Nato member Turkey has agreed to support Sweden and Finland’s membership of the alliance. It had initially opposed the Scandinavian countries’ bids to join. Turkey was angered by what it saw as their willingness to host Kurdish militants. Sweden and Finland could not join Nato without Turkey’s support. Russia strongly opposes the two states joining […]

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Ukraine and Moldova have both been granted EU candidate status, President of the European Council Charles Michel has announced. “Today marks a crucial step on your path towards the EU,” Mr Michel said, describing the European Council’s decision as a “historic moment”. Ukraine applied days after the Russian invasion in February, and the process moved […]

It’s not even two months since Emmanuel Macron was convincingly re-elected as president but he is already in a crunch election that could prevent him pushing through his reforms. French voters go to the polls on Sunday to decide who will control their National Assembly. Mr Macron beat the far right in April, but this […]

Thousands of civilians are trapped in the Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk with essential supplies running out, the United Nations is warning. Many of them are sheltering in bunkers beneath the city’s Azot chemical plant. The last bridge leading out of the city was destroyed in fighting earlier this week – effectively trapping its 12,000 remaining […]

All bridges to the embattled Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk have now been destroyed, the local governor says. With the city effectively cut off, Serhiy Haidai says delivering supplies and evacuating civilians are now impossible. Fierce fighting is taking place in the eastern city where Ukrainian officials said Russian artillery had driven its forces out of […]

Russia has killed hundreds of civilians in the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv using indiscriminate shelling and widely-banned cluster munitions, according to new research by Amnesty International. Amnesty said it had found evidence of Russian forces repeatedly using 9N210/9N235 cluster bombs, as well as “scatterable” munitions – rockets that eject smaller mines that expl...

Russia’s Daniil Medvedev has replaced Novak Djokovic at the top of the world rankings, two weeks before a Wimbledon at which he will not be allowed to play. Wimbledon has been stripped of its ranking points over its decision to ban Russian and Belarusian players over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, that decision means […]

The bodies of some Ukrainian fighters killed defending the key south-eastern port of Mariupol have arrived in Kyiv, the soldiers’ families say. They say this was part of a swap with Russia, with each side receiving 160 bodies. Moscow has not commented. The fighters spent weeks holed up in the city’s Azovstal steelworks. In May, […]

Russia’s UN ambassador has stormed out of a UN Security Council meeting after the European Council president blamed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for causing a global food crisis. Charles Michel said Russia was using food supplies as a “stealth missile” against the developing world, forcing people into poverty. The Russian envoy Vassily Nebenzia accused Mr […]

Around 15,000 suspected war crimes have been reported in Ukraine since the war began, with 200 to 300 more reported daily, its chief prosecutor said. Some 600 suspects have been identified and 80 prosecutions have begun, Iryna Venediktova told reporters in The Hague. The list of suspects includes “top military, politicians and propaganda agents of […]