Ukraine president makes first explicit mention of ‘active operations’ on ground in Russian border region close to Kursk. What we know on day 1,140

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Volodymyr Zelenskyy said for the first time Monday that Ukrainian forces were operating in Russia’s Belgorod region , where Moscow reported attacks in March. Belgorod is regularly the target of Ukrainian air attacks and is close to Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces have been desperately trying to hang on to territory since launching a surprise incursion last year. Zelenskyy said in his daily address that General Oleksandr Syrsky had reported on “our presence in Kursk region and our presence in Belgorod region”. He added: “We continue to conduct active operations in the border areas on the enemy’s territory, and this is absolutely right – the war must return to where it came from.” It is the first time since the full-scale invasion began that Zelenskyy has explicitly mentioned a Ukrainian presence in Belgorod, a border region with a population of about 1.5 million people. The Russian military acknowledged facing Ukrainian land attacks in the region in March. According to the DeepState military blog, which is considered close to Ukraine’s army, Ukrainian troops have occupied a 13 sq km (five square mile) area in the Russian region , near the border village of Demidovka. Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials have said the incursion into Kursk and other Russian territory is to divert Russian forces attacking the Ukrainian regions of Sumy and Kharkiv.

Anger and outrage gripped Zelenskyy’s home town on Monday as it held funerals for some of the 20 people, including nine children, killed by a Russian missile that struck apartment buildings and a playground. More than 70 were wounded in the attack on Kryvyi Rih last Friday evening. The children were playing on swings and in a sandbox in a tree-lined park at the time. Bodies were strewn across the grass. “We are not asking for pity,” Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the city administration, wrote on Telegram as Kryvyi Rih mourned. “We demand the world’s outrage.” The UN Human Rights Office in Ukraine said it was the deadliest single verified strike harming children since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. It was also one of the deadliest attacks so far this year.

Teacher Iryna Kholod remembered Arina and Radyslav, both 7 years old and killed in Friday’s strike, as being “like little suns in the classroom” . Radyslav, she said, was proud to be part of a school campaign collecting pet food for stray animals. “He held the bag like it was treasure. He wanted to help,” she told the Associated Press. After Friday evening, “two desks in my classroom were empty forever,” Kholod said, adding that she still has unopened birthday gifts for them.
“How do I tell parents to return their textbooks? How do I teach without them?” she asked.

Donald Trump has accused Russia of “bombing like crazy right now” even as the US president claimed the parties were “sort of close” on a deal. On Monday he reiterated his opposition to Russia’s bombing of Ukraine as his administration participates in talks seeking an end to the fighting. “I’m not happy about what’s going on”, he told reporters in the White House. “So we’re meeting with Russia, we’re meeting with Ukraine, and we’re getting sort of close, but I’m not happy with all the bombing that’s going in the last week or so,” he said. “It’s a horrible thing.”

Trump’s Monday remarks came hours after the Kremlin said it supported the idea of a truce in Ukraine but had many “questions” about how such a deal would work, pushing back at US and European suggestions that it was playing for time. Russia has kept up its strikes on Ukraine unabated despite the US president’s promise to bring peace within “24 hours” of returning to the White House in January.

Prince Laurent had argued that his work entitled him to the same benefits as independent entrepreneurs but a court in Brussels disagreed

A Belgian prince has lost a legal battle to claim social security benefits on top of his royal allowance, with a court ruling his claim – the first of its kind in the country’s nearly 200-year history – “unfounded”.

Prince Laurent, the youngest of three children of the former king and queen, had argued that his work entitled him to the coverage granted to independent entrepreneurs – and that he was acting out of “principle” rather than for money.

Beijing vows to safeguard its interests after Trump promises steeper tariffs if China doesn’t retract planned countermeasures, as markets brace for further volatility

• Trump threatens additional 50% tariffs on China over retaliatory levies

Japan’s Nikkei share average is up 1.9% after the Tokyo stock market’s opening this morning, Reuters is reporting.

The European Union said on Monday it had offered “zero-for-zero” tariffs to the US weeks before Trump’s tariff announcement and was in negotiations with the administration.

They’re going to have to buy their energy from us, because they need it and they’re going to have to buy it from us. They can buy it – we can knock off $350 billion in one week.

Briton apologised for his ‘big mouth’ and asked for forgiveness, saying he had written a song for the female star

Madonna has said she has “buried the hatchet” with Sir Elton John and hinted she will collaborate with him, after watching the pianist and singer perform with Brandi Carlile on Saturday Night Live (SNL).

The strained relationship dates back to 2002, when John was quoted by CBS News as describing her theme to Die Another Day as “the worst Bond tune ever”.

Amnesty International confirms 1,518 people executed in 2024 but says real total is likely to be thousands more

More people were executed in 2024 than in any other year over the past decade, mainly reflecting a huge increase in executions in Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, according to Amnesty International’s annual report on the use of the death penalty.

The human rights NGO said that although the number of countries carrying out executions was the lowest on record, it had confirmed 1,518 executions globally in 2024, a 32% increase over the previous year and the highest since the 1,634 carried out in 2015.

Thinktank says solar has been fastest-growing energy source for last 20 years, but remains dwarfed by hydro power

The world used clean power sources to meet more than 40% of its electricity demand last year for the first time since the 1940s, figures show.

A report by the energy thinktank Ember said the milestone was powered by a boom in solar power capacity, which has doubled in the last three years.

This tale of two British army sergeants who filmed the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp uses their profoundly disturbing footage. It’s TV that could alter your whole world view

What They Found, the first documentary by the film and theatre director Sam Mendes, is a short, stark shock. The film straightforwardly combines two precious artefacts held at the Imperial War Museum in London: 35mm film, shot by Sgt Mike Lewis and Sgt Bill Lawrie of the British Army Film and Photographic Unit, before and during the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp near the town of Celle in northern Germany in April 1945; and audio interviews given by the cameramen in the 1980s. Lewis and Lawrie did not record sound when they visited Belsen; the words they spoke years later are the only sounds we hear.

Lewis and Lawrie do not arrive at Belsen until almost halfway through the film’s 36-minute running time. First, laid over generic archive footage, we hear how they came to be army photographers, and we get a flavour of their prewar civilian life. This is particularly pertinent in the case of Lewis, a son of Jewish immigrants from Poland who looked on in dismay in 1936 as fascists held rallies in his parents’ adopted home country. “I could not, like most English Jews, really believe this of England,” he says. “But the world began to assume a shape more real than those things we were taught about it.”

The most interesting character was sidelined, the deaths were riddled with lazy logic and it all felt frustratingly middling. Season four will have some redeeming to do

Warning: this article contains spoilers for the finale of season three of The White Lotus. Do not read on unless you have seen episode eight, season three.

In the Hollywood Reporter’s recent oral history , Mike White bristled at the thought of The White Lotus lapsing into a formula. For most of its third season, this didn’t make a lot of sense. After all, in its depiction of the obliviously wealthy, its whodunnit structure and its now mandatory transgressive sex scenes, a lot of this year’s season felt like The White Lotus by numbers.

President, sitting in Oval Office with Benjamin Netanyahu, warns Tehran of ‘great danger’ if talks are not successful

Donald Trump has announced that the US is to hold direct talks with Iran in a bid to prevent the country from obtaining an atomic bomb, while also warning Tehran of dire consequences if they fail.

Sitting beside Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in the Oval Office, Trump indicated that discussions would start this coming weekend, though he also implied communications had already begun.