Ukrainian officials said at least five people were killed from fighting and shelling along the war’s front line in eastern Ukraine, which is mostly occupied by Russia.
Ukrainian shelling and drone attacks on key infrastructure in Russian-occupied areas of southeastern Ukraine led to power cuts across the whole of the Zaporizhia region, according to Russian-installed officials there.
Similar attacks damaged electrical substations in the adjacent Kherson region, leading to power loss for 100,000 residents and 150 towns and villages, according to the Russian-installed officials.
However, there has been no effect on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, Europe’s largest nuclear facility, according to Russian officials who occupy the site. The station is currently in shutdown mode.
Ceasefire
Little headway was made during talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials in Istanbul, but the two sides did agree to swap thousands of prisoners and the remains of 6,000 deceased soldiers. The deal will also include all injured soldiers and those aged between 18 and 25.
Russia set out a memorandum at the talks to end its war on Ukraine. Terms include Ukrainian forces withdrawing from the four regions annexed by Russia in September 2022, but that Russian forces have failed to fully capture, Kyiv halting war mobilisation efforts and a freeze on Kyiv importing Western weapons.
The Russian document also proposes that Ukraine end martial law and hold elections, after which the two countries could sign a comprehensive peace treaty.
Ukraine must also abandon its bid to join NATO, set limits on the size of its armed forces and recognise Russian as the country’s official language on a par with Ukrainian, according to the memorandum.
Ukraine – which has previously rejected all such demands by Moscow – said it would spend the next week reviewing the memorandum and proposed another round of talks between June 20 and 30.
The White House said that United States President Donald Trump is “open” to a three-way summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Zelenskyy’s chief of staff said in a post on Telegram after the talks that he did not believe Moscow wanted a ceasefire. “The Russians are doing everything to not cease firing and continue the war. New sanctions now are very important,” he wrote.
Sanctions
The US Senate said it would start working on further rounds of sanctions for Russia and secondary sanctions for its trade partners if peace talks continue to stall.
Possible sanctions include 500 percent tariffs on countries that buy Russian exports, including oil, gas and uranium. The tariffs would hit India and China, Moscow’s two largest energy customers.
US Senate Majority Leader John Thune said that senators “stand ready to provide President Trump with any tools he needs to get Russia to finally come to the table in a real way”.
Nationalist populist Karol Nawrocki will be Poland’s next president after a tight election race. His victory marks a significant boost for the populist tide in Europe and around the globe.
Electoral Commission results on Monday showed that Nawrocki, backed by the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, won 50.89 percent of the vote. His rival, liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, received 49.11 percent in Sunday’s run-off.
The close result is being viewed as an illustration of the deep divide in Polish society between conservative forces, often linked to the powerful Catholic Church, and liberals, largely based in major cities.
Although the government holds the majority of power in Poland, Nawrocki is expected to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor Andrzej Duda from PiS in using the president’s veto power to block Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s agenda.
Tusk’s centrist coalition government has pledged to reform the judicial system, which PiS revamped during eight years in power that came to an end in 2023. PiS’s changes caused a bitter fight with the European Union, which said they politicised the judiciary and were undemocratic.
The government has also struggled to ease restrictions on abortion and institute LGBTQ rights due to Duda’s resistance.
Nawrocki has pledged to protect Poland’s sovereignty from what he calls excessive interference from Brussels while he also has been critical of Ukraine’s hopes of joining the EU and NATO.
Although he remains supportive of Kyiv in its war against Russia, Nawrocki has also promised to put the interests of Poles above the large number of Ukrainian refugees that the country has taken in.
Therefore, his victory could complicate Warsaw’s relations with the EU and impact its support for Ukrainian refugees.
United States President Donald Trump gave Nawrocki his blessing before the election, and right-wing forces in Europe, who were disappointed by the defeat of nationalist George Simion in Romania’s presidential election last month, have been quick to celebrate.
Here is how the world reacted to his victory:
Poland
Trzaskowski conceded defeat and congratulated Nawrocki on his win but also cautioned him to represent all Poles. “This win is an obligation, especially in such difficult times. Especially with a close result. Don’t forget that,” Trzaskowski said on X.
Slawomir Mentzen, leader of the far-right Confederation party, who came third in the May 18 first round of the election, told Nawrocki: “I am really counting on you not forgetting those millions of voters who did not vote for you in the first round but did yesterday. These people wanted change.”
“The referendum on the dismissal of the Tusk government has been won,” PiS lawmaker Jacek Sasin wrote on X.
European Union
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sent her congratulations, saying she is “confident” that “very good cooperation” with Warsaw would continue.
“We are all stronger together in our community of peace, democracy, and values. So let us work to ensure the security and prosperity of our common home,” she said on X.
Ukraine
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he looks forward to “fruitful cooperation” with Poland.
“By reinforcing one another on our continent, we give greater strength to Europe in global competition and bring the achievement of real and lasting peace closer,” Zelenskyy said.
Germany
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier congratulated Nawrocki and urged Poland to “cooperate closely based on democracy and rule of law”, stating that the two neighbours must cooperate to “ensure a future of security, freedom and prosperity for Europe”.
NATO
Secretary-General Mark Rutte said he was looking forward to working with Nawrocki on “making sure that with Poland, NATO becomes even stronger than it is today”.
France
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen welcomed the result of the election, branding it as “a rebuff to the Brussels oligarchy, which intends to impose a standardisation of legislation on member states, contrary to any democratic will”, and the European Commission’s “authoritarian policies and federalist ambitions [that] are brutalising national sovereignty”.
Hungary
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who seeks to make himself a figurehead for Europe’s nationalist populist forces, congratulated Nawrocki on his “fantastic victory”. Orban added that he is “looking forward to working with [Nawrocki] on strengthening Visegrad cooperation”, a reference to the four-nation Visegrad Group, in which the Czech Republic and Slovakia are also members.
Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto called Nawrocki’s success a “fresh victory for [European] patriots”.
Romania
“Poland WON,” Simion, whose failure to win the Romanian presidency disappointed nationalist and eurosceptic forces, wrote on X.
Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a new prisoner swap and the return of thousands of war dead during direct talks in Istanbul although little headway was made towards ending the war.
The delegations met on Monday at the Ottoman-era Ciragan Palace in the Turkish city, and officials confirmed that both sides will exchange prisoners of war and the remains of 6,000 soldiers killed in combat.
Negotiators from both sides confirmed they had reached a deal to swap all severely wounded soldiers as well as all captured fighters under the age of 25.
“We agreed to exchange all-for-all seriously wounded and seriously sick prisoners of war. The second category is young soldiers who are from 18 to 25 years old – all-for-all,” Ukraine’s lead negotiator and Defence Minister Rustem Umerov told reporters in Istanbul.
Russia’s lead negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, said the swap would involve “at least 1,000” on each side – topping the 1,000-for-1,000 POW exchange agreed at talks last month.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, speaking from Vilnius, Lithuania, said the two parties “exchanged documents through the Turkish side” and Kyiv was preparing for the next group of captives to be released.
The Istanbul meeting marks the second direct dialogue in less than a month, but expectations were low. The talks on May 16 produced another major prisoner swap but failed to reach a ceasefire.
“The exchange of prisoners seems to be the diplomatic channel that actually works between Russia and Ukraine,” Al Jazeera correspondent Dmitry Medvedenko said, reporting from Istanbul.
Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said Kyiv also handed over a list of children it accuses Russia of abducting and demanded their return.
As for a truce, Russia and Ukraine remain sharply divided.
“The Russian side continued to reject the motion of an unconditional ceasefire,” Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya told reporters after the talks.
Russia said it had offered a limited pause in fighting.
“We have proposed a specific ceasefire for two to three days in certain areas of the front line,” Medinsky said, adding that this was needed to collect the bodies of dead soldiers from battlefields.
At the negotiating table, Russia presented a memorandum setting out the Kremlin’s terms for ending hostilities, the Ukrainian delegation said.
Umerov told reporters that Kyiv officials would need a week to review the document and decide on a response. Ukraine proposed further talks on a date between June 20 and June 30, he said.
After the talks, Russian state news agencies TASS and RIA Novosti published the text of the Russian memorandum, which suggested as a condition for a ceasefire that Ukraine withdraw its forces from the four Ukrainian regions that Russia annexed in September 2022 but never fully captured.
As an alternate way of reaching a truce, the memorandum presses Ukraine to halt its mobilisation efforts and freeze Western arms deliveries, conditions that were suggested earlier by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The document also suggests that Ukraine stop any redeployment of forces and ban any military presence of third countries on its soil as conditions for halting hostilities.
The Russian document further proposes that Ukraine end martial law and hold elections, after which the two countries could sign a comprehensive peace treaty that would see Ukraine declare its neutral status, abandon its bid to join NATO, set limits on the size of its armed forces and recognise Russian as the country’s official language on par with Ukrainian.
Ukraine and the West have previously rejected all those demands from Moscow.
Ceasefire hopes remain elusive
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the talks “magnificent”.
“My greatest wish is to bring together Putin and Zelenskyy in Istanbul or Ankara and even add [United States President Donald] Trump along,” he said.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who chaired the talks, said the world was watching closely. He acknowledged the two sides had discussed the conditions for a ceasefire but no tangible outcome was announced.
Head of the Ukrainian delegation, Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, speaks after a second round of direct talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials on June 2, 2025 [Adem Altan/AFP]
Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian member of parliament, told Al Jazeera he was not very optimistic about the talks in Istanbul.
“Russia clearly shows that they don’t want to end the war because Ukraine proposed a 30-days ceasefire in March, and the American and Europe proposition was the same, but only one country [Russia] refused,” Goncharenko said.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has ramped up its military efforts far beyond the front lines, claiming responsibility for drone attacks on Sunday that it said damaged or destroyed more than 40 Russian warplanes. The operation targeted airbases in three distant regions – the Arctic, Siberia and the Far East – thousands of kilometres from Ukraine.
“This brilliant operation will go down in history,” Zelenskyy said, calling the raids a turning point in Ukraine’s struggle.
Ukrainian officials said the attacks crippled nearly a third of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet. Vasyl Maliuk, head of the Security Service of Ukraine, said the mission had taken more than a year to plan.
Zelenskyy said the setback for Russia’s military would increase pressure on Moscow to return to the negotiating table.
“Russia must feel the cost of its aggression. That is what will push it towards diplomacy,” he said during his visit to Lithuania, where he met leaders from NATO’s eastern flank and Nordic countries.
Ukraine’s air force, meanwhile, reported that Russia launched 472 drones on Sunday – the highest number since the start of its full-scale invasion in 2022 – aiming to exhaust Ukrainian air defences. Most of those drones targeted civilian areas, it said.
On Monday, Russian forces bombarded southern Ukraine’s Kherson region, killing three people and injuring 19, including two children. Separately, five people were killed and nine injured in attacks near Zaporizhzhia in the neighbouring Zaporizhia region.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces had intercepted 162 Ukrainian drones overnight across eight regions and Crimea while Ukraine said it shot down 52 of 80 drones launched by Russia.
Zelenskyy warned that if the Istanbul talks fail to deliver results, more sanctions against Russia will be necessary. “If there’s no breakthrough, then new, strong sanctions must follow – urgently,” he said.
Ukraine carries out large-scale drone strikes on multiple Russian airbases.
