At least six people were killed in Russian strikes on Ukraine overnight into Thursday, including three in the city ​of ‌Balakliia in the Kharkiv region and another three in the northern region of Sumy, local authorities said. Russia ⁠also struck ​two ​dry cargo vessels near Ukraine’s ​Black ‌Sea ⁠port ‌of Odesa ⁠late on Wednesday.

Rescuers worked ​on Thursday to douse fires and clear debris in Ukraine’s eastern city ​of ‌Balakliia after Russian strikes ⁠on homes killed three overnight, authorities said ‌on the Telegram messaging app.

Three ⁠people were also killed overnight and at least 19 wounded ​in Russian attacks on ‌settlements in the northern region of Sumy. Twelve more were wounded in ‌the city of Sumy itself, following an attack ​with guided aerial bombs, the Ukrainian police said on Telegram.

A drone attack ​on a van wounded ​six in the southern ​region of Kherson, the regional administration said ​on Telegram. Both Russia and Ukraine deny targeting civilians in the war triggered by Russia’s invasion of ⁠Ukraine in February 2022.

Russia ⁠also struck ​two ​dry cargo vessels near Ukraine’s ​Black ‌Sea ⁠port ‌of Odesa ⁠late on Wednesday, ​TASS ‌news agency reported, citing ‌the ​Russian Defence Ministry.

The vessels were ​transporting ​military ​goods, the ​ministry said.

Russia says it downed 605 Ukrainian drones overnight

Russia shot down 605 Ukrainian drones during the night over its territory and the annexed Crimean Peninsula, the defence ministry said Thursday.

“During the night … air defence systems intercepted and destroyed 605 Ukrainian aerial drones,” the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry flagged attacks in the Tver region about 180 kilometres northwest of Moscow, where local authorities reported a logistics centre belonging to the e-commerce giant Wildberries had been damaged.

Regional governor Vitaly Korolyov said air defence systems had repelled the Ukrainian attack.

“As a result of the fall of debris from one of the drones, the facade of the Wildberries logistics centre was slightly damaged,” he wrote on Telegram, adding that no one had been wounded.

Ukraine has repeatedly struck sites belonging to Wildberries – a popular online commerce platform often described as Russia’s Amazon – across the country since mid-July.

Mikhail Yevrayev, governor of the Yaroslavl region around 250 kilometres north of Moscow, reported the “most massive attack” against his region, saying 92 drones had been shot down.

Debris caused fires in houses and damaged cars, he added on Telegram.

More than four years after the start of Russia’s large-scale offensive against Ukraine, diplomacy is at a standstill and the two countries are ramping up long-range strikes, causing a growing number of civilian casualties.

Source: AFP

German police searched on Sunday for a suspect believed linked to Islamist circles after a car ploughed into a crowd near Berlin’s Gay Pride celebrations, killing one person and wounding 16 others.

The incident shattered what had been a day of celebration for hundreds of thousands attending Christopher Street Day, one of Europe’s largest Pride events, and left revellers fleeing a central Berlin park as sirens echoed through the night.

Police told AFP the suspected vehicle was later found abandoned a few hundred metres from the heart of the festivities in Tiergarten park.

A manhunt involving helicopters and officers from several German states was under way across the capital on Sunday.

A suspect, believed to have links to “Islamist circles” had been “identified” but not yet arrested, police spokesman Florian Nath said.

An eyewitness near the main Pride stage at Brandenburg Gate told AFP that celebrations abruptly ended when police instructed people to leave.

“Go home, please,” officers told participants as the crowd streamed away from the park, where emergency crews rushed to treat victims.

The attack occurred shortly before 10:00 pm (2000 GMT) on Saturday.

“A vehicle entered the Tiergarten park and hit several people,” police said.

One person died and 16 others were injured, including three with life-threatening injuries, according to Berlin fire department spokesman Dominik Pretz.

Around 30 more people were treated for shock at the scene.

Police spokesman Nath said investigators had identified a suspect but not yet made an arrest, adding that investigators believed he had links to “Islamist circles”.

The search was widened to “the whole city” after the vehicle was discovered abandoned in the vast Tiergarten park.

The vehicle appeared to be “akin to a minivan or small SUV”, Nath said.

