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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.”

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

Almost two out of three violent attacks against politicians in Germany in 2025 targeted members of Alternative for Germany (AfD), government data shows. An MP from the right-wing party blamed the development on what he called a years-long defamation campaign.

AfD politicians were targets in a total of 121 cases last year, almost twice as many as all other major German political parties combined, the federal government said in a response to a parliamentary inquiry by AfD MP Martin Hess. The party was also the most frequent target of non-violent politically motivated offenses, the data suggested. The total number of crimes committed against the AfD in 2025 surpassed 1,800.

Around 60% of violent politically-motivated crimes were committed by left-wing suspects, Nius media outlet reported, citing police data provided by the government. Only 11% of offenses were reportedly attributed to right-wing suspects.

Hess, the MP and a former police officer, blamed the “unacceptable development” on what he called a targeted effort to discredit his party.

“Those who constantly defame, delegitimize and dehumanize the AfD and its supporters shouldn’t be surprised when enemies of democracy see in this a call to violence,” he said. The government maintained it saw no indication that the attacks on the AfD were “systematically planned,” according to Nius.

The right-wing party professes an anti-immigration platform and opposes Berlin’s sanctions on Russia. It has faced a boycott from the mainstream German parties, with some of its opponents labeling it “unconstitutional.” The AfD has nevertheless surpassed the CDU in terms of public support, becoming the most popular party in Germany, according to a poll last month.

Moscow and Beijing have signed around 40 cooperation documents and issued two major declarations during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.

Putin’s official visit came just days after Xi’s summit with US President Donald Trump and coincided with the 25th anniversary of the Russia-China Treaty of Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation, a landmark agreement that laid the foundation for the countries’ strategic partnership.

The Sino-Russian talks were held in a “traditionally warm, comradely and constructive atmosphere” with agreements focusing on “the further deepening of our economic cooperation,” Putin said at a press conference following the negotiations. 

Xi hailed the talks as “in-depth, friendly and fruitful” and noted that relations between China and Russia have “reached a new milestone.” The Chinese president said that Beijing and Moscow should align their national development goals and cooperation in energy, artificial intelligence and technological innovation for the sake of the prosperity of both.

• Putin and Xi signed a joint declaration on strengthening the Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership, pledging to expand military, technological, trade, and economic cooperation.

• The two leaders also adopted a declaration on global multipolarity, calling for a new model of international relations based on equality, mutual respect, and mutually beneficial cooperation.

• Moscow and Beijing additionally launched a joint “Year of Education” initiative designed to deepen long-term academic and cultural ties through expanded student exchange programs.

• Putin said a significant share of the agreements focused on economic cooperation. Bilateral trade exceeded $240 billion last year and expanded by a further 20% in the first four months of 2026. 

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The US Senate has advanced a resolution aimed at curbing President Donald Trump’s authority to continue military operations against Iran without congressional approval or a debate on the rationale, cost, strategy, and clear end goal.

The chamber voted 50-47 on Tuesday to take up the war powers resolution, which would require Trump to end the hostilities against Iran, marking the first time either chamber has moved this measure forward since the conflict began in February.

Four Republicans – Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – joined almost all Senate Democrats in supporting the eighth attempt to advance the measure. Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the only Democrat to vote against it, while three Republicans did not vote. Cassidy, who previously opposed the measure, switched sides after losing a primary race in which Trump endorsed his opponent.

Even so, Democrats say the vote is politically significant, arguing that it forces Republicans to go on record over an increasingly unpopular and costly conflict. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer urged lawmakers to back the resolution, accusing Trump of acting “like a toddler playing with a loaded gun.”

The push comes after the 60-day deadline set by the 1973 War Powers Resolution expired on May 1. The law requires the president to obtain congressional authorization within 60 days of introducing US forces into a conflict or end their involvement, with a possible additional 30 days for withdrawal.

Critics have rejected this argument, pointing to the continued US naval blockade of Iranian ports and the fact that US forces remain positioned for possible renewed strikes. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has also told lawmakers that the administration believes the ceasefire pauses or stops the 60-day clock, an interpretation that Democrats and some Republicans have questioned.

The administration of President Donald Trump is reportedly set to tell European NATO members that the US will reduce the military capabilities available to the bloc in the event of a major crisis, including an attack on a member state.

Although the composition of the forces assigned under the NATO Force Model is classified, the Pentagon has decided to “significantly scale down” its commitment, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

The plan is expected to be announced at a meeting of defense policy chiefs in Brussels on May 22, according to three anonymous sources familiar with the matter. The US is expected to be represented at the meeting by Alex Velez-Green, a senior aide to Undersecretary of War Elbridge Colby.

The adjustment of the NATO Force Model has reportedly become a key priority for Colby’s team ahead of the next NATO leaders’ summit, which will take place in Türkiye in July. Despite pushing the Europeans to take the lead on conventional forces, Colby previously said the US would “strenuously oppose” them in developing nuclear weapons to replace the US nuclear umbrella.

The White House has reportedly drawn up a NATO “naughty and nice” list to reward those who supported the US-Israeli war against Iran and punish those who did not, including by shifting troops, scaling back exercises, or redirecting military cooperation.

Earlier this month, the Pentagon canceled the planned rotation of 4,000 troops into Poland, shortly after announcing the withdrawal of 5,000 soldiers from Germany. US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has also reportedly canceled the deployment to Germany of a battalion specializing in long-range missiles.

Moscow has condemned the militarization of Europe, arguing that Western governments are using “ostentatious Russophobia” to justify turning the EU into a military bloc and to divert attention away from domestic issues.

Beijing stands as Moscow’s “most powerful strategic partner,” with Russia’s massive natural reserves and cheap energy making it a perfect fit for cooperation in artificial intelligence development, Kremlin investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev has said.

Speaking to journalists at Tsinghua University in Beijing on Tuesday, Dmitriev, who heads the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), said that Russia and China maintain “a comprehensive investment partnership.”

“Russia has a number of very strong competitive advantages” as it is “a leader in the world in terms of resource reserves” and “can provide the cheapest energy for artificial intelligence in the world,” he said. “We communicate with Chinese partners on projects in the fields of AI, logistics, and infrastructure.”

Speaking to Tsinghua University students on Tuesday, Dmitriev estimated that Russia could fuel AI development and operation ten times cheaper than any other source.

“It was a smarter, more intelligent, more efficient way to think about AI,” including regarding “open sourcing models,” he said. DeepSeek “broke the monopoly of some of the countries who tried to create technology monopoly,” he said.

China and the Global South are now the drivers of global growth, but certain nations are still “not willing to give up constructs that they have to protect their position,” Dmitriev added.

Brussels should strip fighting-age Ukrainian men of “temporary protection” status, Ylva Johansson, the bloc’s special envoy for Ukrainians in the EU, has said.

A total of 4.33 million Ukrainians were living under temporary protection status in the EU as of March 31, 2026, according to the bloc’s statistics agency, Eurostat. Around a quarter of them were men aged between 18 and 64, the data showed, indicating that the bloc could be hosting up to a million of men Kiev deems to be of fighting age.

Ukraine announced a general mobilization shortly after the escalation of the conflict with Russia in 2022, barring men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country. Last year, Kiev relaxed the restrictions, allowing men aged 18 to 22 to cross the border.

“It does not seem quite logical that many fighting-age men, who have no right to leave Ukraine, immediately get temporary protection once they cross the border, maybe even illegally,” Johansson told the German state-funded DW broadcaster last week. “I think this is a bit of a controversial signal that we are sending to Ukraine, because we are also supporting Ukraine in a military way,” she added.

Ukraine has had to rely on mandatory – and often forced – mobilization to replenish its military ranks amid chronic troop shortage and mass desertions as well as draft dodging.

The recruitment drive has grown increasingly brutal over the years, with hundreds of videos showing draft patrols abducting men from streets and even shops. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians have fled to the EU to avoid being conscripted.

CNN reported in December that over 30,000 people had crossed into Romania alone since the Ukraine conflict escalated in February 2022. Moscow has previously accused Kiev’s Western backers of waging a proxy war “to the last Ukrainian” against Russia.

President Donald Trump and pro-Israel groups have helped unseat Representative Thomas Massie, a hardline conservative who broke with the president over Israel, Iran, and the Epstein files, in what became the most expensive US House primary in history.

Ed Gallrein, a retired Navy SEAL and farmer who previously ran unsuccessfully for the Kentucky state Senate in 2024, defeated Massie after pro-Israel groups poured more than $10 million into Tuesday’s Republican primary.

Massie is firmly in the latter camp. In his 14 years in Congress, Massie has opposed every gun control measure that has come before the House of Representatives, pushed to abolish the Department of Education, and voted to deny citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants. On foreign policy, he has backed the withdrawal of US troops from the Middle East, voted against multiple military aid packages for Ukraine, and in October 2023 was the only Republican to vote against a resolution guaranteeing American support for Israel’s war on Gaza.

Why does Trump want Massie out?

Trump endorsed Massie in the 2022 Republican primary, calling him a “conservative warrior” and a “first-rate defender of the Constitution.” However, the two had an uneasy relationship, with Trump branding Massie a “third rate Grandstander” and suggesting he be thrown out of the GOP for opposing the president’s $2 trillion Covid-19 bailout bill in 2020.

The relationship worsened during Trump’s second term. After Massie opposed Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ spending package last year, Trump described the Kentuckian as a “negative force who almost always Votes ‘NO’,” and promised that “we will have a wonderful American Patriot running against him in the Republican Primary.”

Massie’s opposition to Trump’s war on Iran and his insistence that Trump release the full, unredacted Epstein files further angered the president. At a rally in March, Trump gave Gallrein his “complete and total endorsement,” describing him as a “true American hero.”

Ed who?

Trump’s endorsement of Gallrein is illustrative of the president’s recent embrace of the ‘Never Trump’ neocons who despised him a decade ago. Gallrein left the Republican Party after Trump secured the presidential nomination in 2016, vowing not to rejoin the GOP until the party was rid of him. Now, with Trump cozying up to the interventionists, Gallrein is once again content to associate himself with the president.

Gallrein is a relatively unknown figure. His campaign website lists a series of generic Republican policy priorities – “unleash our economy,” “secure the border once and for all,” “end the woke agenda” – and Trump seems to have chosen him not on any specific virtues, but because he is anyone but Thomas Massie. At the endorsement rally in March, Trump devoted more time to attacking Massie than promoting any of Gallrein’s policies, telling the crowd “he’s got to be voted out of office as soon as possible.”

How is Israel involved?

Massie’s persistent criticism of Israel has made him a target of wealthy pro-Israeli donors, who have spent more than $9 million bankrolling Gallrein’s campaign. According to Massie, more than 95% of Gallrein’s donations have come from pro-Israel lobbyists and interest groups. Beyond direct donations to Gallrein, these megadonors have spent a total of $15.5 million on the primary, with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) pitching in more than $4.1 million, the Republican Jewish Coalition’s ‘RJC Victory Fund’ spending $3.9 million, and MAGA KY – a super PAC funded by pro-Israel philanthropists Paul Singer and Miriam Adelson – spending $7.9 million, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.

“Their position is more war, it’s more strife, it’s more bombs, it’s more foreign aid, and those are the things that I’ve been voting against,” Massie told Tucker Carlson earlier this month. “So the real reason that this race is a serious race, and I may lose, is because a foreign lobby has fully funded, to the extent that they’ve never done in any Republican race ever before, my opponent.”

Massie has accused AIPAC of controlling Congress, telling Carlson in 2024 that every US lawmaker “has an AIPAC person… like a babysitter” who works to ensure that they vote in line with Israel’s interests. He has since voted against military aid to Israel, boycotted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress, and introduced legislation that would force AIPAC to register as a foreign agent.

Who won?

