Read the daily news to learn English

Middle East crisis live: Trump says memorandum of understanding with Iran is ‘over’ but talks can continue

Arsenio Dominguez, the secretary general of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), said nearly 6,000 seafarers are stranded in the strait of Hormuz, as he called for “maximum restraint and de-escalation” after US and Iran exchanged attacks in the region. Condemning Iran’s attacks on ships transiting the strait, he said: These reckless attacks have again placed innocent seafarers in grave danger. No seafarer should have to risk their life simply for doing their job. As long as the safety and security of crews cannot be assured, I urge flag States, shipowners, operators and all relevant authorities to avoid exposing seafarers to unnecessary danger by transiting the Strait. The situation in the region remains volatile. These attacks further intensify the fear, uncertainty and psychological strain already being endured by the nearly 6,000 seafarers who remain stranded on board vessels unable to depart the Persian Gulf safely. I call on all states concerned to exercise maximum restraint, de-escalate the situation without delay, and facilitate the safe departure of the ships still trapped in the Gulf since the crisis began. The safety of seafarers must remain our foremost priority.”

Trump makes fresh Greenland demand and threatens trade with Spain at Nato meeting – Europe live

Some allies are trying to highlight that they are already spending 5% GDP on defence – as per the target agreed at The Hague summit last year – with special “5% club” lapel pins. Here is Lithuania’s president Gitanas Nausėda proudly showing off his pin to Nato’s secretary general, Mark Rutte. Estonia’s foreign minister Margus Tsakhna and his Lithuanian counterpart Kęstutis Budrys also boasted about their pins on social media. Lithuania is forecast to spend 5.33% in 2026, with Estonia after closely behind at 5.10%. Latvia is third at 4.92%, followed by Poland in the fourth place at 4.68%. A cursory glance at the map of Europe will tell you why these countries on the eastern flank of the alliance are leading in the spending tables. Spain, which faced so much criticism from Trump this morning, is at 2%, according to official Nato figures.

Trump declares ceasefire with Iran over during angry broadside at Nato summit

Donald Trump has declared that the ceasefire with Iran is over as he arrived at the Nato summit in Ankara, launching an angry broadside in which he complained about the military alliance and repeated his demand for Greenland The US president, sitting alongside the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, called Iran’s leadership scum and “sick people”, and added that he was very upset with the alliance and even threatened to cut off all trade with Spain in a row over defence spending. Overnight, the US had launched strikes on more than 80 Iranian targets around the strait of Hormuz and revoked a temporary sanctions waiver for Tehran to export oil after Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels on Tuesday. When asked whether he thought the ceasefire was still in place as he met Rutte in Turkey, Trump said: “I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them any more. They’re scum. You know what scum is? They’re scum. “They’re sick people. They’re led by sick people and they’re vicious, violent people. And if they had a nuclear weapon, they’d use it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over.” However, he added that US negotiators wanted to keep talking. European leaders were concerned Trump was in a bad mood after a Nato dinner on Tuesday night and were bracing themselves for a difficult summit meeting on Wednesday morning as the situation in the Middle East deteriorated. Trump said he was “very upset with Nato” and complained that alliance members “didn’t want to help us with the number one state sponsor of terror, that’s Iran”, a reference a refusal by European countries apart from the UK to allow the US to carry out bombing missions from Europe’s airbases. There was a specific jibe aimed at the UK, which did not initially allow the US to use RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire for bombing missions in Iran before the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, changed his mind and allowed limited attacks on Iranian missile sites. “The United Kingdom wouldn’t let us use the island for two weeks, so we had to fly back,” Trump said, reiterating complaints he made against Starmer and Britain in the spring as the Iran war continued without the regime in Tehran collapsing. The 15-minute introduction next to Rutte became a litany of complaint. “Greenland is a big problem for us,” Trump said as he renewed his claim on the self-governing Arctic territory “very important for the United States, but it’s not important for Denmark”. Earlier, the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said as she arrived that Denmark would defend “every inch” of its own territory and emphasised that Greenland was “of course not for sale”. There was a familiar complaint about Nato defence spending from Trump, despite last year’s agreement by all members, with the exception of Spain, to lift national defence budgets to 3.5% of gross domestic product by 2035 – and so bring spending by Europe and Canada in line with the US. “I’m very upset with Nato, that we pay far, far too much,” he said. “Billions and billions of dollars, too much, because it’s unfair, because we’re protecting them, so we protect them, but they’re not there for us.” Fresh ire was reserved for Madrid given its decision to reject the 3.5% target. “Spain doesn’t agree to anything, and you shouldn’t carry them,” Trump told Rutte. “I don’t want to do any trade with them, alright?” the president said, turning to Scott Bessent, the US Treasury secretary, who ‌replied: “Yes, sir.” Nato leaders have worked hard to try to Trump-proof the Ankara summit by agreeing a short draft communique in advance. It is expected to reiterate the alliance’s commitment to mutual self-defence if it is signed off by the leaders. However, a report from Bloomberg suggested Nato might not hold a summit in 2027. The hope would be to avoid a repeat of the outburst that has dominated this year’s summit, which was supposed to showcase more than $50bn (£37.5bn) in joint arms procurements, designed to show Nato members were bolstering defence spending to deter Russian aggression.