Eighteen months in the making, Ukraine’s Operation Spider’s Web saw hundreds of AI-trained drones target military aircraft deep inside Russia’s borders.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Sunday’s attacks will go down in history.
He followed them up with a proposal for an unconditional ceasefire as the two sides met in Istanbul.
The European Union is preparing its 18th package of sanctions on Russia, while US President Donald Trump has threatened to use “devastating” measures against Russia if he feels the time is right.
So, is the time right now?
And after the audacious attack, does Zelenskyy finally hold the cards?
Presenter: Dareen Abughaida
Guests:
Hanna Shelest – Security studies programme director at the Ukrainian Prism think tank
Pavel Felgenhauer – Independent defence analyst
Anatol Lieven – Eurasia programme director at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
Russia and Ukraine have concluded talks in Istanbul with no ceasefire deal, but agreed to an exchange of prisoners and fallen soldiers. The talks took place amid escalated attacks by both sides in recent days.
Judges say Berlin broke EU law by refusing Somali asylum seekers entry.
A Berlin court has ruled that Germany violated asylum law when it deported three Somali nationals at its border with Poland in a decision that challenges Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s aggressive new migration stance.
The three asylum seekers – two men and one woman – were turned back by border police at a train station in Frankfurt an der Oder, a city on Germany’s eastern border.
“The applicants could not demand to enter Germany beyond the border crossing,” the court said in a statement on Monday. “However, the rejection was unlawful because Germany is obliged to process their claims.”
Officials cited the asylum seekers’ arrival from a “safe third country” as grounds for their refusal.
But the court determined the expulsion was illegal under European Union rules, specifically the Dublin regulation, which requires Germany to assess asylum claims if it is the responsible state under the agreement.
It marks the first such legal ruling since Merz’s conservative-led coalition took office in February, riding a wave of anti-immigration sentiment that has helped boost the far-right Alternative for Germany party, now the country’s second largest political force in parliament.
Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt defended the deportations, saying the asylum system was failing under pressure. “The numbers are too high. We are sticking to our practice,” he told reporters, adding that the court would receive legal justifications for the government’s position.
Migration policies in doubt
But opposition lawmakers were quick to capitalise on the ruling. Irene Mihalic of the Greens called it “a severe defeat” for Merz’s government, accusing it of overstepping its powers “for populist purposes”.
“The border blockades were a rejection of the European Dublin system and have offended our European neighbours,” she said.
Karl Kopp, managing director of Pro Asyl, an immigration advocacy group, said the expulsion of the Somalis reflected an “unlawful practice of national unilateral action” in asylum policy and called for their return to Germany, the Reuters news agency reported.
The ruling also casts doubt on Merz’s wider migration agenda. In May, his government introduced a directive to turn back undocumented people at Germany’s borders, including those seeking asylum – a sharp departure from former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s more open policy during the 2015 migrant crisis.
Last month, the European Commission proposed a bloc-wide mechanism that would permit member states to reject asylum seekers who passed through a “safe” third country. The measure, widely criticised by rights groups, still awaits approval from national parliaments and the European legislature.
Two were killed, nearly 200 injured and more than 500 arrested after riots erupted in Paris following Paris Saint-Germain’s first-ever Champions League win. Footage shows police firing tear gas on crowds as looting, fires and clashes engulfed the Champs-Élysées.
Critics, including US officials, are calling for the Freedom Flotilla Coalition’s new mission to fail, with twelve volunteers, including Swedish activist Greta Thunberg on board. The flotilla is trying to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
Karol Nawrocki, Poland’s right-wing opposition candidate, narrowly won the second round of voting in the country’s presidential election on Sunday, according to the National Electoral Commission (NEC).
Here is all you need to know about the results:
Who won the presidential election in Poland?
Nawrocki won with 50.89 percent of the votes, the NEC website updated early on Monday.
He defeated liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, who secured 49.11 percent of the vote.
The outcome was a surprise because exit polls had projected a narrow loss for Nawrocki.
What happened in the first round of the election?
The first round took place on May 18, where, as expected, none of the 13 presidential candidates could manage to reach a 50 percent threshold.
Trzaskowski won 31.4 percent of the vote, while Nawrocki got 29.5 percent. As the top two candidates, Nawrocki and Trzaskowski proceeded to the run-off.
Who is Karol Nawrocki, Poland’s new president?
Nawrocki, 42, is a conservative historian and amateur boxer.
He contested as an independent candidate, backed by the outgoing president, Andrzej Duda’s Law and Justice (PiS), Poland’s main opposition party.
The newly elected president’s academic work, as a historian, centred on anti-communist resistance. At the moment, he runs the Institute of National Remembrance, a Warsaw-based government-funded research institute that studies the history of Poland during World War II and the period of communism until 1990.
At the institute, Nawrocki has removed Soviet memorials, upsetting Russia.
He administered the Museum of the Second World War in the Polish city of Gdansk from 2017 to 2021.
Nawrocki has had his share of controversies. In 2018, he published a book about a notorious gangster under the pseudonym “Tadeusz Batyr”. In public comments, Nawrocki and Batyr praised each other, without revealing they were the same person.
United States President Donald Trump’s administration threw its weight behind Nawrocki in the Polish election. The US group Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held its first meeting in Poland on May 27. “We need you to elect the right leader,” US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said during the CPAC event.
Calling Trzaskowski “an absolute train wreck of a leader”, Noem said, “I just had the opportunity to meet with Karol and listen: he needs to be the next president of Poland. Do you understand me?”
How did Nawrocki win?
Experts say the consistency of Nawrocki’s messaging on the campaign trail may have earned him his win.
