law, yet it may change Turkish politics. It would make future compromises harder and allow nationalist forces to accuse any government of giving up rights that had already been written into law.

When no one is looking

The issue’s flashpoint potential is exacerbated by its timing. The Aegean is no longer living inside a stable international environment where major powers can freeze local conflicts and force allies back into predictable channels. The global order is going through a harsh transformation, where the war around Iran has turned the wider Middle East into a zone of constant military and economic nervousness. That conflict and the resulting shipping crisis has shown that maritime space has again become one of the main arteries of war.

This wider crisis changes how Ankara and Athens view the same sea. When the region is calm, Greece and Türkiye can keep their disputes inside the diplomatic space and NATO channels. But when the Strait of Hormuz demonstrates how quickly maritime routes can become battlefields, every coastal state starts thinking in terms of strategic depth. Türkiye looks at this chaos and sees one more argument for Blue Homeland. Greece looks at it and sees all the more reason not to allow grey zones to appear in the Aegean.

There is also the Trump factor. As the most important member of NATO, you would expect Washington to act as a manager of conflict between allies, but it currently has its hands full with the Iran war and the domestic pressures that come with it. A potential escalation between Greece and Türkiye is unlikely to get any reliable American mediation.

For Ankara, this can look like a window of opportunity to formalize Blue Homeland and push its maritime claims with greater confidence. For Athens, it’s a threatening moment when the political umbrella of NATO security is wavering.

A war in the Aegean is not necessarily coming, but the trigger for such a war has become easier to activate. A legal bill in Ankara, a Greek military statement, a patrol near a disputed reef, a media campaign about occupied islands or a naval incident that might once have been contained – any of those, unfolding in a world where everyone is already armed and on edge, and a local dispute can easily stop being local.

Türkiye believes it has reasons to be firm. From Ankara’s point of view, Greece uses its islands, many of them located very close to the Turkish coast, to claim maritime zones that would leave Türkiye with limited room in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean. Turkish officials and analysts often argue that a long continental coastline cannot be trapped by small islands lying just off that coast. They present Blue Homeland not as expansion, but as resistance to what they see as an unfair regional order.

Greece sees the same argument as revisionism. For Athens, the islands are inhabited communities, military positions, historical spaces, and sovereign territory. If Greece accepts that their status or maritime effect can be negotiated under pressure, many Greeks fear that the entire Aegean order could begin to unravel.

Each side has built its own story around this dispute – and each one sees itself as being on the defensive and the other one as being the threat. Turkish officials argue that Greece wants to imprison their country along the Anatolian coast, while Greek officials warn that Türkiye wants to revise borders and treaties through pressure.

Escalation as the only option?

The media environment is pouring even more fuel onto the fire. While pro-government outlets in Türkiye usually maintain some restraint, nationalist channels and social media accounts often don’t. They speak about “stolen islands,” “occupation” and “humiliation.” Greek media and political voices often respond with the same emotional force, warning that Ankara is preparing a direct challenge to Greek sovereignty.

NATO cannot easily solve this problem, even though both Greece and Türkiye are members of the alliance. Membership reduces the chance of a full-scale war, but it does not remove the dispute. NATO can call for restraint, provide military communication, and help avoid accidents, but it cannot make rulings on the sovereignty of islands. The alliance wants unity, but it can’t do anything about an age-old rivalry between two of its members.

The EU has influence, but not the kind of influence that could bring about a settlement – because Greece and Cyprus are members, but Türkiye isn’t. In fact, it’s a long-time aspirant, often feeling bitter over other countries cutting the ‘membership queue’ – there’ve been 15 of them since Ankara applied to become part of the bloc. So for Türkiye, Brussels is part of the diplomatic environment, but it’s on the Greeks’ and the Cypriots’ side and not a neutral judge of the EU, so Athens and Nicosia expect European solidarity. Ankara, however, often sees EU statements as Greek and Cypriot positions in European language.

Sooner or later, Athens and Ankara will have to deal with the maritime question seriously, simply by virtue of immutable geography. The Aegean cannot remain governed in crisis mode forever, and they will have to choose between a difficult diplomatic process and a future in which every small incident risks becoming the spark of conflict.

For now, the region is living through controlled escalation. Neither side appears to want war, but both are making moves that reduce flexibility and increase suspicion. This is the most dangerous kind of calm – where governments can say that everything is under control, while the political space for de-escalation is shrinking by the day until conflict becomes the only possible development.

The Blue Homeland naval doctrine has become a statement of Türkiye’s place in the region and its refusal to accept what it sees as maritime confinement. Greek resistance to it is, in turn, the defense of a national map, a historical memory, and a state identity built around the islands of the Aegean. At its heart, this dispute is about national dignity – and that is what makes it so dangerous.