Massie had easily defeated every primary challenger in his 14-year career in Congress. However, he had never faced such a concerted campaign against him, and several late polls showed him neck and neck with Gallrein.

However, after polls closed, early results showed Gallrein leading by a growing margin, prompting Massie to concede.

“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,” Massie told a crowd of supporters, as the race neared a 55% to 45% result.

With the results in, two key questions remain: Are Republican voters more loyal to Trump than to ‘America First’ principles? And can the Israel lobby buy whatever congressional seats it wants?

Croatian President Zoran Milanovic has refused to approve Israel’s new ambassador to Zagreb, citing disagreements with the Israeli government’s actions.

The presidential office announced the decision on Monday.

“The proposed Ambassador of the State of Israel has not received, nor will he receive, the consent of the President of the Republic Zoran Milanovic due to the policies pursued by the current Israeli authorities,” it said in a statement.

Israel deviated from established diplomatic norms by announcing their proposed ambassador before he was approved by the Croatian president, it added. “Public or political pressure, in this case from the Israeli side, will not alter the President of the Republic’s decision.”

The term of Israel’s current ambassador to Zagreb, Gary Koren, expires at the end of the May. Israeli diplomat Nisan Amdor, whom West Jerusalem last year selected to replace him, will instead arrive in Croatia next month as charge d’affaires, a post not requiring presidential approval, Ynet reported on Monday.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar responded by accusing the president of using “hate-filled language about Israel and Zionism.”

Moscow has also been critical of the Israeli blockade and bombing of the Palestinian enclave, likening it to collective punishment of both Hamas and the local civilian population. The only way out the crisis is to enact a two-state solution, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

A senior official from the administration of US President Donald Trump personally intervened to help former Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, wanted by Warsaw on criminal charges, flee to the US, Reuters has reported.

US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau instructed senior US State Department officials to facilitate and approve a visa for Ziobro, the outlet wrote on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Landau reportedly learned of Ziobro’s case earlier this year from US ambassador to Warsaw Tom Rose and believed the ex-minister was being unjustly prosecuted. Landau reportedly described the matter as “a national security issue,” Reuters added.

Granting a visa to a politician facing criminal charges in a US-allied country is “highly unusual,” the outlet noted. Poland’s current Justice Minister Waldemar Zurek expressed surprise at the report on Tuesday, saying that Warsaw expected its American allies to discuss such a matter. He insisted that Warsaw will “do everything” to bring Ziobro to justice in Poland.

Ziobro faces multiple criminal charges tied to alleged abuse of power while in office. Prosecutors accuse him of leading a criminal group that diverted public money to purchase Israeli-made Pegasus spyware, which was allegedly used to surveil political opponents and journalists. Ziobro could face up to 25 years in prison if convicted.

Poland issued an arrest warrant for Ziobro last November while he was in Budapest. The politician remained in Hungary after then-Prime Minister Viktor Orban granted him political asylum.

Following his election victory in April, Hungary’s new prime minister, Peter Magyar, pledged to extradite Ziobro to Poland upon taking office. On the day of Magyar’s inauguration, Ziobro flew from Milan to New Jersey, according to Polish media reports.

Riot police clashed with anti-government protesters in Bolivia’s administrative capital, La Paz, on Monday. The massive rallies sparked by rising costs of living and fuel shortages escalated into calls for Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz to step down just six months after taking office.

A centrist Christian Democratic Party conservative, Paz scrapped decades-old fuel subsidies that had drained Bolivia’s foreign reserves but has so far failed to stabilize fuel supplies. Thousands of farmers, miners, teachers, laborers, and indigenous activists have spent weeks protesting over rising living costs, stagnant wages, economic instability, and alleged plans to privatize state-owned companies.

Video footage showed riot police firing tear gas as protesters hurled projectiles, firecrackers, and homemade explosives near government buildings. The footage also captured arrests and a burning vehicle.

Local media have reported that more than 100 people were arrested during the Monday unrest.

Supporters of socialist former Bolivian President Evo Morales joined the protests, marching through major streets and avenues while calling on the government to prevent what they described as US interference in the country’s internal affairs.

“The US gives Rodrigo Paz instructions, and Rodrigo Paz uses military police to carry out massacres,” Feliciano Vegamonte, leader of the Confederation of Peasant Workers said during the march, adding that “the current president has been bathed in the blood of Indigenous people.”

The political crisis in Bolivia deepened after the 2019 turmoil, when Morales was ousted following a disputed election in which he secured a highly controversial fourth consecutive term. Prior to that, he had narrowly lost a referendum on removing term limits, which at the time capped the tenure of both the president and vice president at two terms.

On Sunday, Morales supporters occupied an airport in Chimore to prevent his alleged arrest by what he described as US-backed forces. The move reportedly led to 57 arrests and came shortly after Morales claimed that Washington was planning to detain him.

More video footage captured hundreds of demonstrators loyal to Paz marching through La Paz on Monday night condemning the anti-government protests and calling on the authorities to declare a state of emergency.

The EU will turn to a long-term strategy involving cow dung to stave off a looming fertilizer shortage, rather than supporting farmers with immediate measures like suspending tariffs on Russian and Belarusian imports, Politico wrote on Monday.

The US-Israeli war on Iran disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which handles an estimated one third of the global fertilizer trade, and a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) – a commodity important in the production of nitrate fertilizers. The key waterway was blocked during planting season in the Northern Hemisphere, with analysts warning of a potential global shortage of crucial crop nutrients and a delayed world-wide food shock.

As the EU had already secured fertilizer supplies this crop season, any knock-on effect for the bloc’s farmers and consumers is likely to be delayed, Politico wrote.

The European Commission’s latest roadmap to parry the upcoming shortage is a long-term plan that has been around for years, with just a few emergency additions such as state aid for affected farmers, the designation of fertilizers as a crisis-relevant commodity and a promised boost for the EU farm budget, the outlet wrote.

“Manure can be a contribution, but it can never substitute the urea-based, the nitrogen-based fertilizers,” Politico cited Italian MEP and AGRI Committee member Herbert Dorfmann as saying.

Fast-acting measures to aid farmers, such as suspending taxes on carbon-intensive imports or tariffs on Russian and Belarusian fertilizers were dismissed as “too politically toxic,” the outlet said.

Since 2021, Russia has increased sales of mineral fertilizers to BRICS countries by 71%, and now holds first place worldwide in exports of the commodities and second place in output, Russian Association of Fertilizer Producers head Andrey Guryev said earlier this year.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived in Beijing. He has travelled to China for a two-day official visit at the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping. The trip coincides with the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Russia-China Treaty of Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation.

The visit comes less than a week after US President Donald Trump’s trip to China. The American president arrived in Beijing for a two-day state visit last week but did not achieve any major breakthroughs in talks with Xi.

The Kremlin has dismissed speculation that the timing of Putin’s trip is linked to US-China contacts, saying that there is “no connection whatsoever.” Preparations for the visit began shortly after Putin and Xi held a video call in February, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov said earlier this week.

The Russian president was met on the tarmac by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, as well as an honor guard and a group of children waving Russian and Chinese flags. Some of the honor guard members drove to the tarmac on motorcycles ahead of the Russian president’s arrival.

The presidential delegation includes senior officials, ministers, and the heads of major Russian companies. Around 40 bilateral documents are expected to be signed during the visit, including a joint statement on deepening the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries, according to Ushakov.

Meetings between the two presidents are scheduled for Wednesday. According to Moscow, Putin and Xi will hold both one-on-one and expanded-format talks focused on “the most important and sensitive issues” in bilateral relations, as well as major international developments.

The government of Greenland has condemned an unofficial visit by a US doctor to assess the island’s healthcare system during an American diplomatic trip to Nuuk.

The controversy comes amid US President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to take over the autonomous Danish territory.

The four-day visit by a US delegation, including US Ambassador to Denmark Kenneth Howery and Trump’s special envoy to Greenland, Jeff Landry, began on Sunday. The stated goal is to attend a business forum and open a new US consular office in the capital, Nuuk.

The controversy erupted after physician Joseph Griffin, part of the delegation, told Danish broadcaster TV 2 on Monday that Landry had personally invited him to Nuuk to help “assess the medical needs” of Greenland.

Griffin insisted he was acting as a “volunteer” and planned to speak with Greenlanders to learn “how healthcare is practiced here.”

Landry has become a controversial figure in Greenland after repeatedly criticizing the island’s healthcare system and backing Trump’s February proposal to send a US hospital ship to the territory, a plan firmly rejected by officials in Nuuk.

He also previously vowed to be “very aggressive in delivering healthcare to remote parts” of the island, while stating that the hospital ship proposal had been discussed with the Pentagon.

The dispute comes amid Trump’s push to bring Greenland under greater US control, supposedly on national security grounds. The president has described the mineral-rich Arctic territory as strategically vital for countering Russia and China, while White House officials earlier this year said military force to acquire the island was “always an option.”

In an apparent snub to the US delegation, Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen has refused to participate in the opening of the new US consulate.

In 2018, on the day the 2026 FIFA World Cup was awarded to the US, Canada, and Mexico, I vowed that under no circumstances would I work at it in any capacity, from commentator to host, journalist to presenter.

The reason was simple: five years of non-stop lawfare against the sport’s global governing body (FIFA) and the bullying of delegates to vote against the preferred candidate, Morocco. I stayed true to the promise I made live on air with Capital Sports, by saying no to a match commentator and host contract in February this year. A couple of weeks after turning down the gig, the US and Israel unleashed an unprovoked war on Iran, with Canada giving active support. Using FIFA’s own logic that was applied to Russia and Belarus, this summer’s event has to be postponed.

Not all are equal

Having been party to the process of freezing Russian football clubs and teams from international competition in the days following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, I took zero pleasure from being the person to break the news that UEFA (Europe’s governing body) had ‘pulled the trigger’. At that moment, Capital Sports was live on air with the then CEO of the All-Russian Footballers Union. The deal, worked out between the Russian Football Union (RFU), UEFA, and FIFA, gave us all a sense of relief.

It was sensible, pragmatic, and based upon the safety of players, officials, and fans. That Russian troops had gone into a neighboring nation was, to football officials, a secondary concern. Were war ever an actual concern, then the nations of the Coalition of the Willing, part 1, who took part in the illegal and actual full-scale invasion of Iraq 23 years ago this March, would be all out in the cold. Italy and Spain would not have won their World Cups in 2006 and 2010 respectively, and the US would not have been awarded hosting rights for 2026. Yet the three aforementioned nations, plus another 48 including the UK, Latvia, Lithuania, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, have continued to be welcome in the football fraternity.

However, this is not 2003 and the idea of staging a mega-event in two nations up to their knees in blood is not just reprehensible from a moral standpoint, or appalling from a human one, it’s patently unsafe. Award-winning sportswriter Andrew Flint told Capital Sports in December: “It’s a fact that football grounds are too wide open for attack… safety cannot be guaranteed for players and fans alike.”

‘The Washington Candidate’ runs FIFA

In November 2010, two good things happened to football: Russia and Qatar were awarded World Cup hosting rights for 2018 and 2022 respectively. At the time I warned, live on Irish state broadcaster RTE Radio 1, that it would be bad for FIFA and Russia. Bad enough that England lost the race to host the 2018 jamboree, but Washington was infuriated at losing to Qatar. The pair of crybullies couldn’t accept that the world’s most popular sport was not theirs to rule. Moscow, immediately, landed in the crosshairs of the Anglosphere and their European lackeys, with constant attacks on Russia – from doping scandals to regime change pushes and everything in between – that lasted until the tournament kicked off at Luzhniki Stadium. Qatar’s ‘punishment’ continued throughout its well-received event. However, by 2018, football’s global governing body had been gutted. The US had its people in charge of FIFA after a decapitation strike by Donald Trump’s first predecessor, Barack Obama.