“People choose someone they see as strong, clear, and consistent,” Liliana Smiech, chairwoman of the Foundation Council at Warsaw Institute, a Polish nonprofit think tank specialising in geopolitics and international affairs, told Al Jazeera.
“Even with the accusations against him, voters preferred his firmness over Trzaskowski’s constant rebranding. Trzaskowski tried to be everything to everyone and ended up convincing no one. Nawrocki looks like someone who can handle pressure. He became the president for difficult times.”
Unlike Trzaskowski, Smiech said, Nawrocki “didn’t try to please everyone”.
Yet he managed to please enough voters to win.
What is the significance of Nawrocki’s win?
Most of the power in Poland rests in the hands of the prime minister. The incumbent, Donald Tusk, leads a centre-right coalition government, and Trzaskowski was the ruling alliance’s candidate.
Nawrocki has been deeply critical of the Tusk administration. The president has the ability to veto legislation and influence military and foreign policy decisions.
On the campaign trail, Nawrocki promised to lower taxes and pull Poland out of the European Union’s Pact on Migration and Asylum, an agreement on new rules for managing migration and setting a common asylum system; and the European Green Deal, which sets benchmarks for environmental protection for the EU, such as the complete cessation of net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050.
Like other candidates, including Trzaskowski, Nawrocki called for Poland to spend up to 5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defence. Poland spent 3.8 percent of its GDP on military expenditure in 2023, according to World Bank data.
“Some expected a wave of support for the left or liberal side, especially among young people. That didn’t happen. Nawrocki won in the 18-39 age group,” Smiech said.
“It’s a clear message: people still care about sovereignty, tradition, and strong leadership. Even younger voters are not buying into the idea of a ‘new progressive Poland’.”
What were the key issues in the Polish election?
The Russia-Ukraine war, which began in February 2022, is a concerning issue for the Poles, who are fearful of a spillover of Russian aggression to Poland due to its proximity to Ukraine.
While Poland initially threw its full support behind Ukraine, tensions have grown between Poland and Ukraine.
Nawrocki is opposed to Ukraine joining NATO and the EU.
Yet, at the same time, Poland and Nawrocki remain deeply suspicious of Russia.
On May 12, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said an investigation had revealed that Russian intelligence agencies had orchestrated a massive fire at a shopping centre in Warsaw in May 2024. This is why multiple candidates in this election proposed raising the defence budget to 5 percent of the GDP.
Abortion is a key issue in Poland, which has some of the strictest abortion laws in Europe. In August 2024, Prime Minister Tusk acknowledged that he did not have enough backing from parliament to deliver on one of his key campaign promises and change the abortion law. PiS, which backed Nawrocki, is opposed to any legalisation of abortion.
Other issues included economic concerns about taxes, housing costs and the state of public transport.
What’s next?
Nawrocki is expected to be sworn in on August 6.
Smeich said Nawrocki will need to prove that he is not just good at campaigning, but also at governing.
“Expectations are high. People want someone who will defend Poland’s interests, stay firm under pressure, and not give in to media or foreign influence. He’s starting his term in a tough moment — exactly the kind of moment he was elected for.”
Just 40 countries representing 3.5 percent of the world’s population respect all civil liberties, a new study has found, warning that “democracy and human rights are under attack worldwide in a way we have not seen for decades.”
The Atlas of Civil Society report published by the German relief organisation Brot fur die Welt (Bread for the World) on Monday said only 284 million people living in “open” countries – including Austria, Estonia, the Scandinavian countries, New Zealand and Jamaica – enjoy protection of unrestricted civil rights and liberties.
The nongovernmental organisation defines a country as “open” if it allows people to form associations “without legal or practical barriers, demonstrate in public spaces, receive information and are allowed to disseminate it”.
Forty-two countries making up 11.1 percent of the world’s population are listed in a second category in which civil rights are classified as “impaired”. These include Germany, Slovakia, Argentina and the United States.
In these countries, the rights to freedom of assembly and expression are largely respected, but there are recorded violations.
‘Restricted, suppressed or closed’
“In contrast, 85 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where civil society is restricted, suppressed, or closed. This affects almost seven billion people,” the report found.
“Their governments severely restrict civil liberties and harass, arrest, or kill critical voices. This applies to 115 of 197 countries,” it added.
Several European countries appear in the “restricted” category, including Greece, the United Kingdom, Hungary and Ukraine.
Civil society is considered “oppressed” in 51 countries, including Algeria, Mexico and Turkey. In these countries, governments monitor, imprison or kill critics, and exercise censorship, according to the data.
Finally, Russia and 28 other countries are classified as “closed” and characterised by an “atmosphere of fear”. Criticism of the government or regime in these countries is severely punished.
Brot fur die Welt drew on data collected by the Civicus network of civil society organisations worldwide for its annual report covering 197 countries and territories.
Nine countries improved their freedom of expression ratings last year, including Jamaica, Japan, Slovenia, Trinidad and Tobago, Botswana, Fiji, Liberia, Poland and Bangladesh.
However, nine countries were downgraded from the previous year, including Georgia, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Peru, Ethiopia, Eswatini, the Netherlands, Mongolia and the Palestinian territory.
Dagmar Pruin, president of Brot fur die Welt, warned that “the rule of law, the separation of powers and protection against state arbitrariness are under threat or no longer exist in more and more countries.”
Investment to pour into nuclear warheads, submarines and munitions to confront the ‘most immediate threat since the Cold War’.
The United Kingdom has announced a major boost to its defence infrastructure to confront a “new era of threats” driven by “growing Russian aggression”.
The package, unveiled on Monday, includes huge investments in a nuclear warhead programme, a fleet of attack submarines and munitions factories and is part of a Strategic Defence Review that Prime Minister Keir Starmer said will shift the country to “war-fighting readiness”.