Tell us: have you been affected by the wildfires in southern Europe?

Wildfires are continuing to burn across southern Europe after weeks of extreme heat, forcing thousands of people to leave their homes and disrupting communities across the region. We would like to hear from people who have been affected. Have you had to evacuate your home? How are you coping? Are you living with smoke, poor air quality or the threat of evacuation? We would like to hear about your experiences. Though we’d like to hear from you, your safety and security are most important. When recording or sharing your content with us, please put your welfare and the welfare of others first. Extreme weather events can be very unpredictable and carry very real risks. If you’re having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.

Wednesday briefing: How Farage’s byelection gambit may already have backfired

Good morning. I was hoping to be writing today on the late Ali Khamenei’s vast, week-long funeral in Iran. Given yesterday’s events in Westminster however, I’m afraid we’re instead turning our attention to Nigel Farage. Please accept my sincere apologies. Yesterday afternoon, flanked by union jack flags, the Reform leader delivered an extended, wide-ranging and frankly rather rambling statement on his “future in public life”. He complained at length about investigations into the vast sums of cash he has received as gifts, and chastised the public for being ungrateful at the sacrifices he has made on our behalf during his time in office. He bemoaned life in the “communist country” that is Great Britain. And then, Farage announced his resignation as the member of parliament for Clacton-on-Sea. Don’t crack open your bottle of state-produced vodka quite yet though, comrade. Farage immediately clarified he has every intention to run in the byelection that will follow. With characteristic modesty, Farage declared the race to be a “people v the establishment” contest. The plan for today’s First Edition was to explore how one leader delegitimised dissent and avoided accountability. Instead, we’ll look at how another (would-be) leader is seemingly attempting to do just that. First, as always, the headlines. Five big stories Benefits | Disability benefits in England and Wales are “not fit for purpose” and the entire assessment system must be redrawn as part of a radical welfare overhaul, the government’s landmark review of personal independence payments will say. UK news | Prince Harry and six other prominent figures are facing a legal bill of up to £50m after losing their case against the publisher of the Daily Mail over claims it used unlawful methods to source stories. Iran | Iran has accused the US of violating the agreement aimed at ending the war between the two sides, after the US military launched strikes around the strait of Hormuz and revoked a temporary sanctions waiver for Tehran to export oil. France | The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has announced she will run for the presidency in 2027 and will lodge an appeal to France’s highest court over her sentence to wear an electronic ankle tag for the embezzlement of European parliament funds. Defence | Donald Trump has revived his bid for the US to acquire Greenland, threatening to pull all American armed forces out of Europe after the continent repeatedly pushed back. In depth: ‘I’ve decided that the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions’ For much of the last decade, Nigel Farage has been omnipresent in print and on our screens – popping up for press conferences, photo ops and TV appearances with astonishing regularity. It has made his general absence from public-facing events over the past few months particularly conspicuous. Reform would never admit it, of course, but it just so happened that Farage’s (brief) retreat from public life aligned with a staggering story broken by the Guardian in late April: Farage was given £5m by the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne shortly before announcing he would stand in the 2024 British general election. Farage failed to declare the huge gift to parliamentary authorities. A standards investigation is ongoing, and Farage maintains he has not broken any parliamentary rules. Timing really is everything. At 1pm yesterday, a deadline the Guardian had given Farage to comment on the latest update in our investigation passed. Our City editor, Anna Isaac, revealed that Farage’s £5m gift was reported to the National Crime Agency by bankers who were concerned it may have been laundered money. An hour later, his resignation video was streaming. In his address, Farage made up for lost time in front of the camera. It took him a full 15 minutes to get to his resignation announcement. Before that, he celebrated Reform’s remarkable May local election success (and failed to mention the party’s drubbing in June’s Makerfield byelection). He protested his innocence at great length. “Let me be absolutely clear, I have done nothing wrong,” Farage said. “Making money is not a crime.” At one stage, it seemed Farage might be launching a crowdfunder: “I had a