To those of us working in and reporting on sport, it was clear that Obama used lawfare to bring FIFA to heel. As well as the FBI arresting or detaining dozens of FIFA officials, they forced out the president, Switzerland’s Sepp Blatter, and UEFA’s top dog Michel Platini. France’s Platini, one of the sport’s all-time great players, was universally accepted as Blatter’s heir apparent for the FIFA top job. By the end of 2015, Obama had effected a complete clearout of anyone willing to stand up to the US, and in February 2016 UEFA Secretary General Gianni Infantino, the Swiss-born son of Italian immigrants, took over and immediately passed a raft of reforms handed to him from Washington. Infantino had been lockstep with Platini, but he was ready to ‘play ball’ with the new sheriff in town.

On the eve of the World Cup in 2018, delegates from national associations gathered in Moscow to vote for hosting rights of the 2026 tournament. The US-Mexico-Canada bid won despite the vast majority of delegates opposing it. Almost all wanted Morocco to win and the anger was such that Spain abstained, its delegate telling me: “It’s a sham. Washington got their man and he’s handed them this. It’s not the Manchurian Candidate, it’s the Washington Candidate.”

So who is this teflon man who runs the world’s game on behalf of the US?

“We’ve made it the cup of shame,” a caller to Britain’s Talksport radio wailed last December. This after the Trump administration removed visa bans on three of the seven Iranian delegates from attending the World Cup draw. Iran had threatened to boycott the high-profile gala in order to bring sense to the senseless. Trump was promised a “big shiny trophy” another caller opined. For his generosity, the US leader received the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize, to compensate for not winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Football fans around the world groaned, but Infantino “had to pay homage to his boss,” according to former football club owner Simon Jordan.

Last May, Infantino arrived two hours late to the 75th FIFA Congress in Asuncion, Paraguay, having spent the previous days in Trump’s entourage during the US president’s trip to Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Point of note, Infantino owns an apartment in Qatar and two of his kids go to school there. UEFA delegates, in a pre-planned display of theatrical strop, walked out. Arrive two hours late for a meeting and you raise the European ire, murder 150+ children in an Iranian school, silence. Flatten a country and kill tens of thousands, FIFA will send you money for the development of facilities on stolen land and UEFA will allow your clubs and teams in competition.

Infantino knew it was theater, nothing more. Because the UEFA delegates are still silent when citizens of Algeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal, Tunisia, and Cape Verde, as well as Iran, all face visa discrimination. All six countries have qualified to play in this summer’s event, but some of their players and staff might not be allowed into the US. And just last month, Canada refused entry to Iran’s football federation president for the FIFA congress in Vancouver. The same congress where Infantino tried, and failed, to get the Israeli FA president and his Palestinian counterpart to shake hands. 

And yet, one FIFA insider told me that Infantino is a man “at war with himself.” Infantino has, in a private capacity, contributed to charities for refugees in Lebanon, Gaza, Jordan, and at least two other countries in the region. He has “gotten wealthy Qataris to send humanitarian relief to the West Bank. I have no time for the man, but give him this much,” the person told me on condition of anonymity. They reminded me that not only is Infantino’s wife Lebanese, but he is too, having received his citizenship this year. So, then, why are the US and Canada still allowed to host the World Cup and why is Israel still in UEFA competition?

Although some UEFA member nations have spoken out against the inclusion of Israeli teams and clubs in European competitions, not one has refused to play against them. Criminal hooligans attached to Maccabi Tel Aviv have been banned from many European stadia and cities, yet even common sense and public safety went out the window as British politicians cried anti-Semitism this year when local police in Birmingham wanted to reduce the chances of disorder at a game in 2025.

When Ireland was drawn to play Israel in the UEFA European Nations League, set to take place this autumn, the government and Football Association of Ireland (FAI) issued mealy-mouthed excuses that didn’t wash. “Sport should be above politics,” said the CEO of the FAI, an organization which three years earlier refused to allow Russian children to play in European competitions. A refusal that the head of UEFA said was “directly discriminating” against Russian kids. After parroting the government line on Israel, the FAI was duly rewarded by the government, with Dublin giving the debt-laden outfit ‘extra time’ to repay a €1.5 million loan. Complicity in war crimes paid off for Irish football.

If the global outrage at the continued devastation of Gaza, the invasion of Lebanon, and attacks on Iran are not enough reasons for FIFA to reconsider hosting a major event in the US this summer, then nothing will be. There has never been such a scandal-ridden, yet totally overlooked, World Cup in history. While Russia and Qatar were, rightly, scrutinized for a variety of reasons from human/workers rights to construction delays and corruption in the bidding processes, the US-Canada-Mexico version has skated completely free by comparison. Not a single mainstream football ‘writer’ has asked questions over fan safety in the US or Canada, in relation to the war on Iran. No nations, apart from Iran, have stated they will boycott the tournament. And Iran did so only after Trump threatened it.

Football lives inside an incestuous, self-obsessed, and isolated bubble. The sport is riddled with corruption on all levels, from doping to match-fixing, child abuse to money laundering, although there has never been a moment greater than right now for those who genuinely love the sport to make their voices heard. Allowing the US and Canada to host the World Cup this summer is peak football and peak insanity. Lives will be put at risk, legacies destroyed, and only the refusal of qualified countries to participate will make an impact. And the chance of that happening? About as much as my replacing Gianni Infantino as FIFA boss, zero.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has embarked on an official visit to China this week – the latest milestone in a relationship that Moscow and Beijing have described as a “no-limits partnership.”

Putin’s trip comes as the two countries celebrate the 30th anniversary of the China-Russia strategic partnership of coordination, and the 25th anniversary of the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation.

Here is how three decades of pragmatism, Western pressure, and mutual economic need allowed China and Russia to build one of the world’s most consequential partnerships outside of the traditional Western-dominated international system.

Soviet chapter: From comrades to combatants

The relationship between the Soviet Union and Communist China kicked off in the late 1940s and early 1950s as a bond of ideological brotherhood. The Soviet Union acted as China’s ‘elder brother,’ helping the country to recover from devastating consequences of World War II and Civil War, with Soviet technicians pouring into the mostly rural country, helping build factories, railways, and the rudiments of an industrial base.

Beijing subsequently accused Moscow of “revisionism” – an apostasy from orthodox Marxism-Leninism, with the two countries descending into open rivalry. The stand-off culminated in 1969 as the two nuclear powers engaged in an undeclared war over the border island of Damansky (known as Zhenbao in China) on the Ussuri river.

The Long Thaw

Ties started to normalize in the mid-1980s as reformers Mikhail Gorbachev and Deng Xiaoping ascended to power in their respective countries. Moscow and Beijing held a series of grinding talks on mitigating border disputes, with relations improving due to the Soviet decision to start pulling troops from Afghanistan and end support for Vietnam’s presence in Cambodia.

The new era of rapprochement began during Gorbachev’s trip to Beijing in 1989 – the first visit by a Soviet leader in 30 years.

Partnership takes shape

The Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 did not derail an upward trend in relations, with China swiftly recognizing nascent Russia. The tendency was supported by both countries needing one another: China wanted shipments of sophisticated Soviet-designed weaponry and access to Russia’s vast resources, while Moscow – which was undergoing a painful transition to a market economy – needed cash.

Trade boom

In 2001, the two sides signed the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, agreeing to cooperate on tackling common threats and improving global stability. A couple of years later, the sides extinguished the last remnants of the border dispute.

New era in energy cooperation

The start of the Ukraine crisis in 2014 and sweeping Western sanctions against Russia only drew Moscow and Beijing closer.

In May 2014, Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed a landmark 30-year $400 billion agreement to supply 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually through the Power of Siberia pipeline, which came online in December 2019.

“No limits partnership”

In early February 2022, less than three weeks before the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping released a joint statement declaring that the “friendship between the two States has no limits” and that “there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.”

In addition, China continued to ship cars, electronics, trucks, and other goods to Russia while filling the market vacuum left by the exodus of Western companies.

In a video address to the Chinese people prior to this week’s visit, Putin said that Russia-China trade turnover had exceeded $200 billion, with most transactions being carried out in national currencies.

Estonia has shot down an alleged Ukrainian drone over its territory for the first time, the NATO and EU member state’s defense minister, Hanno Pevkur, has said.

Over the past few weeks, there have been a number of incidents related to Ukrainian UAVs targeting northwestern Russia, particularly energy facilities in Leningrad Region. Some of the aircraft eventually crashed in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Finland.

Moscow has warned that if it turns out that the Baltic States and Finland “deliberately provide their airspace” to Kiev’s UAVs, Moscow has the right to self-defense in response to an “armed attack” under Article 51 of the UN Charter.

Pevkur told the outlet Delfi on Tuesday that “this is the first time we have shot down a drone ourselves.”

The downed UAV had been deployed by Kiev to target Russian territory, the minister claimed.

“We activated the necessary measures, and a Baltic Air Policing fighter jet shot the drone down” over Lake Vortsjarv in the southern part of the country, he explained.

Baltic Air Policing is a NATO mission to guard the airspace of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

There is yet no information about possible injuries or damage stemming from the incident, Pevkur said. Various Estonian agencies are on their way to the site where the debris of the drone fell, he added.

On Tuesday, temporary flight restrictions were introduced at Pulkovo Airport in Russia’s second largest city, St. Petersburg, due to drone incursions.

“The easiest way for the Ukrainians to keep their drones away from our territory is to control their activities better,” the minister suggested.

Tallinn “will start dealing with this very quickly now,” he said of the drone incursions.

Earlier on Tuesday, Moscow’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) revealed that, according to its data, Latvia has given Ukraine permission to use its territory for potential drone attacks against Russia.

The SVR warned that “the coordinates of decision-making centers on Latvian territory are well known, and the country’s NATO membership will not protect the accomplices of terrorists from just retribution.”

A US federal jury has rejected Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and other tech executives, dismissing claims that they unlawfully enriched themselves by abandoning the company’s founding mission, several news outlets reported Tuesday.

Musk accused Altman, OpenAI president Greg Brockman and other executives of improperly turning the organization from a nonprofit research lab into a profit-driven business. According to the lawsuit, as cited by news agencies, the tech mogul said he had invested $38 million in the venture and sought $150 billion in damages, along with the removal of the company’s current leadership. He reportedly vowed to donate any compensation granted in the case to OpenAI’s nonprofit arm.

In a ruling delivered on Monday, the nine-member jury reportedly found that Musk had waited too long to file his lawsuit and missed the statutory deadline. Although the jury served in an advisory capacity, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers later adopted the verdict as the court’s own and dismissed Musk’s claims, according to reports.

According to the OpenAI defendants, as cited by Reuters, Musk only wanted to control OpenAI, and he was told in 2017 that the company would need financing that came with being a for-profit.

Commenting on the verdict, Musk once again claimed that “Altman and Brockman did in fact enrich themselves by stealing a charity.”

“The only question is WHEN they did it!” he said in a post on X, vowing to appeal the ruling, which he described as “incredibly destructive and creating a precedent to loot charities.”

The current choreography of great-power diplomacy has prompted a familiar round of speculation. Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives in China only days after his US counterpart Donald Trump’s own high-profile visit to Beijing, and commentators are already speaking of a new “great triangle” between Russia, China and the United States.

The timing, however, is largely coincidental because Putin’s visit was planned long in advance. Meetings between the Russian and Chinese leaders are now routine and form part of an increasingly institutionalized partnership. Trump’s trip, by contrast, had already been postponed several times, most recently because of the war with Iran. The American president was clearly reluctant to arrive in Beijing while trapped in the role of a wartime leader unable to control events. Even so, he didn’t manage to come to town as a triumphant statesman because Iran hasn’t yielded, and Washington’s position remains uncertain.