The attack immediately revived memories of a series of deadly assaults that have shaken Germany in recent years and fuelled fierce debate over security.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz vowed that those responsible would face justice.

In a statement, Merz described the incident as a “horrific act” and said he and Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt were being kept informed of developments.

Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner condemned what he called a brutal attack on “a gathering for a tolerant and peaceful Berlin”.

Police had deployed more than 2,000 officers to secure the event.

Following the incident, additional personnel from across Germany joined the search operation, supported by helicopters equipped with thermal-imaging cameras.

An AFP journalist at the scene saw numerous emergency vehicles lining a nearby road and a large tent erected as police combed the area.

Violent attacks

Earlier Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people took part in the event, called Christopher Street Day in Germany, which is one of the biggest Pride events in Europe.

The march ended next to the Brandenburg Gate, which has been the venue for concerts since Friday.

Germany has in recent years seen several violent attacks at public spaces, including a stabbing in February 2025 at Berlin’s Holocaust memorial, a stone’s throw from the scene of Saturday’s incident, in which a Spanish tourist was seriously injured.

A Syrian man named only as Wassim Al M. was jailed in March for 13 years for that attack, with the court finding he acted in the name of the so-called Islamic State group.

Last month Taleb Jawad al-Abdulmohsen, a 51-year-old Saudi psychiatrist, was sentenced to life in prison for killing six people and wounding more than 300.

He drove a rented SUV through a crowded Christmas market in 2024 in the easter city of Magdeburg.

The deadliest such attack in recent years was a truck rampage at a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016 that killed 12 people.

Saturday’s incident came two months before voters in Berlin elect a new state assembly.

Polls indicate that the centre-right CDU, to which Merz and Wegner both belong, will face a stiff challenge from both the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the far-left Linke parties.

Wegner himself said earlier this month he would not run for re-election after months of criticism over his handling of a major blackout in January apparently caused by sabotage.

Source: AFP

More than one million undocumented migrants in Spain have sought legal status under a scheme that has defied a wider European crackdown on irregular immigration, the government said on Tuesday, the final day for submissions.

The vast scheme was predicted to benefit around 500,000 people, most from Latin America, when the left-wing government launched it in April.

“The more than one million applications submitted… show how necessary this recognition of rights and responsibilities was,” Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told an event in Madrid.

Sanchez has become a standard bearer of more open immigration policies as his European neighbours – including some Socialist peers – toughen measures in response to pressure from ascendant far-right parties.

He has long argued that immigrants are needed to sustain the economy, the welfare state and pensions amid Spain’s ageing population and depopulation in rural regions.

The number of applications submitted does not necessarily indicate the number of migrants who will secure their legal status.

Applicants must prove they have a clean criminal record and spent at least five consecutive months in Spain before January 1.

The authorities have three months to process their paperwork and decide whether to issue a work and residence permit only valid in Spain.

“When we condemn a person to invisibility, I think we make our country a worse country. We all lose,” Sanchez explained, saying his government aimed to “offer an opportunity and future” to migrants.

“We want the world to view Spain as a country that respects, protects and upholds human rights.”

Economic boost

For Juana Hernandez, a 59-year-old Cuban who has lived in Spain for two and a half years and whose application was recently approved, the plan “is a huge opportunity”.

She told AFP she had paid a lawyer roughly €200 ($225) to handle the administrative formalities “to be on the safe side”, as well as receiving help from a migrant aid association.

Although she was “a little worried” at the start, the English degree holder now aims to work at Madrid’s airport.

A land of emigrants for centuries, Spain is a key entry point into the European Union for tens of thousands of undocumented asylum seekers and migrants, alongside Italy and Greece.

Many come via a long and perilous Atlantic route from West Africa to the Canary Islands, although numbers dropped last year after peaking in 2024.

Since April, streams of men, women and children have queued in the streets to obtain documents and attend appointments for their regularisation, in addition to online applicants.

Although fears arose of a saturation of the services handling the scheme, Mohamed, a Moroccan who lives in the northern region of Cantabria, felt the administrative journey was “relatively easy”.

The 23-year-old jobseeker, who declined to give his surname, has been in Spain irregularly for about four years and hopes “to be able to work legally, to pay contributions”.

Gaining legal status will also spare him from unscrupulous employers who “take advantage” of irregular migrants “by paying low salaries, without any rights or… don’t pay at all,” he told AFP.