“The threat we now face is more serious, more immediate and more unpredictable than at any time since the Cold War,” Starmer said as he delivered the review in Glasgow.
“We face war in Europe, new nuclear risks, daily cyberattacks, growing Russian aggression in our waters, menacing our skies,” he added.
‘The front line is here’
The defence review, the UK’s first since 2021, was led by former NATO Secretary-General George Robertson.
Starmer said it would bring “fundamental changes” to the armed forces, including “moving to war-fighting readiness”, recentring a “NATO first” defence posture and accelerating innovation.
“Every part of society, every citizen of this country, has a role to play because we have to recognise that things have changed in the world of today,” he said. “The front line, if you like, is here.”
The UK has been racing to rearm in the face of what it sees as a growing threat from Russia. Fears that the United States has become a less reliable ally under President Donald Trump and will downsize its military presence in Europe as Trump demands NATO states raise their defence spending are other significant factors.
Starmer’s government pledged in February to lift defence spending to 2.5 percent of gross domestic product by 2027, which would mark the “largest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War”.
The government has said it will cut overseas aid to help fund the spending.
New munitions factories, attack submarines
Based on the recommendations in the review, the government said on Sunday that it would boost stockpiles and weapons production capacity, which could be scaled up if needed.
A total of 1.5 billion pounds ($2bn) will be dedicated to building “at least six munitions and energetics factories” with plans to produce 7,000 long-range weapons. As a result, total UK munitions spending is expected to hit 6 billion pounds ($8.1bn) over the current parliamentary term, which ends in 2029.
There are also plans to build up to 12 new attack submarines as part of the AUKUS military alliance with Australia and the US.
The Ministry of Defence also said it would invest 15 billion pounds ($20.3bn) in its nuclear warhead programme. Last week, it pledged 1 billion pounds ($1.3bn) for the creation of a “cyber command” to help on the battlefield.
The review described Russia as an “immediate and pressing” threat while calling China a “sophisticated and persistent challenge”.
Kyiv, Ukraine – Any description of Ukraine’s attacks on Russia’s fleet of strategic bombers could leave one scrambling for superlatives.
Forty-one planes – including supersonic Tu-22M long-range bombers, Tu-95 flying fortresses and A-50 early warning warplanes – were hit and damaged on Sunday on four airfields, including ones in the Arctic and Siberia, Ukrainian authorities and intelligence said.
Moscow did not comment on the damage to the planes but confirmed that the airfields were hit by “Ukrainian terrorist attacks”.
Videos posted by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), which planned and carried out the operation, which was called The Spiderweb, showed only a handful of planes being hit.
The strategic bombers have been used to launch ballistic and cruise missiles from Russian airspace to hit targets across Ukraine, causing wide scale damage and casualties.
The bomber fleet is one-third of Moscow’s “nuclear triad”, which also consists of nuclear missiles and missile-carrying warships.
According to some observers, the attack shattered Russia’s image of a nuclear superpower with a global reach.
The attack inadvertently “helped the West because it targeted [Russia’s] nuclear potential”, Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy head of the Ukrainian military’s general staff, told Al Jazeera.
While the assault decreases Russia’s potential to launch missiles on Ukraine, it will not affect the grinding ground hostilities along the crescent-shaped, 1,200km (745-mile) front line, he said.
(Al Jazeera)
Romanenko compared The Spiderweb’s scope and inventiveness to a string of 2023 Ukrainian attacks against Russia’s Black Sea fleet that was mostly concentrated in annexed Crimea.
Although Ukraine’s navy consisted of a handful of small, decades-old warships that fit into a football field-sized harbour, Kyiv reinvented naval warfare by hitting and drowning Russian warships and submarines with missiles and air and sea drones.
Moscow hastily relocated the decimated Black Sea fleet eastwards to the port of Novorossiysk and no longer uses it to intercept Ukrainian civilian vessels loaded with grain and steel.
The Spiderweb caught Russia’s military strategists off-guard because they had designed air defences to thwart attacks by missiles or heavier, long-range strike drones.
Instead, the SBU used 117 toy-like first-person-view (FPV) drones, each costing just hundreds of dollars, that were hidden in wooden crates loaded onto trucks, it said.
Their unsuspecting drivers took them right next to the airfields – and were shocked to see them fly out and cause the damage that amounted to $7bn, the SBU said.
“The driver is running around in panic,” said a Russian man who filmed thick black smoke rising from the Olenegorsk airbase in Russia’s Arctic region of Murmansk, which borders Norway.
Other videos released by the SBU were filmed by drones as they were hitting the planes, causing thundering explosions and sky-high plumes of black smoke.
Russia’s air defence systems guarding the airfields were not designed to detect and hit the tiny FPV drones while radio jamming equipment that could have caused them to stray off course wasn’t on or malfunctioned.
The SBU added a humiliating detail – The Spiderweb’s command centre was located in an undisclosed location in Russia near an office of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Moscow’s main intelligence agency, which Russian President Vladimir Putin once headed.
“This is a slap on the face for Russia, for FSB, for Putin,” Romanenko said.
However, Kyiv didn’t specifically target the pillar of Russia’s nuclear triad.
“They are destroying Russian strategic aviation not because it’s capable of carrying missiles with nuclear warheads but because of its use to launch … nonnuclear [missiles],” Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s Bremen University, told Al Jazeera.
The operation, which took 18 months to plan and execute, damaged a third of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
“This is our most far-reaching operation. Ukraine’s actions will definitely be in history textbooks,” he wrote on Telegram late on Sunday. “We’re doing everything to make Russia feel the necessity to end this war.”
The SBU used artificial intelligence algorithms to train the drones to recognise Soviet-era aircraft by using the planes displayed at an aviation museum in central Ukraine, the Clash Report military blogger said on Monday.