Yet from the perspective of the broader international system, the triangular comparison is understandable. Russia, China and the United States are today the three powers with the greatest capacity to shape global affairs. Their strengths differ as America retains unmatched military and financial reach, while China possesses industrial and economic weight on a historic scale. Meanwhile, Russia continues to wield enormous geopolitical and strategic influence far beyond the size of its economy. Thus, any interaction between the three inevitably affects the wider international balance.

Still, the similarities end there and, in practice, the relationships themselves are fundamentally different in character.

The United States and China are strategic rivals, and that rivalry isn’t temporary, and Trump’s latest visit to Beijing underlined how deeply the relationship has changed. For decades, both sides benefited from a kind of economic symbiosis in which commercial interests outweighed political disagreements but that era is now over.

As a result, the Trump–Xi relationship is becoming one defined by managed divergence rather than convergence, but tensions will rise and fall and escalation and partial stabilization will alternate. Neither side wants a catastrophic rupture, because the economic consequences would be enormous, but both now seem to accept that long-term competition is unavoidable.

The Russia–China relationship is built on an entirely different foundation.

Moscow and Beijing view themselves not primarily as rivals, but as strategic partners shaped by a shared geopolitical environment across Eurasia. Both countries see the Eurasian landmass as the central arena of 21st-century politics and the most dangerous military conflicts are already unfolding there, from Eastern Europe to the Middle East, while the most consequential future confrontation could emerge in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Against that backdrop, Russia and China increasingly regard stable cooperation as a strategic necessity.

That’s also why weakening that relationship has become a major objective for Washington. Many American strategists openly insist that the United States must drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing in order to preserve global primacy. In practice, however, US pressure has often produced the opposite result, pushing the two Eurasian powers into even closer alignment.

None of this means the relationship is free of friction and it’s clearly not. Russia and China are both major powers with long histories, strong national interests and their own strategic ambition which means disagreements over trade, investment, logistics and regional influence are inevitable. But the crucial difference is that these disagreements aren’t existential in nature.

Unlike US-China relations, where competition increasingly revolves around limiting and constraining the other side, Russia and China don’t fundamentally view each other as adversaries so while practical disputes may cause irritation, delays or bargaining, but they don’t threaten the relationship itself.

That stability is precisely why meetings between Putin and Xi generate less global drama than summits involving Trump. There’s little suspense because the basic direction of the relationship is already clear. The two countries have spent years building a relatively deep level of political trust, something increasingly rare in international affairs.

In today’s world, predictability has become an unusual commodity, yet that may ultimately be one of the greatest advantages of the Russian-Chinese partnership. While relations between Washington and Beijing are defined by uncertainty and suspicion Moscow and Beijing have constructed something far steadier: a relationship whose trajectory no longer depends on atmospherics or temporary political moods.

And in an increasingly unstable international environment, that alone makes it significant.

This article was first published by Rossiyskaya Gazeta, and was translated and edited by the RT team 

These days all the world is closely following the high-level international meetings in China. US President Donald Trump just completed his first state visit to China since his trip in November 2017. On May 19, another top foreign guest will arrive on a two-day state visit: Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

Unlike his American colleague, Putin has always regarded Beijing as one of his preferred international travel destinations; the last time he was here was less than a year ago, in September 2025. The two sequential trips symbolize the growing importance of China as a global player; Beijing has become an indispensable actor in critical dimensions of world politics and economy.

More than ‘business as usual’

The two summits are not a sudden and unexpected outburst of diplomatic activities. Since the beginning of the year, China has seen many top foreign statesmen, including South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, his Canadian counterpart Mark Carney and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, not to mention a long string of foreign ministers, defense ministers and other high-ranking officials.

While the sheer number of foreign leaders going to China is impressive, what is even more so is the diversity: Major powers and mid-size states, close neighbors and remote overseas lands, and Global North and Global South nations.    

The flood of high-level guests demonstrates the fast-growing breadth of China’s international connections and its principles of equal and open major-country diplomacy, featuring non-alignment, non-confrontation and non-targeting of third parties. It also reflects China’s clear stance: Managing differences through dialogue, pursuing stability through cooperation and promoting win-win outcomes through practical actions.

It sends a strong message to the world that China has been consistently acting as a builder of peace, contributor to development and defender of international order, fulfilling its responsibilities as a major country. China’s principles are reflected in the four strategic visions outlined by President Xi Jinping: The Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative, Global Civilization Initiative and the Global Governance Initiative.

Overall China-US trade experienced a visible decline in 2025, but nonetheless accounted for $414.69 billion with a lot of potential for further growth. The China-Russia trade was more modest, but still impressive – $228.1 billion in 2025. From January to April in 2026, it demonstrated a nearly 20% increase and continues to grow. No wonder then that the May state visits of US and Russia’s presidents go beyond diplomatic “business as usual.”     

If we take a closer look at the current state of China-Russia-US relations, is a Beijing-Moscow partnership by definition hostile to US national interests? Does China have to choose between Russia and the US? Is late American diplomat Henry Kissinger’s approach to the global geopolitical triangle – maintaining good relations with China taking advantage of its then distance from the Soviet Union – still valid or should it be dismissed as archaic and misplaced?

No ‘zero-sum game’ anymore

Some claim that there is a natural affinity between China and Russia, nations opposed to US or other Western hegemony. Trump probably does not share this rather primitive world outlook personally, but it is nonetheless very typical for the US political mainstream, especially the segment closely associated with the Democratic Party. This rigid view of the world clearly does not hold water and contradicts the real-world picture.

The political and economic systems in China and in Russia are very different. China is a socialist country, while Russia has moved to capitalism since early 1990s. Russia’s political institutions have been created in the image and likeness of Western examples, not Chinese ones. Besides, social and political similarities have never guaranteed foreign policy unity.

Maybe, the real legitimate concern in the US should be about the deepening economic interdependence between China and Russia. But as mentioned, the China-US trade is almost twice the China-Russia trade; it is also much more diverse involving large numbers of small and mid-size enterprises on both sides. Beijing holds almost $700 billion of US Treasury bonds and is looking for a substantial increase in direct investment in America. Trump’s visit will undoubtedly be a major boost to bilateral cooperation between the two most powerful economies of the modern world. However, the political and business leaders in Russia expect that at some point, the China-Russia economic cooperation may fully match the current level of China-US interaction.

Around 1.5 million tourists from China visited the US in 2025, while about 834,500 chose to go to Russia. And one should not underestimate the powerful attraction of the US movie industry, pop music and the English language.

Are the US concerns grounded in the geopolitical proximity of Beijing and Moscow? The latter two nations often hold the same position in international institutions like the UN Security Council, they actively promote multilateral groupings like BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and jointly call for a multipolar international system.

Still, this meeting of minds is not anything close to the monolithic Soviet-Chinese cooperation of 1950s. Beijing and Moscow have distinctly different nuclear doctrines and different attitudes to strategic arms control.

It would be wrong to conclude that the relations within the China-Russia-US triangle can be described as a “zero-sum game.” A degree of competition between Moscow and Washington for attention from Beijing is unavoidable and natural, but it does not mean that the Kissinger approach would work out half a century later in a completely different environment.

For instance, if China buys less from America, it does not necessarily mean that it will automatically buy more from Russia. If Moscow is successful in reaching out to Washington, it does not imply that it will lose its appetite for upgrading its ties to Beijing.

None of the three would be interested in global economic or financial instability. An economic tide is likely to raise all the three boats, while an economic storm might wreck all three. Even on the most sensitive and potentially divisive matters like the conflict in the Middle East, there is considerable overlap in China, Russia and US positions: None of them would like to see Israel wiped off the map, or the Strait of Hormuz staying closed indefinitely.

International affairs these days fit less and less into any of these theoretical frameworks; they represent a complex mix of unipolarity, bipolarity, multipolarity and no polarity. Academics might fight for the best theoretical frameworks explaining the contemporary international system and forecasting its future evolution, but politicians should focus on working together where there are even minimal opportunities for joint efforts.

It is all about trust

So, what is the most important difference between China-Russia and the China-US relations? In my view, what really matters is whether China, Russia and the US can trust one another. At the end of the day, it is trust that defines what is possible and what is not in relations between the three major powers.

Does trust exist in the China-US-Russia geopolitical triangle?

The answer is definitely positive in the case of China-Russia relations. The predominant public views of each other are essentially positive, especially among the younger generation. According to the most recent survey conducted in May by the Global Opinion Research Center at Renmin University of China, within the Russian and Chinese age group between 18 and 35, the overwhelming majority view bilateral relations as friendly (85.5% in China and 87.5% in Russia), have positive views of the other nation (76.4% and 78%) and are optimistic about future cooperation (73.7% and 77.7%). The strong personal relations between their top leaders also add to the stability and predictability of bilateral relations.

Regretfully, in the case of China-US relations, the answer is less encouraging. Although the recent survey by Pew Research Center shows that 27% of Americans now hold a favorable view of China, the figure suggests that considerable room for improvement still exists. There are many reasons why the two nations cannot fully trust each other. The trust, if it ever existed between Beijing and Washington, was badly damaged over the last couple of years by inconsistent and unpredictable US policies.

This is not only about the personality of Trump though his personal style, undoubtedly, brings more uncertainty into US foreign policy. However, the core problem is about the current state of American society and politics. As long as this society remains deeply divided, it is very hard to expect a predictable, consistent and trustworthy foreign policy to come out of the US.  

The odds are that due to these deep social and political divisions, the US will remain a difficult foreign policy partner in years to come. Still, it will remain an indispensable player in many areas of international life, which means that both Beijing and Moscow should keep trying to engage Washington wherever possible, short of yielding to excessive US demands or accepting inappropriate US ultimatums.

It will be a long and bumpy road for both China and Russia. However, as Confucius put it, “It doesn’t matter how slow you go as long as you don’t stop.”

This article was first published by CGTN.

Israeli forces have seized least 39 out of 51 at boats of the Global Sumud Flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, the organizers of the action have said.

Yachts with more than 420 activists from 39 countries aboard departed from the port of Marmaris in Türkiye last week, with the stated goal of breaking the Israeli naval blockade of the Palestinian enclave.

On Monday, the organizers of the flotilla issued a post on X, saying that “military vessels are currently intercepting our fleet and Israel Occupation Forces are boarding the first ⁠of our boats ⁠in broad daylight.” In a later message, they said Israeli troops had “illegally and violently” seized their ships and “abducted our volunteers.”

Among the hundreds of those detained was Irish doctor Margaret Connolly, the sister of Irish President Catherine Connolly, the organizers said.

The Israeli Navy has begun to intercept the activist mission sailing to the Gaza Strip to challenge Israel's naval blockade. pic.twitter.com/YXeSwxPDOd

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) May 18, 2026

Israeli servicemen boarded the vessels some 250 nautical miles (463 km) from Gaza, off the coast of Cyprus. According to the EU nation’s rescue services, the incident happened outside of Cypriot territorial waters. The country’s president, Nikos Christodoulides, said Israel had not informed Nicosia of its plans to act against the flotilla.

West Jerusalem denies withholding supplies for Palestinians in Gaza, almost 2 million of whom have been displaced since the outbreak of the conflict between Israel and Hamas in October 2023. It also earlier dismissed the flotilla as a stunt, saying that the activists had rejected an offer to pass the aid they were carrying to Israel or international organizations so that it could be delivered to Gaza via official channels.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the interception of the flotilla as “piracy and banditry” and demanded that Israel to release those detained, including more than 40 residents of Türkiye.

NATO should strike Russia’s Kaliningrad to make a point to Moscow, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys has said.

Kaliningrad Region is a Russian exclave of over a million people, which sits on the Baltic Sea coast and borders NATO member-states Lithuania to the north and Poland to the south.

In his interview with Swiss newspaper Neue Zurcher Zeitung on Monday, Budrys insisted that the Europeans “need to turn our fear of the [Russian] threat into a sense of self-empowerment.”