Sanchez, who has presided over one of the world’s fastest-growing developed economies in the last few years, has touted the benefits of immigration for sectors such as construction that need to boost their workforce.

Spanish business leaders have welcomed the regularisation drive but the conservative and far-right opposition are furious about a policy they claim will encourage more irregular immigration.

While accepting “tensions” and “challenges” linked to immigration and integration, Sanchez on Tuesday accused the right of “fuelling fear (and) stirring up xenophobic discourse that does not solve any problem”.

Source: AFP

EU leaders agreed during talks Thursday that the bloc must develop beefed-up trade defenses to curb a surge of Chinese exports deemed an existential threat to European industry by Brussels — while simultaneously seeking “constructive dialogue” with Beijing.

There is a growing consensus in the European Union that it is too dependent on China, and Brussels fears this makes it vulnerable to potential coercion and supply shocks.

The 27-nation bloc’s trade deficit in goods hit around 360 billion euros ($413 billion) last year, meaning Chinese exports sharply exceeded the EU’s.

During a two-hour summit dinner in Brussels, leaders chewed over how the EU could address the imbalance, and whether the bloc needed to boost its arsenal.

After talks ended early on Friday, an EU official said the leaders tasked the commission with continuing to engage “in a constructive dialogue with our main economic partners” but did not directly say China.

They also asked the executive “to develop and eventually complement the toolbox in the area of trade defense” and to make sure the EU has “all the instruments it needs to defend its interests and derisk”, the official said.

While EU capitals agree on a common diagnosis, the positions differ on the cure and several leaders on Thursday had called for dialogue as a priority.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez struck a more conciliatory tone than his counterparts before the dinner.

“We need friends, we need balanced relationships, we need to be pragmatic, and we need to build bridges both with major economies and potential allies, such as China,” Sanchez told reporters.

Following Trump’s playbook?

One way to beef up the EU’s arsenal could be creating a new tool to impose sector-specific tariffs such as chemicals or green tech — taking a page out of President Donald Trump’s playbook.

French President Emmanuel Macron last month called for a “European equivalent of Section 301” — the trade tool Trump has employed to set sweeping tariffs — arguing Europe’s “sovereignty is at stake”.

Germany has until now adopted a cautious posture because its economy is more exposed to potential retaliation, while Spain has sought to avoid tensions as it chases Chinese investment.

But Berlin appeared to be coming around to France’s way of thinking.

A German official said Berlin was “open” to new tools if they are necessary so long as they were “not targeted at specific recipients”.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, however, would not be drawn on China by reporters in Brussels.

Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin said before the dinner he wanted to see “the shape and nature of any mechanisms” introduced but warned Europe had to make sure it understood the consequences.

The EU official did not comment on what any new tools would look like.

Concern about Chinese dominance is not limited to the EU.

Fears are rising in the West over Beijing’s control in the market for rare earth minerals used in everyday electronic appliances, and China was on the agenda of G7 talks in France this week.

Brussels often evokes the need for fair competition, pointing to the unfair advantage Chinese companies have because of massive state subsidies.

Between 2005 and 2024, Chinese firms received around three to eight times more government support than firms in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, according to the OECD, which called it “a conservative estimate”.

EU appetite for a fight?

Even as its resolve appears to be hardening, the EU has shown no appetite to trigger a broader trade war with China.

Fears over Chinese retaliation are not unfounded.

After the EU hit Chinese electric cars with higher tariffs in 2024, China imposed anti-dumping duties on European cognac.

And Beijing has vowed to hit back if the EU pushes through rules that would exclude certain products manufactured outside the bloc from public contracts.

Sefcovic has invited Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao to Brussels later this month as the bloc still hopes it can prevent escalation through dialogue with China — but an EU official would not confirm the visit.

Source: AFP

European Union foreign ministers on Monday agreed new sanctions on Israeli settlers over violence against Palestinians, as a change of government in Hungary ended months of blockage.

“It’s done. The European Union is sanctioning today the main Israeli organisations guilty of supporting the extremist and violent colonisation of the West Bank, as well as their leaders,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot wrote on social media.

“These most serious and intolerable acts must cease without delay.”