‘The very logic of the negotiations process won’t change’
The attack took place a day before Ukrainian and Russian diplomats convened in Istanbul to resume long-stalled peace talks.
But it will not affect the “logic” of the negotiations, a Kyiv-based political analyst said.
“Emotionally, psychologically and politically, the operation strengthens the positions of Ukrainian negotiators,” Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta think tank, told Al Jazeera. “But the very logic of the negotiations process won’t change.”
“Both sides will consider [US President] Donald Trump an arbiter, and whoever is first to leave the talks loses, ruins its negotiation positions with the United States,” Fesenko said.
Once again, the talks will likely show that the sides are not ready to settle as Russia is hoping to carve out more Ukrainian territory for itself and Ukraine is not going to throw in the towel.
“Russia wants to finish off Ukraine, and we’re showing that we will resist, we won’t give up, won’t capitulate,” Fesenko said.
By Monday, analysts using satellite imagery confirmed that 13 planes – eight Tu-95s, four Tu-22Ms and one An-12 – have been destroyed or damaged.
“What a remarkable success in a well-executed operation,” Chris Biggers, a military analyst based in Washington, DC, wrote on X next to a map showing the destruction of eight planes at the Belaya airbase in the Irkutsk region in southeastern Siberia.
Five more planes have been destroyed at the Murmansk base, according to Oko Hora, a group of Ukrainian analysts.
The Spiderweb targeted three more airfields, two in western regions and one near Russia’s Pacific coast, according to a photo that the SBU posted showing its leader, Vasyl Malyuk, looking at a map of the strikes.
But so far, no damage to the airfields or the planes on them has been reported.
Russia is likely to respond to The Spiderweb with more massive drone and missile attacks on civilian sites.
“I’m afraid they’ll use Oreshnik again,” Fesenko said, referring to Russia’s most advanced ballistic missile, which can speed up to 12,300 kilometres per hour (7,610 miles per hour), or 10 times the speed of sound, and was used in November to strike a plant in eastern Ukraine.
Russia and Ukraine continued to launch air strikes overnight as they prepared to meet for a second round of direct peace talks in Turkiye.
The Ukrainian delegation arrived in Istanbul on Monday, despite recent rhetoric from Kyiv suggesting it may not take part in the follow-up to the first round of talks between the adversaries last month, at which little progress was made towards a ceasefire in the war, started by Russia as it invaded its neighbour in February 2022.
The Russian negotiators also announced they had arrived in the Turkish city, where Kyiv and Moscow – under pressure from the United States – are expected to present respective memorandums on peace terms.
The first round of talks ended with just a prisoner swap agreed, with Ukraine complaining that Russia continues to make unacceptable and unrealistic demands.
Russia has resisted pressure to send its memorandum to Kyiv in advance. However, presidential adviser Vladimir Medinsky, Moscow’s lead negotiator, was quoted by the TASS news agency as saying the Kremlin had received Ukraine’s proposal.
Kyiv, according to the Reuters news agency, has proposed a roadmap for lasting peace, with no restrictions on its military strength nor international recognition of Russian sovereignty over parts of Ukraine, conditions that Moscow has sought to insist upon.
As the delegations arrived in Turkiye, Ukrainian officials were busy coordinating with European allies, who are seeking to raise support for Kyiv amid uncertainty over the commitment of the US under President Donald Trump.
Ahead of the meeting with their Russian counterparts, the Ukrainian delegation met with representatives from Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom.
Around the same time, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius for a summit with the leaders of NATO’s eastern and Nordic members, who are some of Kyiv’s staunchest backers amid the Russian invasion.
“If Ukraine is not present at the NATO summit, it will be a victory for Putin, but not over Ukraine, but over NATO,” he said last week.
Zelensky wants the Western military alliance to offer security guarantees to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire or peace deal, something Moscow has called “unacceptable.”
Police officers stand guard on the day of the second round of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine at Ciragan Palace, in Istanbul, Turkey, June 2, 2025. [Reuters]
Zelenskyy had reiterated calls for a “full and unconditional ceasefire” before the talks.
“Second – the release of prisoners. Third – the return of abducted children,” he said in a post on social media.
Zelenskyy also called for a direct meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin has previously said such a meeting could take place only after the delegations reach wider “agreements”.
Russia continues to demand that a ceasefire agreement must address the “root causes” of the conflict. It has persistently referred to limiting Ukraine’s military capabilities, banning Ukraine from joining NATO and agreeing to territorial concessions.
Massive bombardment
As the delegations arrived in Istanbul, both countries reported bombardments from massive overnight attacks.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said on Monday that its air defence units had “intercepted and destroyed” 162 Ukrainian drones, the majority of which were over the bordering regions, including 57 intercepted over the Kursk region and 31 over the Belgorod region.
A day earlier, Ukraine carried out one of its biggest and most successful attacks on Russian soil, hitting dozens of strategic bombers in Siberia and other military bases in the country.
Ukraine, meanwhile, reported that Russia had targeted its territory with 80 drones overnight, striking 12 targets.
The governor of Kherson, Oleksandr Prokudin, wrote on Telegram that artillery fire had killed a 40-year-old man in the Korabelny district.
A five-year-old child was also injured in the attack in Kherson and was undergoing medical supervision, he added.
Final vote count gives conservative candidate 50.89 percent, while his liberal rival receives 49.11 percent, AP reports.
Conservative eurosceptic Karol Nawrocki is expected to win Poland’s presidential run-off election with all votes now counted, according to media reports.
The Associated Press news agency, citing the final vote count, reported on Monday that Nawrocki won 50.89 percent of votes in the tight race against liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, who received 49.11 percent.
The Polish news website, Onet, reported the same results on its website.