very, very good high-earning career. I gave that up at a huge cost.” (In Brussels, Farage took home €101,808 a year before tax. His MP’s salary is £98,599. Since entering Westminster, he’s pocketed an estimated further £2m and counting). This weekend, the Sunday Times published another investigation into the Reform leader’s finances. It reported that Farage did not declare gifts and benefits provided by crypto entrepreneur and convicted fraudster George Cottrell, which included social media staff, security and accommodation at his rented five-storey townhouse near Buckingham Palace. Farage has insisted he followed the rules over the support he had received from Cottrell. “They can’t beat us fairly, so they’ve chosen to use foul means,” Farage complained of the apparently undisputed reporting. “The new attack from the media is that somehow I am a crook. I am dishonest. Yet another reason to hate me.” And then came the resignation. “I’ve decided that the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions … It’s a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment, to frankly tell them where to go.” Farage’s hope, surely, is to reassert support from his political base, regain momentum in the polls after months of stagnation, and bury the growing list of sleaze allegations that he just can’t shake. *** What happens now? Technically, a byelection could take place as soon as August, but early indications are the vote will be held in early September. While parliamentary procedure sets a general timeline, as the incumbents Reform can control the specific timing. When Farage was elected in 2024, he won his seat with more than 21,000 votes – a majority of more than 8,400. By yesterday evening, the Conservatives, Labour, the Green party, Restore Britain and the Lib Dems all confirmed that they would not stand candidates to run against Farage. Perennial novelty candidate Count Binface, meanwhile, has thrown his shiny, bin-shaped hat into the ring. In Clacton, Guardian reporters found weariness among constituents about the impending election. Keir Starmer described the move as a “a desperate stunt from Nigel Farage” adding “he is up to his neck in sleaze”. Lib Dem leader Ed Davey said “This new stunt is his latest attempt to escape consequences for his biggest grift. We won’t let him”, and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch accused Farage of throwing a “hissy fit”. Rupert Lowe, leader of far-right party Restore, was quick off the mark too: “The people of Clacton do not need a media circus descending on their town over a busy tourist season because their MP has made a series of bad decisions … He should have declared that £5m. He knows it. We all know it. Now he is going to weaponise a byelection to distract from that.” For good measure, Team Burnham chimed in, labelling the whole thing a “gimmick” (and not a cheap one, mind). The Makerfield byelection required £226,208 of taxpayer cash to be set aside to cover the cost of voting. Yesterday afternoon, Nigel Farage made a point of declaring Reform’s offer to local authorities in Clacton to cover the cost of the byelection his resignation forced. There is, however, no mechanism through which this could actually happen. There’s precedent for other parties standing aside in vanity project/point of principle byelections. In 2008, the Conservative MP David Davis resigned his seat only to re-stand in protest of the Labour government’s 42-day terror detention plan. Neither Labour nor the Lib Dems ran against Davis, in order to take the wind out of his sails. Farage’s opponents are similarly attempting to rid the election of pizzazz. There were inescapable echoes of Donald Trump in Farage’s statement yesterday, not just in its long-winded nature: attacks on the media, a refusal to take questions, and a notable wholehearted defence of profiteering. It’s clear that Reform’s opponents are lining up to frame this vote as a vote on sleaze. Farage, it seems, has a different calculation in mind. The president has pocketed $2bn since returning to the White House, and his base doesn’t seem to care. Farage is surely hoping the Clacton electorate will afford him a similar privilege. *** Evading scrutiny? If anyone on Team Farage was hoping a resignation would help him avoid scrutiny, they’re in for disappointment. As evidenced by the media scrum in Makerfield, the political press pack loves a high-drama byelection to report on – and this one is even closer to London. Simply mouthing off at reporter questions – as he did this week at Heathrow Airport – won’t cut it in front of voters. And what’s more, investigations into misconduct by parliamentary authorities don’t automatically end if an MP steps down. As the code of conduct outlines: While ongoing investigation(s) will be suspended during the byelection period, it can and likely will resume again after, regardless of whether Farage wins or loses. There’s also the very real possibility that Farage will win this byelection, only to be soon forced to face another. If the House of Commons Committee on Standards orders the suspension of an MP for 10 days or more