Trump-endorsed Republican candidate Ed Gallrein has defeated Representative Thomas Massie in a primary election in Kentucky, in a result that the Israel lobby spent tens of millions of dollars to secure.

Gallrein defeated Massie by 54.9% to 45.1% in Tuesday’s election, and will face off against Democratic candidate Melissa Strange this November. Massie had comfortably held Kentucky’s fourth congressional district since 2012, and easily fended off five primary challenges in the intervening years, but this year faced intense pressure from the president and pro-Israel megadonors.

Massie’s insistence that Donald Trump release the full, unredacted Epstein files and refusal to back the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ spending package angered the president, who announced last year that he would back “a wonderful American Patriot” to contest the primary.

Gallrein’s campaign was boosted by the powerful Israel lobby, with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), and other special interest groups and donors pouring $15.5 million into the race, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.

Massie is a vocal critic of US aid to Israel, and of Israel’s influence over American politics via lobbying groups like AIPAC. The election, he said last week, is “a referendum on whether Israel gets to buy seats in Congress.”

The unprecedented outlay by AIPAC and the RJC helped make the election the most expensive primary in American history, with almost $33 million in total spent on advertising.

In his concession speech, Massie mocked the role of the Israel lobby in Gallrein’s victory. “I would have come out sooner but I had to call my opponent and concede and it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv,” he said, to cheers from his supporters.

🚨 JUST IN — REP. THOMAS MASSIE CONCEDES: "I would've come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent and concede."

"And it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv."

"I have called and conceded the race." pic.twitter.com/8Y70wGzp36

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) May 20, 2026

The result further cements Trump’s hold over the Republican Party. In another primary election in Kentucky on Tuesday, Trump-backed candidate Ralph Alvarado beat four challengers to replace outgoing Rep. Andy Barr. Last week, Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy lost a primary election to the Trump-backed Julia Letlow, while Trump has also waded into next week’s primary in Texas, endorsing former state Attorney-General Ken Paxton to take on Senator John Cornyn.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel have done “unimaginable damage” to the EU through a series of disastrous policies, former Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller has said.

Miller, who was responsible for Warsaw’s 2004 accession to the EU, took to X on Tuesday after Merkel received the newly created European Order of Merit award, presented to her by von der Leyen during a ceremony in Strasbourg.

“Merkel and von der Leyen are two German women who have caused unimaginable damage to the European Union. I hope that justice will still catch up with them,” Miller wrote.

Merkel led Germany from 2005 to 2021 through multiple crises. Among her most divisive policies was the decision to admit large numbers of asylum seekers during the 2015 migration crisis.

Merkel also took part in negotiating the 2014 and 2015 Minsk accords between Russia and Ukraine, admitting in 2022 that the agreements were intended in part to “give Ukraine time” to strengthen its military. Moscow said it was “deceived” by the deal’s European guarantors.

Von der Leyen, meanwhile, has become one of the EU’s most polarizing leaders over her backing for aid to Ukraine and sweeping sanctions on Russia that critics say have fueled inflation and put pressure on European industry.

Critics also accuse von der Leyen of centralizing power and sidestepping traditional EU decision-making processes, particularly through efforts to weaken or abolish member states’ veto powers.

“The European Union is not made up entirely of idiots, but Ms. Kallas undoubtedly hails from that species,” Miller wrote.

The remarks echo Russian criticism of the current EU leadership. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in 2025 there were “no prospects for meaningful dialogue with the bulk of these elites in Europe,” while former President Dmitry Medvedev has described European leaders as “destructive and narrow-minded people.”

The South African government has condemned what it called the “illegal abduction” of its nationals aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla, a civilian-led humanitarian mission bound for Gaza that was reportedly intercepted by Israeli forces.

The Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) said it viewed the incident with “grave concern”, warning that South African citizens may now be detained or imprisoned in Israel following the seizure of the vessel.

”The Government of South Africa notes with grave concern reports that following the illegal seizure of the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) bound for Gaza, South African nationals have been abducted in international waters and may now be facing detention/imprisonment in Israel,” the department said.

The flotilla was described by the government as a peaceful humanitarian initiative aimed at drawing international attention to the worsening crisis in Gaza while delivering aid to Palestinians affected by the ongoing conflict.

”It must be underscored that the Flotilla, a civilian-led initiative embarked upon a peaceful and humanitarian mission,” Dirco said.

”Its participants aim to draw attention to the severe and urgent humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people in Gaza and to deliver vital aid to alleviate the widespread suffering of a people living under occupation and genocide.”

“The safety, security and physical integrity of all unarmed participants aboard the Flotilla, including South African citizens, are of paramount importance,” the department added.