The Polish Electoral Commission said on its website that it had counted all of the votes. The commission had said earlier that official results would be out on Monday morning.
Nawrocki, 42, a historian and amateur boxer who ran a national remembrance institute, campaigned on a promise to ensure economic and social policies favour Poles over other nationalities, including refugees from neighbouring Ukraine.
While Poland’s parliament holds most power, the president can veto legislation, and the vote was being watched closely in Ukraine as well as Russia, the United States and across the European Union.
These are the key events on day 1,194 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Here’s where things stand on Monday, June 2:
Fighting
Ukraine said it destroyed Russian bombers worth $7bn at air bases as far away as Siberia in an attack that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Kyiv’s “longest-range operation”.
Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari, reporting from Moscow, said the “simultaneous large-scale attack” was “launched from inside Russia” and targeted “Russian planes that have been carrying out attacks on Ukraine”.
An official at Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service told the Reuters news agency the operation involved hiding explosive-laden drones inside the roofs of wooden sheds and loading them onto trucks that were driven to the perimeter of the air bases. At least 41 Russian warplanes were hit, they said.
Russia’s Tass news agency said there were no military or civilian casualties and that “some of the participants” had been detained.
The operation came as Ukraine’s air force said Russia had launched 472 drones at the country overnight, in the highest nightly total of the war. Moscow also launched seven missiles.
This included a missile attack on a Ukrainian military training ground that killed 12 soldiers and wounded more than 60 on Sunday morning, according to Ukraine’s Land Forces.
The assault led Ukrainian ground forces commander Mykhailo Drapaty to announce his resignation, saying he felt a “personal sense of responsibility” for the soldiers’ deaths.
Meanwhile, in Russia, at least seven people were killed and 69 injured when a bridge in the Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine, collapsed onto a passing passenger train. Moscow Railway, in a post on Telegram, said the bridge had collapsed “as a result of an illegal interference in the operation of transport”.
A second bridge collapse caused a freight train to derail in Russia’s Kursk region, which also borders Ukraine, injuring a train driver, according to the acting governor of the area.
A Ukrainian drone attack on Kursk also sparked fires after debris from destroyed drones fell on private homes, the acting governor said.
Vladimir Medinsky, a former cultural minister who will lead Russia’s delegation in Istanbul, said Moscow has received Ukraine’s “version of the memorandum on a peaceful settlement,” the TASS news agency reported.
However Zelenskyy said that Russia is yet to share its own memorandum. “We don’t have it, the Turkish side doesn’t have it, and the American side doesn’t have the Russian document either,” the Ukrainian president said in a post on X.
TASS also reported that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his US counterpart Marco Rubio spoke by telephone about “several initiatives aimed at a political solution to the Ukraine crisis”, including Monday’s talks.
An exit poll in Poland’s presidential run-off shows the two candidates are very close and that the race is still too close to call, in an election where aid to Kyiv, Ukraine’s potential membership of NATO, and Ukrainian refugees were key issues.
Day before his government’s publication of a defence strategy review, PM Keir Starmer says he will ‘restore Britain’s war-fighting readiness’.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has warned the United Kingdom must be prepared to confront and defeat hostile states with modern military capabilities, as his government unveils a 1.5-billion-pound (about $2bn) plan to build at least six new weapons and explosives factories.
“We are being directly threatened by states with advanced military forces, so we must be ready to fight and win,” Starmer wrote in The Sun newspaper on Sunday. “We will restore Britain’s war-fighting readiness as the central purpose of our armed forces.”
The announcement came in advance of a Strategic Defence Review (SDR), which Starmer is set to publish on Monday. The review will assess threats facing the UK amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and pressure from United States President Donald Trump for NATO allies to bolster their defences.
European nations have rushed to strengthen their armed forces in recent months, following Trump’s comments that Europe must shoulder more responsibility for its security.
Defence Secretary John Healey, speaking to the BBC network, said the planned investment signals a clear warning to Moscow and would also help revive the UK’s sluggish economy.
“We are in a world that is changing now … and it is a world of growing threats,” Healey told the BBC on Sunday. “It’s growing Russian aggression. It’s those daily cyberattacks, it’s new nuclear risks, and it’s increasing tension in other parts of the world as well.”
The UK’s Ministry of Defence confirmed the funds would support the domestic production of up to 7,000 long-range missiles. With this package, its total munitions spending will reach approximately 6 billion pounds (nearly $8bn) during the current parliamentary term.
Meanwhile, The Sunday Times reported that the government is eyeing US-built jets capable of launching tactical nuclear weapons, although the UK’s Defence Ministry has yet to comment.
The forthcoming SDR, ordered after the Labour Party’s election win in July 2024, will outline emerging threats and the military capabilities required to address them. Starmer has pledged to raise defence spending to 2.5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2027, with an eventual aim of reaching 3 percent.
The arms initiative follows earlier government pledges to invest 1 billion pounds ($1.3bn) in artificial intelligence technology for battlefield decision-making and an additional 1.5 billion pounds (about $2bn) to improve housing conditions for armed forces personnel.
The 12-person crew, which includes climate activist Greta Thunberg, expects to take seven days to reach Gaza.
International nonprofit organisation Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) says one of its vessels has left Sicily to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, after a previous attempt failed due to a drone attack on a different ship in the Mediterranean.
The 12-person crew, which includes Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, Irish actor Liam Cunningham and Franco-Palestinian MEP Rima Hassan, set sail on the Madleen from the port of Catania on Sunday, carrying barrels of relief supplies that the group called “limited amounts, though symbolic”.
The voyage comes after another vessel operated by the group, the Conscience, was hit by two drones just outside Maltese territorial waters in early May. While FFC said Israel was to blame for the incident, it has not responded to requests for comment.