for breaching parliamentary rules, only 10% of voters in said constituency need to sign a recall petition for an MP to lose their seat, triggering a byelection. Given the scale of Farage’s alleged misdemeanours, it’s highly possible he’d receive that level of punishment. So brace yourself. There could well be not one but two Farage fests before Christmas, and we’d be footing the £500k bill. What else we’ve been reading Tim Burrows heads back to Epping a year on from the protests against a hotel that housed asylum seekers in the town. Patrick I really appreciated Lanre Bakare’s thoughtful interview with the photographer Misan Harriman and precise dissection of the social media firestorm that has engulfed him of late. Libby Savina Petkova, a self-described “practising non-monogamist”, writes about the significance of The Invite, which she argues is Hollywood’s first major poly-romcom comedy. Patrick World Cup 2026 On the pitch Argentina 3 - 2 Egypt | Enzo Fernández scored a stoppage-time winner to put Argentina into the World Cup quarter-finals with a win over Egypt, who led by two goals deep into the second half. Switzerland 0-0 Colombia | After a goalless draw with Colombia, Switzerland won a penalty shootout 4-3 with Ruben Vargas converting the winning spot-kick to book their place in the quarters against Argentina. Off the pitch Fifa | Football’s top governing body has hit back at Uefa after they criticised Fifa’s decision to lift a suspension on USA striker Folarin Balogun following pressure from Donald Trump. England | Jacon Steinberg has written about the rise and rise of Jude Bellingham ahead of Saturday’s quarter-final in Miami with Erling Haaland’s Norway. Podcast | With the quarter-final line up complete, Max, Barry and the team have been digesting what lies ahead for the last eight in the tournament on the Guardian’s Football Weekly podcast, which has run every day this tournament. No fixtures tonight - the quarter-finals kick off tomorrow Sport Tennis | Jannick Sinner eased into the Wimbledon semi-finals with a 7-5, 7-6 (4), 6-3 victory against Jan-Lennard Struff. In the women’s draw, Coco Gauff progressed to the semis – she’ll face Karolína Muchova, who beat Naomi Osaka in straight sets. Cycling | Mads Pedersen won stage four of the Tour de France from Carcassonne to Foix, which took place in extreme heat. Rugby |After an easy win against England, our rugby union correspondent Robert Kitson reflects on South Africa’s blistering form ahead of next year’s World Cup in Australia for The Breakdown newsletter. The front pages “Farage’s £5m gift reported over money laundering concerns”, is the Guardian’s splash today. The Times leads with “Labour and Tories won’t fight Farage’s ‘fake contest’”, the Mirror goes with “Desperate” and the Telegraph says “Farage gamble turns to farce”, and the FT has “Farage gambit falls flat after rivals refuse to contest ‘fake’ by-election”. The i Paper says “Farage quits and gambles his future on new by-election – amid investigation into £5m crypto gift” and Metro says “Farage’s big by-election gamble”. The Express’s take is “Let the people be the judges of my actions”. Elsewhere, the Mail, on Prince Harry losing his case against its publishers, leads on “Vindicated”. And the Sun’s take is “Harry caned”. The Latest Nigel Farage resigns to stand in ‘people v establishment’ byelection Nigel Farage has announced his resignation as the MP for Clacton, triggering a byelection in which he intends to stand as a candidate. The Reform UK leader is under scrutiny over his finances, with two investigations by the parliamentary standards watchdog over undeclared gifts. During a 15-minute press conference, he accused the media of a “pile-on” over his personal finances, and harassment of his family. He said his decision was part of “sticking two fingers up at the establishment” and would prove the public want him to stay on as an MP. Lucy Hough speaks to policy editor, Kiran Stacey. Cartoon of the day | Ella Baron The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Trinidadian Jason Jones has been fighting for a decade to remove his country’s homophobic laws, which derive from laws introduced by the UK to its colonies during the British empire. This week he will make legal history when he brings his fight to the privy council in London, which remains the Caribbean island’s final court of appeal. Since beginning his campaign to decriminalise same-sex intimacy, he’s won friends and supporters along the way. A previous court victory inspired Trinidad’s inaugural pride event and legal challenges by activists in other countries, including India. Speaking in the UK parliament earlier this year ahead of this final court hurdle, he told a meeting attended by lawyers and LGBTQ+ activists, including the former Love Island winner Amber Rose Gill, whose father is Trinidadian. “I’m nothing special. I dropped out of college. I survived HIV. All I am is a very angry gay man. I think about all the friends and lovers I’ve lost over the last 40 years. This is a dream we couldn’t dream back then.” Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