“We must show the Russians that we can penetrate their small fortress that they have built in Kaliningrad,” he said.

The minister claimed that “NATO has the means to raze the Russian air defense and missile bases there to the ground in an emergency.”

The Kremlin has repeatedly reject claims of them harboring aggressive plans against Europe as “nonsense,” saying that they are only being made by Western politicians to distract the public from domestic problems and justify increased military spending. A clash with NATO is only possible if Russia is attacked first, they said.

Speaking about incursions into Lithuanian airspace by Ukrainian drones targeting northwestern Russia, Budrys complained that “we obviously lack air defense” and called upon NATO to fix that.

Russian Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu said last month that either Western air defenses are proving ineffective against Ukrainian UAVs or the Baltic States – Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – and Finland “deliberately provide their airspace, thereby becoming open accomplices in aggression against Russia.”

In the latter case, Moscow has the right to self-defense in response to an “armed attack” under Article 51 of the UN Charter, Shoigu stressed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Wednesday for talks expected to focus on expanding economic and strategic cooperation, as the two countries mark the 25th anniversary of a landmark friendship treaty.

Moscow and Beijing are expected to sign dozens of agreements during the two-day visit, highlighting the increasingly close alignment between the two powers on foreign policy, trade, and opposition to what they describe as Western unilateralism.

RT looks at where Russia and China align on global politics.

Multipolar world

Moscow and Beijing have increasingly aligned around the idea of a “multipolar world” – a global order they say should no longer be dominated by the West and the US in particular.

Both countries have accused Washington of abusing sanctions, military alliances, and the global financial system to preserve its dominance, while arguing that emerging powers should play a greater role in international decision-making.

Russia and China have promoted deeper cooperation through platforms such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, presenting them as alternatives to Western-led institutions and as pillars of a more balanced global order.

Taiwan

Russia backs the One China policy, under which Beijing views Taiwan as an inseparable part of Chinese territory. While most countries formally adhere to the policy, continued US military support for Taipei has fueled rising tensions between Washington and Beijing.

Middle East

Moscow has condemned the US-Israeli attack on Iran as “entirely unprovoked aggression.”

China, the main buyer of Iranian crude, has lost much of that supply since the US and Israel launched attacks in February. Russia has since ramped up oil exports to China to help offset the shortfall.

Both Moscow and Beijing have repeatedly called for the conflict to be resolved through dialogue and a diplomatic settlement.

Ukraine

Russia has described the conflict as a NATO-backed proxy war triggered by the US-led bloc’s expansion toward its borders and growing influence over Kiev after the 2014 Western-backed coup.

Moscow has insisted that any durable peace deal must include Ukraine’s return to a neutral, non-aligned status, as well as its demilitarization and “denazification,” alongside the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from all territories that voted to join Russia in 2022.

I’ve been back in my hometown of Vancouver, Canada, for a few days now. The big wall-to-wall news story has been about a moron who was speeding around on a jet ski in the harbor off the downtown coast where pods of whales have been swimming around – and ended up using a grey whale as a jump ramp. The whale seems no worse for wear, while the jackass crashed out. I can’t remember the last time that I’ve heard such mass outrage.

This is Vancouver, after all. Home of “save the whales.” Greenpeace was literally founded here in 1971. People here have parked themselves in trees for days on end to save them from being chopped down for development. How could some jackass end up possibly slamming into a whale when anyone with working eyes can see that orcas are everywhere right now, putting on aquarium-like shows in their natural habitat. The answer is simple, really. The whims of a select few have been accommodated for far too long. That is, until something disastrous happens and jolts some people out of their slumber to notice that the institutions have failed to uphold even the most basic common sense. The incident is a metaphor for the whole place these days.

I remember when I was growing up here in the 1980s and wokeism used to mean fighting the good fight for the rights of the oppressed. Labor unions pushing back against creeping demands by the state and its corporatist cronies to give more for increasingly less. Defending animals and nature incapable of advocating for themselves. Equality of opportunity for all was the name of the game. And helping those who fell through the social safety net to get back on their feet.

But then, like the whale jumper, some folks took things too far in their own self-interest. Cottage industries of lobbyists and NGOs popped up to cash in on pushing grievances not towards any constructive resolution benefiting society, but instead to permanent profit for themselves.

And now, like the whale show spectators, average people are finally showing signs of being horrified by the results.

So after clinging to its failure for far too long, the same government has now thrown in the towel on decriminalization of drugs. The original goal was to “reduce stigma and fear of criminal prosecution that prevents people from reaching out for help, including medical assistance.” Turns out that giving them a safe place to shoot up, then when that didn’t work giving out free needles, then when that failed just giving them free drugs – all under the pretext that feeding their addiction at the public expense will get them clean – was a major bust. Now the mop-up job is more daunting than ever.

The mess is obvious to anyone without an agenda or a business model based on persistence of the debacle. Homelessness and drug carnage has now merged with the migrant crisis caused by the same woke institutions destroying their own longstanding immigration point system that was the envy of the free world. Because it wasn’t quite free enough, apparently. But now because they treated borders like an option, the borders and boundaries are left to everyday citizens to enforce themselves. Like when an Indian migrant was caught washing his clothes in a protected river, as onlookers yelled at him in a futile attempt to try to explain the concept to someone who could barely even understand the language itself.

Colony Farm is now “ƛ̓éxətəm Regional Park,” the public swimming pool built and named for the 1973 Canada Games, and where I trained as a young competitive swimmer, is now called “təməsew̓txʷ Aquatic and Community Centre,” and the Pattullo Bridge is now the “stal̕əw̓asəm Bridge.” Try plugging that into your GPS.

But the final straw seems to be indulging the natives to the point of making tribal leaders de facto co-governors of the province while doing nothing to repeal the provincial legislation that implements DRIPA – the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act – leaving the average citizen convinced that somewhere between “consultation” and “consent,” the average homeowner may eventually need three permits, two environmental assessments, and a hereditary chief’s blessing just to build a garden shed on their own property.

It’s all become so absurd that you have to wonder how anyone still defends it with a straight face. But sprawling ideological movements rarely collapse without a fight, and the modern alphabet bureaucracy is no exception. Too many people remain invested in propping it up, if only because admitting the excesses would require rethinking years of assumptions, social loyalties, and their own identities. Like the guy who launched his jet ski off a whale, the woke crowd spent years thinking that they could mow down everything without wiping out.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to China on May 19-20 is expected to mark a new milestone in the deepening partnership between Moscow and Beijing. The two sides are reportedly preparing to sign around 40 agreements, and issue a joint statement on expanding their comprehensive strategic cooperation.

Since Chinese President Xi Jinping took office in 2013, the two leaders have met more than 40 times, repeatedly producing major agreements and driving Russia-China ties to new heights.

RT looks back at some of the key meetings that have shaped relations between the two countries over the past decade.

March 2013

Russia became the first country visited by Xi after he took office. During talks with Putin, the two leaders discussed issues ranging from trade and technology cooperation to the crisis in Syria. Moscow and Beijing signed more than 30 agreements covering energy and humanitarian and cultural cooperation, including a deal to expand oil trade and an action plan under the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness, Friendship, and Cooperation.

May 2014

Putin’s state visit to Shanghai marked a watershed moment in Russia-China energy ties. In the presence of the two leaders, Russian energy giant Gazprom and China’s CNPC signed a landmark $400 billion gas deal under which Russia agreed to supply China with 38 billion cubic meters of gas annually over 30 years.

May 2015

Xi visited Moscow for Victory Day celebrations marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. The visit also produced a series of agreements linking China’s Belt and Road Initiative with the Eurasian Economic Union, a Moscow-led economic bloc of which Russia is a founding member.

September 2015

Putin traveled to Beijing for celebrations marking the end of World War II, with the visit also serving as a platform for extensive talks between Russian and Chinese officials. The trip resulted in nearly 30 signed documents, including 16 agreements between Russian and Chinese companies. Russian energy giant Rosneft alone signed deals with an estimated investment potential exceeding $30 billion, according to CEO Igor Sechin.

June 2016

Economic ties between Russia and China deepened further during another state visit by Putin to Beijing. The two sides signed a broad range of agreements covering energy, high speed rail development, aircraft manufacturing, and major investment projects.

July 2017

During Xi’s visit to Moscow, Putin awarded the Chinese leader the Order of St. Andrew, Russia’s highest state honor, in recognition of his role in strengthening the comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation between the two nations. Putin described Xi as a “big friend” of Russia who had consistently supported closer ties between Moscow and Beijing.

June 2018

Xi returned the gesture by awarding Putin the Chinese Order of Friendship, making him the first foreign leader to receive the honor. The Chinese president described Putin as a “founder” of modern Russia-China relations and the “most recognizable and respected” foreign leader in China.

June 2019

Russia and China declared that their comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation had entered a “new era” in a joint statement issued during Xi’s visit to Moscow. The declaration said the two countries had elevated bilateral ties to their highest level, setting an example of good neighborly relations and mutually beneficial cooperation.

Moscow and Beijing also pledged to deepen coordination on defending their core national interests, sovereignty, and long term development strategies.

February 2022

Russia and China described their relationship as a “no limits” partnership, emphasizing that their cooperation has “no forbidden areas” and is not constrained by traditional alliance structures. The phrase was formalized in a joint statement issued by Putin and Xi, in which the two sides pledged deeper coordination on security, economics, technology, and global governance while opposing what they described as Western dominance in international affairs.

March 2023

Russia became the first country visited by Xi after securing a third consecutive term as Chinese president. Beijing attaches “great importance” to ties with Moscow, Xi said at the time, describing the relationship as rooted in “historical logic” and driven by the two nations’ shared goals and interests.

Putin hailed the “major progress” in bilateral relations, noting that annual trade between Russia and China had surged from $87 billion to $185 billion over the previous decade.

May 2024

Putin chose China for his first foreign trip after securing re-election in 2024, describing ties with Beijing as a model of good-neighborly relations. Xi said the partnership had become a key pillar of global “strategic stability” and a driving force behind the democratization of international relations.

May 2025

Xi Jinping joined Russia’s Victory Day celebrations once again, a decade after first attending the commemorations in Moscow. During the visit, Xi said Russia and China had found the “right” model for cooperation and pledged to work together toward a more just and balanced system of global governance.

September 2025

Vladimir Putin traveled to China to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, describing the visit as a tribute to the sacrifices and heroism of the Russian and Chinese peoples during the conflict. The memory that “our ancestors paid an enormous price for peace and freedom” remains the foundation of modern Russia-China relations, he said.

Xi Jinping described ties between the two countries as a model of “eternal” friendship and mutually beneficial cooperation.

US President Donald Trump has postponed what he described as a “very major attack” on Iran, saying Gulf leaders had asked Washington to give negotiations with Tehran another “two or three days.”

Trump said the strike had been scheduled for Tuesday, but that he had ordered the Pentagon to stand down for now after Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and “some others” urged him to allow more time for diplomacy.

“We were getting ready to do a very major attack tomorrow,” Trump told journalists. “I’ve put it off for a little while, hopefully maybe forever, but possibly for a little while, because we’ve had very big discussions with Iran.”

The president claimed that the Gulf states believe Tehran is “getting very close to making a deal,” adding that any agreement must prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Trump also instructed the US Department of War to remain ready for a “full, large-scale assault” at “a moment’s notice” if Washington does not receive what it considers an acceptable deal, according to his earlier post on Truth Social.

The announcement follows a series of threats by Trump, who warned Iran over the weekend that “the Clock is Ticking” and that “there won’t be anything left” of the country unless it accepts Washington’s demands.

Indirect talks between Washington and Tehran have remained stalled since a fragile ceasefire was established in early April, following a month of hostilities initiated by the US and Israel.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran enters into dialogue with dignity, authority, and the preservation of the nation’s rights, and under no circumstances will it retreat from the legal rights of the people and the country,” Pezeshkian wrote.