Israel responded by denouncing the planned EU sanctions as “arbitrary and political” and vowed to stand ‘”for the right of Jews” to settle in the West Bank.

The move in response to rising violence and settlement expansion in the Israeli-occupied West Bank had been stalled by former Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban.

But the ouster of the nationalist leader and Israel ally, by rival Peter Magyar, now appears to have paved the way for the veto to be lifted.

EU officials said seven settlers or settler organisations would be blacklisted. The bloc also agreed to sanction representatives from Palestinian militant group Hamas.

The occupied West Bank has been gripped by almost daily violence since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, involving Israeli troops and settlers.

There has been a surge in deadly attacks by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank since the start of the Iran war on February 28, Palestinian officials and the United Nations have said.

While the EU is moving ahead with the sanctions on Israeli settlers, there remains no consensus among member states to take further steps against Israel, such as curbing trade ties.

A number of countries are pushing to ban products from Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

“The work on trade measures for products coming from the illegal settlements moves forward,” an EU diplomat said.

Source: AFP

Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul has downplayed the impact of the US decision to withdraw troops from Germany and Washington’s plans to suspend the deployment of long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles in the country, insisting the moves will not weaken NATO’s deterrence in Europe. 

“I have absolutely no doubt that there will be no reduction in NATO’s conventional deterrence capability in Europe,” Wadephul said at a news conference in Athens, Greece, on Monday.

“That will be offset one way or another in any case,” he added.

His remarks came in response to questions about US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw 5,000 US troops from Germany and reports that Washington has dropped plans to deploy long-range missiles in the country.

“We must not overestimate individual measures,” Wadephul said, noting that the troop withdrawal had been widely expected as part of a US global defense posture review.

He also described the planned deployment of US long-range missiles as merely a “temporary measure” until Europe develops its own similar capabilities.

“We will now first seek close dialogue with the United States to determine what decisions have been definitively made and what options we have to consider,” he said.

“And second, we must view this as a new call to develop and make our own capabilities available more quickly. There is simply no way around this.”

Tensions between the German government and the Trump administration escalated last week after Chancellor Friedrich Merz criticized the American aggression against Iran for lacking a clear exit strategy.

Merz said Tehran “humiliated” Washington with its negotiating tactics.

Merz also cast doubt on a swift end to the conflict, stating: “The Iranians are obviously stronger than expected, and the Americans clearly don’t have a truly convincing strategy in the negotiations either.”

In response, Trump said on social media that Merz “doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

The Pentagon subsequently announced it would pull back 5,000 troops from Germany, with Trump indicating that even larger reductions were forthcoming.

US media also reported that the Trump administration intends to cancel a 2024 decision by then-President Joe Biden to deploy a battalion equipped with long-range Tomahawk weapons to Germany, which was presented as a deterrent against Russia.

Source: Press TV

Hungary’s incoming prime minister Peter Magyar said Monday the country will execute International Criminal Court warrants against anyone, after he invited the Israeli regime’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted under just such a warrant, to Budapest later this year. 

In 2024, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu over allegations of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including starvation as a method of warfare, in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. 

Hungary’s outgoing leader Viktor Orban announced last year that his country was withdrawing from the ICC, after meeting with Netanyahu in Budapest.  

The withdrawal was due to take effect by June 2 this year. 

Last week Magyar made clear he wants Hungary to reverse that decision, but he also invited the Israel premier to visit Budapest again in October, according to an Israeli readout of a call between the two leaders. 

Asked by a reporter to clarify, Magyar said he issued invitations to all prime ministers and presidents he spoke on the phone for the 70th anniversary of Hungary’s anti-Soviet uprising of 1956. 

But he also said that he had made it clear, “even to the Israeli prime minister”, that it was his intention to stop the country’s withdrawal from the ICC. 

“If someone is a member of the International Criminal Court and a person who is wanted enters our country, then they must be taken into custody,” the pro-EU conservative told reporters. 

“I don’t need to spell everything out over the phone. I assume that every head of state and government is familiar with these laws,” he added. 

Magyar also said his incoming government can halt the withdrawal process before Hungary formally leaves the ICC. 

The United States has slapped sanctions on top ICC judges and prosecutors for issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu over Gaza war crimes. 

The United Nations has criticized the sanctions as “reprisals”. 

Source: Press TV’