Palestinians brace as Israeli settler figures in coalition seek to cement West Bank gains before election

The attack in Ein Arik came in the middle of the night and was aimed at the rudiments of life: the earth, water, roots and seedlings. Ilham Karajeh awoke on Friday last week to find her family allotment raided and ruined. The thin black irrigation pipes had been sliced, grape vines cut and 70 young olive trees, the embodiment of the family’s aspirations for the future, had been uprooted. On Sunday, Karajeh and her husband, Mohammed, were collecting the severed branches. “See – they are still wet with sap,” she cried out in horror at the cruelty of the act. There was no doubt in this West Bank village about the perpetrators. Since a new settler outpost had been established last year on a neighbouring hill, violence has flowed down into the valleys in a gathering tide. The outpost, which now calls itself Maoz Tzur, began with just a handful of Israeli settlers but they quickly set about seizing territory. Their first target was the Bedouin shepherd community on the surrounding hills and valleys. Then the pressure was turned up on the villagers. For more than a year they have been prevented from reaching family olive and citrus groves and springs on the hillsides to the south, nearest the new settler outpost. Those brave enough to venture in that direction were repeatedly attacked with clubs and stones. The night attack on the Karajeh family’s small farm reflects an acceleration in the intimidation campaign around Ein Arik, extending northwards and up the slope towards the neighbouring village of Deir Ibzi. It is part of a surge of settler aggression across the West Bank driven by the febrile dynamics of Israeli politics. Elections are looming. They must be held by the end of October at the latest and as things stand, Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right bloc is facing the prospect of defeat after more than three years of political domination. The radical settler elements in the coalition are scrambling to impose facts on the ground in the West Bank before the vote. A landscape that has endured for centuries, of steep terraced hills, olive groves, vineyards, lemon trees planted around springs, and fields of herbs and vegetables in the valleys, is consequently being ripped apart at breakneck speed. “These are going to be very tough months,” said Dror Etkes, the founder of Kerem Navot, an advocacy group dedicated to monitoring the unfolding land grab in the West Bank. “Firstly, it doesn’t look good for the current coalition, so there could be a new government. Secondly, all the attention is on the elections so the settlers can use this period to do whatever they want.” Throughout 2025 and the first half of this year, the creeping de facto annexation of the West Bank has broken into a gallop, driven primarily by farm outposts such as Maoz Tzur. They require none of the planning and construction work of established settlements, just a small, highly motivated vanguard ready to use violence to drive Palestinians over a wide swath of territory. According to a report published on Monday by Kerem Navot and its fellow activist organisation Peace Now, farm outposts now control more than 1m dunams (100,000 hectares), 18% of the entire West Bank. Nearly a third of that wholesale seizure took place in 2025 alone. The report concludes that “the government has advanced de facto annexation at an unprecedented pace”. “It has done so through structural governance changes, settlement expansion, the retroactive authorisation of outposts, land seizures, the expulsion of Palestinian communities, and increased Israeli control in areas previously under Palestinian Authority responsibility,” the report says, arguing that at its heart, the process relies on a sustained pattern of violence. “These amount to thousands of incidents, ranging from verbal abuse to murder. The vast majority of