Iran previously accused the Trump administration of taking a “maximalist approach,” while insisting that its own nuclear program is peaceful and that it will not dismantle its enrichment capabilities entirely. Tehran has also demanded sanctions relief, reparations, an end to Israel’s campaign in Lebanon, and recognition of what it calls its sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran is allegedly ready to hand over its highly enriched uranium stockpile to Russia, the Saudi news broadcaster Al Hadath has reported. The idea was floated as part of the latest peace proposal Tehran sent to the US via Pakistan, the outlet said on Monday, citing a leaked document it had obtained.

Indirect talks between the two sides mediated by Islamabad have been stalled since a ceasefire was established in early April. It followed a month of hostilities initiated by the US and Israel against the Islamic Republic in late February. Both Washington and Tehran have since repeatedly put forward proposals to end the conflict while dismissing each other’s demands.

According to the report, Iran is allegedly ready to freeze its nuclear program for a long period of time but only on the condition that its highly enriched uranium will be transferred to Russia instead of the US. Tehran still rules out dismantling its program completely, Al Hadath added.

Iran retains more than 400 kg of uranium enriched to 60%, according to International Atomic Energy Agency estimates. Weapons-grade levels typically require 90% enrichment and higher.

“Not only did we make such an offer; we already implemented it once before, back in 2015. Iran has complete trust in us, and not without reason,” Russian President Vladimir Putin told journalists earlier this month. Moscow has never violated its agreements, he stressed, and continues to cooperate with the Islamic Republic on its peaceful nuclear energy program.

Washington has reportedly already dismissed Iran’s latest proposal as insufficient, Axios reported on Monday, citing an unnamed American official briefed on the issue. According to the official, Tehran made only “token” improvements on the previous version.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly insisted that Iran’s highly enriched uranium should be handed over to America. Last week, he told Fox News that the issue was “more for public relations” and getting the Iranian stockpile would just make him “feel better.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin will travel to Beijing this week with a high-level delegation for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping focused on bilateral ties, trade, energy cooperation, and global affairs, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov has said. 

The May 19-20 visit coincides with the 25th anniversary of the Russia-China Treaty of Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation, which Ushakov said reflects relations that have reached an “unprecedentedly high level.” 

Ushakov told reporters on Monday that the delegation will include senior ministers, top Kremlin officials, and the heads of major Russian state corporations and banks, among them Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina. 

According to Ushakov, Putin and Xi will hold both one-on-one and expanded-format talks focused on “the most important and sensitive issues” in bilateral relations, as well as major international developments. 

Around 40 bilateral agreements are expected to be signed, including a joint statement on deepening the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries.  

The two leaders are also set to adopt a separate declaration on promoting a “multipolar world” and “a new type of international relations,” Ushakov said. 

The Kremlin aide also dismissed speculation that the timing of Putin’s trip was linked to US-China contacts, stating that there was “no connection whatsoever” and that preparations for the visit began shortly after Putin and Xi held a video call in February. 

US President Donald Trump made a two-day visit to China last week, where he discussed Iran, Taiwan, trade relations and other issues with Xi. Despite both sides describing the talks positively, the visit produced no major breakthroughs on key disagreements between Beijing and Washington.

Three men were killed in a shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego on Monday, and two suspected teenage shooters are also dead, law enforcement officials said. The attack is being investigated as a hate crime, according to police.

Police responded to reports of an active shooter at the mosque, located at 7050 Eckstrom Avenue in San Diego’s Clairemont area, at about 11:40am local time. Officers later said the threat had been “neutralized” after a large emergency response around the Islamic Center.

One of the victims is believed to have been a security guard who investigators said played a “pivotal role” in preventing the attack from becoming “much worse,” according to FOX 9, citing law enforcement.

Graphic aerial footage from the scene showed a body lying in a pool of blood at the entrance to the facility.

🚨 NOW: ACTIVE SHOOTER situation at Islamic Center in San Diego results in 2 dead, more injured, and someone spotted laying in a pool of blood, aerial view shows

Absolutely horrifying.

Police have rushed the scene.

Pray for any victims 🙏🏻

h/t @RapidReport2025 pic.twitter.com/WjaEHWz0Ac

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) May 18, 2026

The mosque complex includes Al Rashid School, but officials said no students, teachers or school staff were injured. Aerial footage from the scene showed children being escorted away as police surrounded the area.

NEW: Children at a nearby school are escorted out by police after an active shooter was reported at the Islamic Center of San Diego.

2 teen suspects are dead from what appear to be self-inflicted gunshot wounds, according to police.

Officials say at least 3 adult male victims… pic.twitter.com/fTkpiHEas3

— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 18, 2026

San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said the two male suspects, aged 17 and 19, appear to have died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

“There were no officers involved in firing their weapons,” Wahl said at a news briefing, while cautioning that the investigation remains “still very preliminary at this point.”

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said emergency personnel were working to protect the community and secure the area, while California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said the governor had been briefed and urged the public to follow local authorities’ guidance.

European leaders have reportedly discussed appointing an envoy to Moscow since early 2025, apparently out of concern that the EU’s interests could be sidelined if the US and Russia draw up a peace deal for Ukraine without their involvement. In a report on Monday, Politico revealed that chatter in Brussels has focused on three potential candidates: former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, and former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

Notable for her absence from this list is EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, who as the bloc’s chief diplomat would normally be a natural fit for the role. Kallas nominated herself for the position last week, boasting that she could “see through the traps that Russia is presenting.”

However, EU diplomats told Politico that Kallas’ open hostility toward Russia – she refers to Putin as a “terrorist” and has expressed support for the defeat of Russia and its dissolution into “many different nations” – makes her a non-starter for the job. “She’s ruled herself out for this one, unfortunately,” one diplomatic source told the outlet.

While Merkel, Stubb, and Draghi have not called for the outright dissolution of the Russian state, their track records will likely give the Kremlin pause before entering talks in good faith.

Merkel the deceiver

Merkel, who served as Germany’s chancellor from 2005 to 2021, has a long relationship with Putin, speaks fluent Russian, and in late 2021 proposed the establishment of a diplomatic format between the EU and Russia, which failed to find backing from other members of the bloc. Merkel has recently defended her support for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, and on Monday criticized EU leadership for their refusal to engage with Moscow over Ukraine.

However, Merkel has also admitted that she negotiated the 2014 and 2015 Minsk accords – under which Kiev agreed to grant some autonomy to the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in exchange for a ceasefire with pro-independence forces – in bad faith. In 2022, Merkel admitted that the agreements were in fact an “attempt to give Ukraine time” to “create powerful armed forces” in preparation for a more intense conflict with Russia.

Putin has said that Russia was “simply led by the nose [and] deceived” by Merkel and the other European guarantors of the Minsk agreements.

Even if the Kremlin were to overlook Merkel’s deception, the former chancellor has ruled herself out as a potential envoy to Moscow. “We were only able to hold [the Minsk] talks with President Putin because we had political power, because we were heads of government,” she told German broadcaster WDR. “You need that power. And I, personally, would never have thought of asking a mediator to go to Minsk for me and talk to Putin.”

Stubb the hawk

Stubb has also repeatedly invoked the Second World War as a template for Finland to follow in dealing with modern Russia, telling US President Donald Trump last year that “we found a solution in 1944 – and I believe we can find one in 2025.”

His retelling of the Second Soviet–Finnish War left out the fact that Nazi-allied Finland allowed a buildup of German troops on its soil before declaring war on the USSR in 1941, and omitted Finland’s participation in the extermination of a million Soviet citizens during the siege of Leningrad.

On top of these grievances, Stubb has also lifted a ban on hosting NATO nuclear weapons on his country’s soil, and given Ukraine his blessing to use Finnish weapons in long-range strikes on Russia.

Draghi the no-show

Politico describes Draghi as “widely respected in Europe and seen as neither overly hawkish nor sympathetic to the Kremlin.” While the former Italian PM lacks Stubb’s belligerence and Merkel’s track record of betrayal, his record on Ukraine is broadly in line with his European counterparts. Before resigning in July 2022, Draghi declared it “impossible to have meaningful dialogue with Moscow,” sent military aid to Ukraine, and promised Kiev “whatever it takes” to defeat Russia.

Draghi served as president of the European Central Bank from 2011 to 2019, and returned to economic affairs after his tenure as Italian PM ended, currently working as the EU’s rapporteur on competitiveness. While his name has come up in Brussels for the envoy position, Politico conceded that “there’s been no public signal that the economically focused Draghi wants the role.”

Who does Russia want?

Earlier this month, Putin mentioned Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, as his preferred intermediary for talks with the EU. Schroeder served as chancellor from 1998 to 2005 and signed off on the Nord Stream 1 project, which buoyed Germany’s industrial output and economic growth during the Merkel years. A close friend of Putin, Schroeder worked as a director of the German-Russian consortium responsible for both Nord Stream pipelines after leading office, and served on the board of Russian oil giant Rosneft until 2022.

However, Schroeder is as unacceptable to Brussels as Kallas is to Moscow. Describing the former chancellor as a Russian “lobbyist,” she told reporters last week that it “would not be very wise” to side with Putin in choosing him.

Russia maintains that it is open to constructive dialogue, but Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stressed last week that any debate over who will lead the European delegation is meaningless until “a political decision to resume dialogue” is made in Brussels.

“How can you discuss anything with Kaja Kallas?” Peskov remarked to reporters earlier this year. Brussels, he added, is full of “semi-literate, incompetent functionaries.”

No matter who Brussels sends to Moscow, the EU’s vision for Ukraine remains fundamentally unacceptable to Russia. After the first iteration of Trump’s draft peace plan leaked to the media last year, Britain, France and Germany released a counterproposal that removes limits on NATO expansion, clears the way for Ukraine to join the military bloc, hands Ukraine security guarantees along the lines of NATO’s Article 5, and mandates that Moscow pay reparations to Kiev.

Top EU officials, including Kallas and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, have endorsed all of these positions and insisted that Ukraine not be forced into making territorial concessions. With the US and Russia treating territorial concessions as a foregone conclusion, Brussels’ stubbornness all but guarantees that the EU will continue to be sidelined as the real powers draft a deal.

Last week’s Trump-Xi summit produced no dramatic declaration or historic treaty – yet its importance may prove far greater than any immediate deliverable. What happened in Beijing was not a breakthrough in policy but a breakthrough in recognition: the United States openly acknowledged China as an equal center of global power. That alone marks a historic turning point.

For decades, American administrations approached China from the assumption that Beijing was either a manageable challenger or a state that would eventually integrate into a US-led international order on American terms. The summit suggested something fundamentally different.

US President Donald Trump appeared compelled to recognize that China is no longer simply a rival great power but a central pillar of the emerging world order – one that Washington can neither isolate nor overpower. This was the true message of the summit.

The triumph of pragmatism

Neither Washington nor Beijing expected immediate breakthroughs. The summit was never realistically supposed to solve structural tensions overnight. Its purpose was to stabilize relations between two powers which are increasingly aware that prolonged escalation has become prohibitively costly.

The talks reflected the reality that the US now needs stable engagement with China as much as China needs stable engagement with the US. This mutual dependency is perhaps uncomfortable, but it is also unavoidable – neither full confrontation nor full separation is sustainable anymore.

For years, the Americans described China as a revisionist actor seeking to overturn the international order. But the Beijing summit demonstrated something more consequential: the international order itself is already changing. Many countries have begun treating China not merely as a competitor to the US, but as a parallel – and in some respects superior – center of global gravity.

That transformation explains Trump’s increasingly pragmatic posture. Competition with China remains intense, particularly in trade and technology, but the White House no longer appears interested in fantasies of regime change or direct strategic rollback against Beijing. More importantly, Washington may no longer possess the power necessary to pursue such ambitions successfully.