“We are doing this because no matter what odds we are against, we have to keep trying, because the moment we stop trying is when we lose our humanity,” Thunberg told reporters at a news conference before the departure. The Swedish climate activist had been due to board the Conscience.
She added that “no matter how dangerous this mission is, it is nowhere near as dangerous as the silence of the entire world in the face of the lives being genocised”.
The activists expect to take seven days to reach their destination, if they are not stopped.
The FCC, launched in 2010, is a non-violent international movement supporting Palestinians, combining humanitarian aid with political protest against the blockade on Gaza.
It said the trip “is not charity. This is a non-violent, direct action to challenge Israel’s illegal siege and escalating war crimes”.
United Nations agencies and major aid groups say Israeli restrictions, the breakdown of law and order, and widespread looting make it extremely difficult to deliver aid to Gaza’s roughly two million inhabitants.
The situation in Gaza is at its worst since the war between Israel and Hamas began 19 months ago, the UN said on Friday, despite a resumption of limited aid deliveries in the Palestinian enclave.
Under growing global pressure, Israel ended an 11-week blockade on Gaza on May 19, allowing extremely limited UN-led operations to resume.
On Monday, a new avenue for aid distribution was also launched: the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, backed by the United States and Israel, but with the UN and international aid groups refusing to work with it, saying it is not neutral and has a distribution model that forces the displacement of Palestinians.
The FCC is the latest among a growing number of critics to accuse Israel of genocidal acts in its war in Gaza, allegations Israel vehemently denies.
“We are breaking the siege of Gaza by sea, but that’s part of a broader strategy of mobilisations that will also attempt to break the siege by land,” said activist Thiago Avila.
Avila also mentioned the upcoming Global March to Gaza – an international initiative also open to doctors, lawyers and members of the media – which is set to leave Egypt and reach the Rafah crossing in mid-June to stage a protest there, calling on Israel to stop the Gaza offensive and reopen the border.
Officials say multiple military airbases deep inside Russia have come under drone attacks in a major Ukrainian operation ahead of peace talks due to start in Istanbul on Monday.
The Russian Defence Ministry said Ukraine had launched drone strikes targeting Russian military airfields across five regions on Sunday, causing several aircraft to catch fire.
The attacks occurred in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan, and Amur regions. Air defences repelled the assaults in all but two regions – Murmansk and Irkutsk, the ministry said.
“In the Murmansk and Irkutsk regions, the launch of FPV drones from an area in close proximity to airfields resulted in several aircraft catching fire,” the ministry said.
The fires were extinguished and no casualties were reported. Some individuals involved in the attacks had been detained, the ministry said.
The Security Service of Ukraine said on Sunday that it had hit Russian military planes worth a combined $7bn in a wave of drone strikes on Russian air bases thousands of kilometres behind the front lines.
“$7 billion: This is the estimated cost of the enemy’s strategic aviation, which was hit today as a result of the SBU’s special operation,” the agency said in a social media post.
Targets included the Belaya airbase in Irkutsk, about 4,300km (2,700 miles) from the Ukrainian border, and the Olenya airbase in south Murmansk, some 1,800km (1,100 miles) from Ukraine.
“According to witnesses on the ground and local officials, these drones were launched from sites near the airbases. That means this was an elaborate operation … that involved a number of people inside Russia,” Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari said, reporting from Moscow.
“This is the single largest attack that we’ve seen in one day across multiple military airbases inside Russia since the war began in February of 2022,” Jabbari said, noting that the airbases are home to Russia’s strategic air bombers, which have been used to attack targets across Ukraine over the past three years.
Earlier on Sunday, multiple local media reports in Ukraine, including those by state news agency Ukrinform, cited a source within the SBU saying the coordinated attacks inside Russia were “aimed at destroying enemy bombers far from the front”.
They said the operation was carried out by the SBU using drones smuggled deep into Russia and hidden inside trucks. At least 41 Russian heavy bombers at four airbases were hit, the reports said, adding that the operation, dubbed “Spiderweb”, had been prepared for over a year and a half, and it was personally overseen by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Al Jazeera’s John Hendren, reporting from Kyiv, said it’s “an audacious strike, one that Ukraine has been waiting a long time and patiently to deliver, and it’s come after Russian air strikes into Ukraine have dramatically accelerated over the past couple of weeks”.
Meanwhile, at least seven people were killed and 69 injured when a highway bridge in Russia’s Bryansk region, neighbouring Ukraine, was blown up while a passenger train heading to Moscow was crossing it with 388 people on board.
No one has yet claimed responsibility. Russian officials said they were treating the incident as an “act of terrorism” but did not immediately accuse Ukraine.
The developments came as Russia also said it had advanced deeper into the Sumy region of Ukraine, and as open-source pro-Ukrainian maps showed Russia took 450sq km (174sq miles) of Ukrainian land in May, its fastest monthly advance in at least six months.
Moscow launched 472 drones at Ukraine overnight, Ukraine’s Air Force said, the highest nightly total of the war so far. Russia had also launched seven missiles, the Air Force said.
Both parties sharply ramped up their attacks as Ukraine confirmed it will send a delegation to Istanbul led by its Defence Minister Rustem Umerov for talks on Monday with Russian officials. Turkiye is hosting the meeting, which was spurred by US President Donald Trump’s push for a quick deal to end the three-year war.
Zelenskyy, who previously voiced scepticism about the seriousness of the Russian side in engaging in Monday’s meeting, said he had defined the Ukrainian delegation’s position on the talks.
Priorities included “a complete and unconditional ceasefire” and the return of prisoners and abducted children, he said on social media.
Russia has said it has formulated its own peace terms, but refused to divulge them in advance. Russian President Vladimir Putin also ruled out a Turkish proposal for the meeting to be held at the leaders’ level.