these incidents are neither documented nor counted by any authority, as they do not meet the threshold for news reporting,” the report notes, adding: “This violence is part of a funded and institutionalised system whose purpose is to expel Palestinians and take over their land.” At the top of this system sits Bezalel Smotrich, a hardline settler who was considered far too extreme for mainstream politics until Netanyahu – his grip on power shaken by a string of corruption scandals – first brought him into government in 2019. Smotrich is now finance minister but his power is far wider than the title suggests. He has taken over the authority to approve settlements from the defence ministry and used the power to retroactively legitimise farm outposts such as Maoz Tzur. In April, Smotrich came to Maoz Tzur to celebrate its recognition as an official settlement and its 12 “core families” who he hailed as “pioneers”. Outposts like Maoz Tzur, Smotrich said, would “completely destroy the idea of a Palestinian state within our heartland”. The settlers of Maoz Tzur have no near-term prospect of taking over the Karajehs’ plot in Ein Arik. The aim of such attacks appears to be to demoralise the population while isolating them by blocking the roads between Palestinian communities with steel gates or blocks of stone, and overlaying them with new roads, accessible only to settlers, connecting the new outposts, thus developing a new circulatory system in the West Bank by cutting off the old. “When you connect something, you always dissect something else – that’s the principle they act on,” Etkes said. Recourse to the law has also been cut off almost entirely for Palestinians, since another settler extremist, Itamar Ben-Gvir, was made national security minister by Netanyahu at the end of 2022. Villagers in Ein Arik said it has proved futile to complain to the police or go to court for redress. “We went to so many lawyers but they all said there is nothing they could do as the government is with the settlers,” Ahmad Abu Mayala, whose family was the target of a settler attack on 22 May, said. “They said: ‘Wait for the election to see if it will change the government. Then maybe we can do something’.” The local mayor, Mohannad Othman, was pessimistic on that score. “The way things in the Middle East work, there will be someone even worse than Smotrich,” Othman said, though later he speculated that if Palestinian Israeli parties acted together, they could hold the balance of power after the elections, and perhaps bring change. Othman has only been in office a month and is thinking of inviting representatives of foreign embassies and organisations to accompany villagers into the hills for the olive harvest in the hope it offers some protection against attack. Last month, the UK, Australia, Canada, France and Norway imposed sanctions on what they called financial and enabling “networks” behind the “horrific levels of settler violence” on Palestinians. France also banned Smotrich from entering the country. He was banned from the UK in 2020. Such measures are unlikely to have a significant impact at a time when the Israeli government has the support of the Trump administration – which opposes formal annexation but has allowed the continuing informal seizures of territory – and there is disunity within the EU, where Germany and Italy have led the resistance to the suspension of the association agreement with Israel. Without sustained external pressure, Etkes is pessimistic about how much a new Israeli government could or would do to hold back settler violence. “Any attempt to change policies in the West Bank will be confronted with the very strong opposition of the people who are today in the government, who will be out there in the field with strong political back-up,” he said. “So it would be very, very hard for any new Israeli government to try to reverse things.” Quique Kierszenbaum contributed to this report

Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv targets Kremlin ‘shadow’ tankers as Russian strikes continue in capital

Ukrainian drones have attacked a dozen tankers from Russia’s “shadow fleet” over the past two days that were delivering fuel to Crimea, Kyiv’s military said, as it intensifies efforts to isolate the Russian-occupied peninsula. Ukraine’s drone forces said they had struck eight vessels subject to sanctions in the Sea of Azov, each with a deadweight of about 7,000 metric tons. Two more tankers were hit later in the day, they added. Ukraine’s capital ⁠Kyiv came ⁠under a Russian missile attack early on Wednesday, ⁠triggering fires and injuring at least two people, the city’s mayor, ⁠Vitali Klitschko, said. Klitschko ‌said strikes ‌in the capital caused ‌a fire in a storage area and a non-residential building. Two people were injured, with one requiring treatment in hospital. The air alert lasted for about an hour. The latest onslaught comes after Russian strikes – including multiple missile hits on Kyiv – killed 30 people in Ukraine on Monday. A missile strike ⁠in the southern port of Odesa earlier in the evening injured 10 people, the regional ‌governor, Oleh Kiper, said. Eight were being treated in hospital. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, made a fresh appeal for his country to be allowed to join Nato, saying his country’s armed forces are highly experienced and would boost the alliance’s defense capabilities. He highlighted Ukraine’s ability to strike deep inside Russia and hit oil refineries and other energy targets. He said Ukraine’s armed forces were “eliminating” on average 30,000 Russian troops every month. He is to meet with the US president, Donald Trump, on Wednesday in Ankara. “Frankly, we take no pride in this,” Zelenskyy said, noting that the war with Russia – now in its fifth year – is one “we did not seek but one we are forced to fight.” When asked about his meeting with Zelenskyy, Trump said he had spoken to the Ukrainian president and Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, before the ‌Nato summit about ending the war. “I think they both want to make a deal. It’s too bad it took so long … Something’s going to come out,” Trump said before the summit. “They both want to get it settled now.” Zelenskyy said on Tuesday that Ukraine had signed three more “drone ⁠deals” with Denmark, Estonia and the Netherlands, making available its expertise gained from more than ⁠four years of ⁠war with Russia. Ukraine has developed a highly sophisticated drone industry after having only limited expertise in the ‌sector when Russia invaded ‌its smaller neighbour in February 2022. The deals are unique to each country, but typically involve Kyiv providing blueprints for drone technology in exchange for royalties, investments and other military hardware. Ukraine’s foreign ministry denounced ⁠as “troubling” the International Olympic ⁠Committee’s decision to ⁠lift the Russian Olympic Committee’s suspension and urged ⁠both countries and international sports bodies to ⁠maintain restrictions on Russian participation and ‌use of ‌state symbols. “The IOC’s decision ‌to cancel the recommendations on limiting Russian athletes’ participation is a troubling signal for the entire international ‌community,” the ministry said in a statement. It called on countries hosting competitions to uphold a ban on Russian state symbols ⁠as “under this flag an unprovoked war is continuing in Ukraine.”