The summit also revealed the outlines of Trump’s evolving geopolitical doctrine. Contrary to alarmist rhetoric on both sides of the Pacific, Washington’s strategy increasingly appears less focused on destroying China’s rise than on managing coexistence while preserving maximum American leverage. The emphasis has shifted from ideological crusades to economic and technological competition.

At the same time, the US seems determined to tighten strategic control over the Western Hemisphere in a manner reminiscent of the Monroe Doctrine. Recent developments in Panama and Venezuela, alongside growing pressure on Cuba, should be understood through this lens. Washington seeks uncontested primacy in the Americas while reducing external dependence and limiting Chinese penetration into its natural sphere of influence.

This strategy undoubtedly weakens Beijing’s position in Latin America. Yet paradoxically, it also reflects the logic of multipolarity. Trump’s America increasingly appears willing to accept Chinese dominance in certain areas, provided the US retains dominance in others.

The same applies in the Indo-Pacific. Washington continues to supply weapons to Taiwan, Japan, and other regional partners while encouraging broader militarization across the region. But this should not automatically be interpreted as preparation for direct confrontation. It may instead represent a rebalancing of strategic burdens – an effort to share military responsibility among allies while avoiding a catastrophic US-China war over Taiwan or other flashpoints.

The Iran exception

One major contradiction remains: the Middle East. Trump’s broader strategy points toward selective engagement, hemispheric consolidation, and managed competition with China. Yet the war against Iran appears strikingly inconsistent with that idea.

Strategically, it resembles an aberration – a costly diversion driven less by core American interests than by the influence of Israel and the priorities of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In many respects, it’s more Netanyahu’s war than Trump’s war.

Unlike Washington’s moves in the Americas, which constrained Chinese influence, instability in the Middle East may actually strengthen Beijing’s global position.

China benefits when the US gets trapped in expensive, open-ended regional crises. Every additional military commitment dilutes American focus and accelerates the redistribution of global influence. Beijing, meanwhile, continues to present itself as a comparatively stable economic partner with a mature and modern political system capable of engaging all sides simultaneously.

While Washington attempts to contain China economically and strategically, its own Middle Eastern entanglements may be helping Beijing expand its international stature far beyond the Gulf region.

This, in turn, reinforces Beijing’s confidence at the negotiating table. China now approaches talks with the US not as a rising power seeking acceptance, but as an established force convinced that time increasingly favors its long-term game.

Perhaps the clearest evidence of this transformation lies in official American doctrine itself. A comparison between Trump’s 2017 National Security Strategy and the 2025 version released last November reveals a remarkable evolution in Washington’s thinking.

The 2017 document portrayed China as a strategic threat, a revisionist power undermining American security and prosperity. Beijing was grouped alongside Russia, Iran, North Korea, and jihadist terrorism as one of the principal dangers ostensibly facing the US. China’s political system and values were described as fundamentally incompatible with American interests.

The new strategy is dramatically different. The 2025 National Security Strategy focuses primarily on trade imbalances, economic competition, and maintaining strategic equilibrium. China is no longer explicitly framed as a security threat. Ideological language has given way to that of balance, competition, and coexistence.

This is not a cosmetic adjustment. It reflects a profound strategic recalibration. Washington increasingly understands that China cannot be isolated, economically decoupled, or politically transformed through pressure alone. The costs would simply be too high – not only for China, but for the US itself.

‘Constructive strategic stability’

The Trump-Xi summit therefore may represent the beginning of a broader search for what Beijing calls “constructive strategic stability.” Not friendship, and certainly not alliance. But a structured coexistence between two systems competing intensely while recognizing mutual limits.

In many ways, this also validates Chinese President Xi Jinping’s long-standing assertion that “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can go hand in hand.” Until recently, such statements were dismissed in Washington as propaganda. Now it increasingly resembles the conceptual foundation of an emerging geopolitical compromise.

The next stage of this process may arrive sooner than expected. Xi will travel to Washington in September – a highly symbolic visit given that he never visited the US during Trump’s earlier presidency.

If that meeting takes place, it will confirm what the Beijing summit already suggested: the era when Washington could dictate the terms of the global order unilaterally is ending. A new world is emerging, shaped by negotiated coexistence between rival centers of power.

For the first time in decades, the United States appears ready to admit it.

The US-Israeli war on Iran has already cost businesses throughout the world at least $25 billion, with losses continuing to mount, Reuters reported on Monday, citing an analysis of corporate disclosures from companies listed in the US, Europe and Asia.

The outlet reviewed statements from businesses across major global markets and found that at least 279 enterprises have cited supply chain disruptions and soaring fuel costs linked to the Iran conflict as a reason for emergency measures.

Some have raised prices or cut production, while others have suspended dividends or share buybacks, furloughed staff, imposed fuel surcharges or have sought urgent government support.

Whirlpool CEO Marc Bitzer told analysts earlier this month that the downturn resembled the global financial crisis in 2008 after the appliance maker halved its full-year forecast and suspended dividend payments. “Consumers are holding back on replacing products and, rather, repairing them,” Bitzer said.

Most of them were based in the EU and the UK, where energy prices were already elevated since cutting back on Russian oil and gas imports after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict four years ago.

McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said “elevated gas prices are the core issue we’re seeing right now,” while Newell Brands CFO Mark Erceg said every $5 rise in oil prices adds about $5 million in costs. Continental executive Roland Welzbacher said the impact would become “full-blown” in the second half.

Airlines accounted for the largest share of quantified war-related costs at nearly $15 billion, while Toyota warned of a $4.3 billion hit and P&G estimated a $1 billion post-tax profit blow, the report said.

The economic fallout from the Iran war has also spread across the US economy, pushing inflation higher and sharply increasing fuel costs for consumers. A separate report by Brown University’s Watson Institute estimated Americans have spent an extra $41.5 billion on gasoline and diesel since the start of US President Donald Trump’s war with Iran – about $316 per household.

US President Donald Trump has posted a glitchy AI-generated image of himself alongside a shackled alien in his latest flurry of space-themed Truth Social posts on Sunday.

The post came just over a week after the US War Department declassified a batch of government files on unidentified flying objects (UFOs), spanning more than a hundred historic documents, reports, photographs and videos of various unexplained phenomena.

In Trump’s post, the alien – portrayed as a tall grey-skinned humanoid with a bald head and large black eyes – is flanked by the president, several Secret Service agents and a US soldier. The restraints on its wrists appear to be only partially generated. Trump did not explain or caption the image.

In another set of AI-generated images, Trump is portrayed at a console in a space station, with images of satellites and missiles being shot down in the background. One post shows the US president five to six times larger than the officers that surround him as he holds his fingers on a big red button.

The images are labelled “Space Force.”

The Pentagon has characterized the program as urgently needed.

The US has “very limited capability” against ballistic missiles and “no defense against hypersonic weapons or cruise missiles today,” Assistant Secretary of War for Space Policy Marc Berkowitz told lawmakers in the Senate last month. Russia, China, India and some other nations have developed and deployed hypersonic missiles in recent years.

After US President Donald Trump’s state visit to China, Russian President Vladimir Putin will arrive on May 19 to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Given the flurry of visits by foreign leaders to Beijing this year, it is clear that Beijing has become the place to go to for resolving major problems which have become intractable for traditional international institutions.

Trump’s visit from May 13 to 15 has undoubtedly done more to reset China-US relations than all the discussions conducted over the last nine years between delegations and representatives of both nations. More than that, it presented a real possibility of reshaping the relationship from rivalry to genuine partnership.

”Great changes unseen in a century” is the phrase often used by Xi to describe the present period of world history. This characterizes the turmoil in the world today and the abject failure of traditional institutions to deal with that turmoil.

A war in the midst of Europe well into its fourth year, Israeli attacks on Gaza, and the unprovoked attack on Iran by the US and Israel have all been repeatedly debated and discussed in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and the UN Security Council, but with no resolution.

Some nations are moving away from seeking multilateral solutions to overriding problems and showing greater unilateralism and protectionism in the realm of trade and investment. Some have increasingly decided to go their own way without considering the interests of their neighbors. And the resulting rise in political tensions has seen more nations seeking destructive weapons, jeopardizing the treaties put in place to limit the possession of nuclear weapons and prevent their use.

In many respects, the fabric of the international norms and principles established in the aftermath of World War II has been seriously undermined, creating a basis for greater conflicts, including even a possible conflict between nuclear powers. The failure of many nations this year to commemorate the end of WWII indicates the principles established in the past to prevent new wars are being increasingly ignored and abandoned.

In 2023, the Global Civilization Initiative was proposed during the Communist Party of China in Dialogue with World Political Parties High-level Meeting to protect and respect the cultural diversity of the world. Then in 2025, China introduced the Global Governance Initiative at the ‘Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Plus’ Meeting to strengthen the international institutions meant to preserve peace and harmony in the world.

In 2013, China launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Occurring at a time when the West had totally lost interest in development, it put the issue of global development firmly back on the agenda, creating tremendous excitement among the nations of the Global South that had despaired of working their way out of poverty and misery. The BRI has become the lodestar for the Global South, providing the needed infrastructure for them to move forward on the road to progress. This initiative alone has created a bond of trust among them and China.

During meetings between Xi and Trump, both leaders agreed on a new vision of building a constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability. This involves positive stability with cooperation as the mainstay, healthy stability with competition in proper limits, constant stability with manageable differences, and lasting stability with expected peace.

Such a guiding concept stands in stark contrast to the previous phase of the relationship, characterized by great power rivalry, strategic confrontation and decoupling. In the often-troubled relationship between these two great powers, Xi expressed the hope of moving it from rivalry to partnership.

Even in the face of disruptions of international supply chains and increase in energy prices worldwide, China has maintained a stable economy. China’s 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) calls for greater opening up to foreign investment and in the area of hi-tech, China is open to international cooperation rather than shutting itself behind ‘high walls’ like some nations.

Putin will arrive in China at a time when Russia-Ukraine military operations are still ongoing. During the course of the conflict, China has maintained a close relationship with Russia, in spite of its concerns about the conflict, and maintains good relations with Ukraine too.

The China-Russia relationship has been strengthened during these years, thanks to the close relationship between the two presidents and their overall agreement on issues of the international world order. And both leaders attest to the fact that the relationship of their two countries has now attained its highest level ever.

Given China’s position on the unnecessary conflict in Iran, it was not surprising that Iran’s Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araghchi visited Beijing on May 6, a week before Trump, at a time when the US president was again threatening military strikes on Iran.

China has been working diligently to bring this conflict to an end. China and Pakistan put forward a five-point initiative for restoring peace and stability in the Gulf region. Those included respect for national sovereignty, rejection of force and regime change, protection of civilians and shipping, reaching a political settlement and upholding the principles of the UN Charter. China has also been supportive of Pakistani efforts to mediate peace negotiations between the US and Iran.

Amid the overall paralysis in many of our international institutions, this type of heads-of-state diplomacy, championed and taken to its highest level by the Chinese president, provides an alternative to increasing chaos. Putin’s visit will be another example in this genuine endeavor to bring order out of chaos. Given the important role the Chinese, US and Russian leaders play in determining the outcomes in a wide variety of areas, this new beginning could provide the impetus for restoring a just and lasting system of global governance.

This article was first published by CGTN.

The decoupling of the US and European armies within NATO is no longer theoretical – the process is already underway. American troop deployments are being canceled, and weapons deliveries – delayed.

The latest example came in early May, when the US canceled the rotation of 4,000 troops into Poland, a week after the announcement Washington is pulling 5,000 soldiers from Germany following German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s criticism of the US-Israeli war on Iran as misguided.

US War Secretary Pete Hegseth has also canceled the deployment to Germany of a battalion specializing in long-range missiles, according to a leaked memo.