The department further warned that “any forceful detention of these vessels in international waters constitutes a grave breach of international legal norms and fundamental human rights.”

Pretoria said it would engage relevant stakeholders and organisations linked to the flotilla in efforts to secure the release of those affected.

South Africa also called on the international community to ensure the protection of humanitarian missions and adherence to international law.

”We further call upon the international community and all relevant parties to uphold their obligations under international law and to ensure the safe and unimpeded passage of humanitarian missions,” Dirco said in conclusion.

🚨 SOS - Aqir (Munki) Name Intercepted
SOS: the israeli occupation has again illegally and violently intercepted our international fleet of humanitarian vessels and abducted our volunteers as they undertake a legitimate mission to break the illegal siege on Gaza and open a… pic.twitter.com/baTm9bjI5U

— Global Sumud Flotilla (@gbsumudflotilla) May 18, 2026

First published by IOL

The UK government has denied easing sanctions on Russia after coming under fire for issuing a temporary license allowing imports of Russian-origin diesel and jet fuel. London said the move was necessary to stabilize energy markets disrupted by the Middle East conflict.

The license, which takes effect on Wednesday, effectively reverses a pledge by Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government to ban imports of fuel made from Russian crude abroad, leaving a route for sanctioned oil to enter the British market through refiners in countries such as India and Türkiye. Western nations have imposed sanctions and price-cap measures on Russian oil exports since the 2022 escalation of the Ukraine conflict in an effort to reduce Moscow’s revenues.

The decision follows a similar move by the US, which on Monday extended a sanctions waiver allowing limited purchases of Russian seaborne oil to help vulnerable countries cope with supply disruptions after the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz during the US-Israeli war on Iran.

The license has sparked a wave of criticism from the Conservative Party. Former Conservative cabinet minister David Lidington rushed to brand the government decision to weaken sanctions on Russian oil “an appalling betrayal of Ukraine.” He was echoed by Tory leader Kemi Badenoch who posted on X that “after 18 months of ‘standing up to Putin’, the Labour government quietly eased the restrictions.”

Starmer’s cabinet then rushed to dismiss the accusations, framing them as a misunderstanding stemming from poor communication. “We’ve handled this clumsily,” a Business and Trade Department official, Chris Bryant, told the Commons, apologizing for “giving the wrong impression.”

The prime minister himself, who is facing a crisis at home and calls to resign, claimed the licenses were “short-term” and insisted that the government was in fact tightening sanctions by simultaneously introducing “a strong new package” of restrictions targeting Russian LNG and refined oil products.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksander Novak said the moves by Britain and the US showed that the Western sanctions policy was beginning to crack under pressure from the Middle East energy crisis.

“Without Russian oil and oil products, global markets cannot cope today,” Novak told Vesti on Wednesday.

Moscow has repeatedly signaled that it is ready to plug any oil supply gaps triggered by the Middle East conflict. Some Asian countries have already moved to secure Russian crude since Washington first eased the restrictions.

Nearly 600 suspected Ebola infections and at least 139 suspected deaths have been reported during the latest outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Wednesday. 

Congolese Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba has reported the country has so far recorded 543 suspected Ebola cases. 

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that the outbreak could worsen rapidly, citing several factors driving the spread of the virus. According to the WHO, the number of cases is expected to rise further because Ebola had likely been “circulating for weeks” before health authorities detected the outbreak. Cases have already been identified in several urban areas, while healthcare workers are among the dead, raising fears of transmission inside medical facilities. 

“The province of Ituri is highly insecure,” Ghebreyesus stated. 

The African state continues to grapple with instability as the M23 rebel group maintains control over parts of the region, fueling ongoing clashes and humanitarian crises. 

Ghebreyesus also warned that the outbreak involves the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, for which there are currently no approved vaccines or treatments. The affected area is a mining zone with constant population movement, increasing the risk of the virus spreading further across the region. 

African countries are also tightening Ebola prevention measures. Burundi, Zambia, and Tanzania have strengthened border controls, surveillance, and testing capacity, while Rwanda temporarily closed its border with DR Congo.

DR Congo and Uganda confirmed their first Ebola cases on May 15. The WHO declared the outbreak a global public health emergency on Sunday.

Senior Ukrainian police officials have been detained on suspicion of accepting regular bribes from underground porn studios.

Among the high-ranking law enforcement figures arrested on Wednesday in western Ukraine were the police chief of Ivano-Frankovsk Region and his deputy, as well as deputy police chiefs from the Ternopol and Zhitomir regions, authorities said.

A fifth suspect works in the Interior Ministry’s garage and served as a personal driver for a deputy minister, officials said. Investigators allege that he acted as an intermediary and money courier in the corruption scheme.