The bigger picture: America in Europe 

US forces have been permanently stationed on the European continent since World War II. Up to 80,000 American troops were stationed there in 2025 under a “coupled” system that is now unravelling. 

Both US President Donald Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden have signaled that Washington’s commitment to European defense is on the wane.

Responses by NATO’s European members have ranged from outright rejection of US militarism, as in the case of Spain, to both verbal criticism and acquiescence.

What decoupling actually means 

Decoupling armies in practical terms means the withdrawal of most of the 80,000 US troops in Europe, ending the post-1945 tradition of combined territorial defense and deterrence.

NATO’s European capitals are thus waking up to the prospect of living without the US military umbrella. “For the first time in human memory, we are alone,” as ex-ECB chief Mario Draghi has put it.

The US-Israeli war on Iran has stretched American stocks of ammunition, artillery systems, and missile interceptors thinner than at any point since the end of the Cold War.

US officials have warned several NATO members – including Baltic and Scandinavian states – that crucial weapons deliveries through the Foreign Military Sales program will be delayed, citing the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Beyond Iran, China remains the Pentagon’s primary long-term concern. Every brigade kept in Europe is one less available for a potential Pacific conflict.

Europe has become a secondary theater where NATO’s Euro-bloc will be expected to fend for itself.

‘Big bang’ or non-starter – EU’s army plan 

Earlier this year, EU defense chief Andrius Kubilius called for a “big bang in defense” – a 100,000-strong standing army to operate independently of the US and NATO.

The idea is deeply controversial. It would violate the EU treaty, require a new intergovernmental accord, and force member states to cede sovereignty over their armed forces – a non-starter for many capitals.

France has long championed the plan, with President Emmanuel Macron arguing for “strategic autonomy” from Washington, though Paris insists its nuclear deterrent would stay outside any joint command.

But analysts say the idea faces insurmountable legal hurdles: the EU’s founding treaties explicitly rule out a common army, and defense policy remains the exclusive preserve of national governments.

Europe’s capability problem 

Europe’s armies however remain highly dependent on the US for spy satellites, long-range missiles, heavy airlift aircraft, and undersea warfare capacity.

Earlier this month, German defense experts and industry executives published a paper arguing that EU defense autonomy will cost around $59 billion per year for the next decade.

The dramatic rise in NATO’s European members military spending has not translated into greater operational autonomy, though that may come. Vast amounts have been and will be spent, but capabilities remain fragmented across the bloc.

The internal European scramble 

Across the continent NATO’s European members are arming themselves at a pace not seen since the Cold War, citing intelligence reports of a ‘Russian threat’ – despite Moscow’s outright rejection of such – in an apparent effort to consolidate the EU and to reboot their economies through militarization.

In total, European NATO members spent a combined $559 billion on defense in 2025, with Germany’s outlays rising 24% to $114 billion and Spain’s jumping 50% to $40.2 billion.

The Franco-German brotherhood is the obvious place to find dissonance. In March, French President Emmanuel Macron announced plans to expand his country’s nuclear stockpile to ensure a secrecy-obscured arsenal so that “no state, however powerful, could shield itself from it, and no state, however vast, would recover from it.”

Berlin remains deeply uncomfortable with Macron’s nuclear overtures, while German officials have started recalling their country’s past military forays in ways that are making neighboring countries nervous.

The view from Moscow 

For Russia, the militarization of European states and transformation of the EU into a military alliance resembling NATO, but without US defense and deterrence, presents a direct and growing threat. European elites have a historical tradition of ‘marching eastward’.

Russia has scorned the EU army idea, suggesting that the bloc should first tackle its internal problems – refugees, energy dependence, and lagging NATO contributions.

Moscow has also repeatedly condemned the EU’s militarization as “using ostentatious Russophobia” as a pretext to turn Russia into a “model external enemy” and divert attention from internal European crises.

For Moscow, any transformation of the EU into a military alliance would raise security concerns and upset an already fragile strategic balance in Europe.

Tehran will take the US and Israel to court over attacks on Iranian cultural sites, the Islamic Republic’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, has said.

A fragile ceasefire, which was established between the sides in early April after a month of intense hostilities initiated by the Americans and the Israelis, currently holds. However, there has been no progress in indirect peace talks, with both Washington and Tehran rejecting each other’s demands as unacceptable.

Gharibabadi wrote in a post on X on Sunday that at least 149 historical landmarks and museums in 20 Iranian provinces, including five UNESCO-registered sites, have been damaged by the US and Israeli bombardment.

The authorities in Tehran “will register, document, and pursue this assault on its cultural heritage within the framework of international responsibility; for it will allow no power to sacrifice the history of the great Iranian nation to its military and political objectives of today,” he wrote.

Cultural sites must be protected during conflicts in line with the 1954 Hague Convention and the fundamental rules of humanitarian law, the diplomat added.

“Iran’s cultural heritage is not merely a national asset of the Iranian people; it is part of humanity’s shared memory,” Gharibabadi said.

The attacks on historic landmarks by Washington and West Jerusalem constitute “a clear manifestation of the lawless behavior of the American regime and the Zionist regime,” the deputy minister insisted.

The Iranian Ministry of Culture previously estimated that repairing the heritage sites damaged during the conflict would cost some 70 trillion rials (nearly $39 million).

The American wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere have led to damage or destruction of multiple cultural heritage sites since the 1950s, but Washington had never been held liable. It’s increasingly difficult for foreign governments to sue the US in domestic or international courts due to the doctrine of sovereign immunity and its refusal to recognize compulsory jurisdiction of global legal bodies.

In early April, US President Donald Trump warned that Iran’s “whole civilization will die” if it fails to accept American demands and faced instant international backlash, with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres saying that he was “deeply troubled” by the statement and Pope Leo XIV calling it “truly unacceptable.”

Smartphones and weaker face-to-face relationships could be contributing to plunging birth rates worldwide, particularly among young people, as global fertility is declining at a record pace, the Financial Times has reported, citing researchers and demographic data.

An analysis spanning population records and Google search data found that birth rates declined sharply across multiple countries following the widespread adoption of smartphones, regardless of earlier demographic trends, the outlet wrote on Saturday.

The FT cited Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde, an economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a researcher on demographic change, who described falling fertility as “the big question of our time.” He argued that many of today’s economic and social problems were “downstream” from collapsing birth rates.

Researchers are increasingly linking heavy smartphone and social media use as well as weaker face-to-face relationships to declining fertility in countries around the world, including the US, UK, Brazil and South Korea, according to the report.

The FT cited a recent paper by Nathan Hudson and Hernan Moscoso-Boedo of the University of Cincinnati examining birth rates during the rollout of 4G mobile networks in the US and UK.

Similar trends had been recorded across the world, the outlet said. France and Poland saw comparable declines from 2009, followed by Mexico, Morocco and Indonesia in around 2012, while Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal recorded steep drops between 2013 and 2015.

According to a Eurostat report published last month, the EU’s population is projected to shrink by 11%, or about 53 million people, over the next 75 years. The region’s population is expected to peak at 453 million in 2029 before falling below 400 million by the end of the century as fertility rates decline to around 1.3 children per woman.

As part of efforts to rebuild social connections, Russian policymakers in 2024 introduced restrictions banning students from using mobile phones in schools, with exceptions allowed only for emergencies.

RT's own new special project – the Social Well-Being Index – aims to gauge the health of nations around the world, including their social cohesion and long-term reproduction viability. You can check out the insights it provides on the dedicated web page linked above.

Tehran could respond militarily to US naval forces enforcing a blockade of Iranian ports, a senior Iranian official has said, warning that the Gulf of Oman could become a “graveyard” for American warships.

Speaking on Iranian state television on Sunday, Mohsen Rezaei, who serves on a senior advisory body to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, said Iran’s patience with the ongoing maritime restrictions was running out after weeks of disrupted shipping activity.

“The longer they continue the naval blockade of Iran, the greater the damage to the world economy will be,” Rezaei stated. “We advise the US military to lift the siege before the Gulf of Oman turns into their graveyard.”

Rezaei, a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), argued that Tehran would be justified in responding militarily to an act of war, which he stressed the blockade amounts to.

US President Donald Trump announced the naval operation on April 13, undermining indirect diplomatic efforts mediated by Pakistan. Although Washington and Tehran declared a fragile ceasefire on April 8, both sides have continued to reject each other’s conditions for a broader settlement.

NOW: 🇺🇸 🇮🇷 TRUMP THREATENS IRAN

Trump just posted this to his truth social.

To me it looks like a clear threat of invasion or balkanisation, either directly or via proxy.

What a clown. pic.twitter.com/vhKOzPw7CD

— Adam (@adamemedia1) May 17, 2026

The crisis was triggered by a US-Israeli bombing campaign targeting Iran’s leadership and key infrastructure. Tehran responded with retaliatory strikes against the attacking nations and against regional countries hosting US military bases. Iranian authorities have also restricted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway linking the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

According to reports by Axios and CNN, Trump convened senior national security officials on Saturday to discuss possible next steps, including renewed military action. The meeting was reportedly held hours after Trump’s return from a state visit to China, and included Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and special envoy Steve Witkoff, sources have said.

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te has defended purchases of American weaponry after US President Donald Trump characterized weapons deliveries to the island as a bargaining chip in talks with Beijing.

During Trump’s visit to Beijing last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping described the status of the self-governing island as the central issue in bilateral relations, warning that it could potentially lead to conflict. Beijing has repeatedly condemned US arms sales to Taipei as interference in China’s internal affairs and a violation of the decades-old One-China policy.

In a statement posted on social media on Sunday, Lai called the arms sales “the most important deterrent” against conflict in the region.

“We thank President Trump for his continued support for peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait since his first term, including the continuous increase in the scale and amount of arms sales to Taiwan,” he wrote.

Lai added that Taiwan “will not provoke” a conflict, but would also not “give up national sovereignty and dignity.”

In December, Trump approved a record $11 billion weapons package for Taiwan that included missiles, drones, artillery systems, and military software. Last week, however, he raised doubts about future deliveries, telling Fox News that he had not yet approved a proposed new $14 billion package.

China considers Taiwan part of its sovereign territory – a position shared by the vast majority of countries, including Russia. Xi stated in 2022 that Beijing sought peaceful reunification, but warned that the People’s Republic would not rule out the use of force if provoked.

Although the US does not officially recognize Taiwan as a separate country, it maintains informal diplomatic ties with Taipei, which Beijing also regards as a violation of the One-China policy.

US President Donald Trump has threatened Iran with a new attack if Tehran doesn’t agree to make swift concessions to Washington.

Indirect talks between the sides have remained stalled since a fragile ceasefire was established in early April after a month of hostilities initiated by the US and Israel. Both Washington and Tehran have repeatedly dismissed each other’s demands, with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi earlier this week singling out the Trump administration’s “maximalist approach” and provocative rhetoric as main obstacles to reaching a deal.

Meanwhile, disruptions continue in the Strait of Hormuz, which has heavily affected global shipping and sent oil prices soaring. While Tehran has announced its own mechanism to regulate maritime traffic through the waterway, which accounts for some 25% of global crude trade, the US has rejected the scheme and is enforcing a naval blockade on Iranian ports in retaliation.

Trump took to his Truth Social platform on Sunday to warn that “for Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!”

The new threat followed the president’s meeting on Saturday with top members of his national security team, including Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and special envoy Steve Witkoff, dedicated to the situation around Iran, CNN reported.

According to the broadcaster’s sources, the Pentagon has prepared a list of targets, including energy and infrastructure sites, if Trump ultimately decides to resume strikes on the country.

The New York Times reported on Friday, citing unnamed American officials, that the US and Israel are actively preparing for a renewal of hostilities with Iran and could launch “more aggressive bombing runs” as early as next week.