The anti-graft operation, carried out by several agencies together with the National Police’s internal investigations division, targeted the production of adult content, an illegal but reportedly thriving industry in Ukraine. The suspects are accused of receiving monthly payments of around $25,000 per studio in exchange for shielding porn producers from law enforcement scrutiny.

Investigators seized six luxury cars, five expensive Swiss watches, and cash worth roughly $510,000 while executing search warrants connected to the case, Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko said.

Opinion polls have suggested that widespread government corruption is seen by many Ukrainians as an even greater threat to the country than the conflict with Russia. Last week, Andrey Yermak, a former chief of staff to Vladimir Zelensky, was arrested in a money-laundering case. He was released on Monday after backers posted bail of $3.2 million on his behalf.

Yermak is linked to a broader investigation into an alleged criminal network said to have been led by Timur Mindich, a longtime associate of Zelensky who fled Ukraine last November shortly before being indicted.

Nigerian anti-graft authorities have arrested former Power Minister Saleh Mamman, days after he was sentenced in absentia to 75 years in prison for fraud and money laundering linked to major state-backed electricity projects.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said Mamman was arrested early Tuesday in the Rigasa area of Kaduna State after “weeks of intensive surveillance and intelligence gathering.” 

“For us, getting the convict to serve his jail terms is extremely important in view of the seriousness with which we are tackling corrupt practices,” EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede told reporters, adding that Mamman would be transferred to the correctional authorities.

Mamman was found guilty on May 7 on all 12 counts related to the diversion of funds meant for the Zungeru and Mambilla hydroelectric power projects meant to boost Nigeria’s chronically unreliable electricity supply, with planned capacities of 3,050MW and 700MW, respectively.

The Federal High Court in Abuja held that Mamman and his associates diverted at least 22 billion naira (about $16 million) from funds allocated to the projects. Mamman was absent from court during the ruling, prompting Judge James Omotosho to order national and international security agencies to arrest him and hand him over to the authorities. The judge also ordered the forfeiture of the former minister’s Abuja properties and foreign currencies recovered from him. The EFCC said the former minister went “underground” after he was sentenced.

Former Accountant-General Ahmed Idris is also facing trial over an alleged 109 billion naira fraud, while former Petroleum Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke is on trial in London on bribery charges linked to her tenure from 2010 to 2015.

The Pentagon has once again refused to admit responsibility for a strike on an Iranian school that killed more than 170 people, most of them children, despite pressure from US lawmakers.

The Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab was hit on February 28, the first day of the US-Israeli bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic. According to Iranian officials, 175 people were killed, most of them children.

US officials initially offered conflicting explanations, with President Donald Trump even suggesting the strike was “done by Iran.” Investigations by media outlets and analysts later concluded that the school was likely hit by a US-made missile.

An internal military probe reportedly found US forces likely used “outdated targeting data” that misidentified the school as part of a nearby Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps naval base. The Pentagon later elevated the investigation but has since only said that it is ongoing.

“It’s been 80 days or thereabouts since the initial bombing campaign that struck the girls’ school. It’s really pretty clear what happened there,” Representative Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the committee, said.

He accused the Pentagon of “endless stalling,” noting that it previously moved much faster to acknowledge “these types of mistakes” even before completing formal probes.

“Can you at this moment acknowledge that that mistake was made and that we were responsible for it?” Smith asked Cooper, who replied that “the US does not deliberately target civilians” and reiterated that the investigation is ongoing.

Cooper deflected, saying “it’s a complex investigation” and claiming that the school was located “on an active IRGC cruise missile base,” while promising lawmakers a report once the probe is complete.

Archived copies of the school’s official website, however, indicate that the school was adjacent to – not inside – the military compound and separated from it by a fence visible in satellite imagery. Reacting to Cooper’s remarks, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei called his claims “an appalling lie.”

“This shameless distortion is a clear attempt to obscure the severe reality,” he wrote on X on Wednesday, calling for accountability and describing the strike as “a grave violation of international humanitarian law” and “a clear war crime.”

The claim by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) that the targeted #Shajareh_Tayyebeh Elementary School in #Minab was located within a "missile launch facility" is a baseless fabrication and an appalling lie.

This shameless distortion is a clear attempt to obscure the severe…

— Esmaeil Baqaei (@IRIMFA_SPOX) May 19, 2026

The tragedy sparked international outrage. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the US of “cruelty, cynicism, and dehumanization.” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez expressed solidarity with the victims of the “massacre.”

“We may have to give Iran another big hit… I’m saying two or three days, maybe Friday, Saturday, Sunday, something, maybe early next week, a limited period of time, because we can’t let them have a new nuclear weapon,” he told reporters on Tuesday.