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Middle East crisis live: Netanyahu rejects Trump’s Gaza plan and vows no withdrawal until Hamas disarms

New York progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez discussed the Iran war’s impact on affordability during an interview airing Sunday, saying President Trump’s complaints about rising costs don’t match his policies that make consumer goods more expensive. Representative Ocasio-Cortez was asked on ABC’s This Week about her reaction to Trump’s comments that oil companies are “making too much money…based on a shortage” due to his war on Iran. “I think that every day people, every day Americans, we can see the very large gap between what Trump, Donald Trump says and what Donald Trump does,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Donald Trump may be saying that oil companies are making too much money, but what Donald Trump is doing is starting a reckless war in Iran, having closed door meetings with oil companies before his election, saying, you know, you give me money, you give me campaign contributions, and I will do whatever you want.” “What he is doing is jacking up the price, not just at the pump, but at everything that you buy that requires the transportation of goods,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

Italy condemns Spain’s ‘unacceptable’ border controls as Ceuta fallout intensifies

Italy’s foreign minister has called Spain’s decision to impose retaliatory checks on travellers from Italy “incomprehensible and completely unacceptable” as people making their way between the two EU countries were left grappling with the effects of the escalating feud. Spain started carrying out spot checks on visitors from Italy at midnight on Saturday. The tit-for-tat move came after Rome infuriated Madrid by launching checks on 1 August for travellers from Spain in response to the recent influx of about 72,000 people into Ceuta, a Spanish territory in north Africa. Spanish officials were swift to point out that the Italian checks made little sense, given that by 1 August, the border in Ceuta was back under control and the vast majority of those who had arrived had been returned to Morocco. Ceuta is not part of the Schengen free-movement zone, Madrid has repeatedly stressed, meaning there is little chance of onward travel to continental Europe without EU citizenship or residency. The checks by Italy had led to “intolerable” scenes at Italian airports, Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, told reporters. “This measure is, first and foremost, an attack on the dignity of the Spanish people, but, secondly, it is a torpedo fired at the hull of European unity,” he said. In an interview published on Sunday in La Stampa, Italy’s foreign minister defended the move by Rome. “Some order needs to be brought in: we’re not against Spain, but we have a duty to protect our borders,” said Antonio Tajani, voicing concerns about some of the migrants potentially holding jihadist views. “What is incomprehensible and completely unacceptable is Spain’s reaction.” He pushed back against the suggestion that Rome’s actions were symbolic, given the remote possibility of anyone making it to Italy from Ceuta. “Where do they go after arriving in Spain? Italy, as a destination, is the country most at risk. We’re not Germany or Norway.” When asked if Italy’s response was proportionate, Tajani pointed to the reports of fresh calls online for a mid-August mass crossing. “We hope to be able to lift the suspension soon, as soon as the risk is no longer present,” he said. Italy’s interior minister publicly praised Spain last week for its handling of the crisis, but Tajani blasted Spain for not being “as vigilant” as it should have been. He linked the influx to Spain’s recent regularisation programme, describing the move to provide working migrants with papers as a “negative message that puts everyone’s safety at risk,” despite the EU’s earlier dismissal of any connection between the Ceuta influx and regularisation. Italy’s government has long criticised Spain’s efforts to regularise undocumented migrants, even as it quietly works on similar plans to give nearly 1.1 million work permits to foreign workers by 2028. Speaking to the Financial Times, one researcher described the Italian government’s efforts as a “disguised amnesty.” Spain and Italy both have a long history of regularisation programmes. In 2002, Tajani’s party, Forza Italia, carried out one of Italy’s largest such programmes, issuing just over 634,000 permits. Even so, the perception of differences in their approach to migration has pitted Madrid and Rome against each other, with Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, seeking to position herself as a hardliner on migration while Spain’s Pedro Sánchez – who has defended the need for foreign workers to grow Spain’s economy and stave off demographic collapse – said Italy had registered the highest number of irregular crossings in recent years in the EU, with figures that are double those of Spain. In recent days, the row has widened to include people making their way between the two countries, a route used by more than 8 million last year. “It’s ridiculous that we’re in this situation,” Elisa Fabbri, 41, told Spanish news site Eldiario.es as she left Madrid-Barajas airport on Saturday. Israel Pérez, a Cuban-born Spanish citizen, described it as an “absurd spiral” that risked pulling everyone down. “If we keep imposing checks on each other, in the end we’ll all end up losing,” he said. “This shouldn’t be happening between two European countries.” In Italy, opposition politicians accused Meloni of unleashing an “unfounded diplomatic crisis” that would ultimately harm Italians. “The cynical propaganda of the Meloni government has produced what was predictable: a boomerang that Italians will pay dearly for,” said Nicola Fratoianni, the leader of the Greens and Left Alliance. “This is a colossal mistake.” The EU commissioner for migration, Magnus Brunner, said on Saturday that he had been in contact with the interior ministers of the two countries. “Both confirmed that the internal border controls are temporary,” he said on social media. “Spanish authorities assured us the events in Ceuta will have no lasting effect on the Schengen area. That is why there are signals from Italy that controls could be lifted soon.” The row between Rome and Madrid after the events in Ceuta hints at sensitivities over migration across the EU, particularly as governments in Italy, France and Poland prepare to face off against far-right challengers in upcoming elections. But the latest Eurobarometer poll, which tracks public opinions every quarter, suggests the focus on migration may be out of step with Europeans’ top priorities. When asked about the topics that should be a priority for the European parliament, migration ranked sixth, behind issues such as the cost of living, the defence and security of the EU and the economy and job creation.

Most X accounts posting about Belfast and Southampton unrest were based outside UK

More than half the accounts that posted on Elon Musk’s X about the rioting in Belfast and the civil disorder in Southampton in June were based outside the UK, an analysis by the Guardian can reveal. Of the 8,672 accounts whose combined posts about the events exceeded 1,000 views, just 45.3% were shown as from the UK, according to the social media platform’s own location function. One in six (16.8%) came from the US, 4.5% from Ireland, and about a quarter from all European countries other than the UK. Seven of the 12 most-read tweets about Belfast and Southampton came from the US – including one from Musk himself and two other US “alt-right” commentators – while an eighth was linked to North America. The analysis underlines that US rightwing actors are seeking to influence the UK and boost their position on X in moments of disorder – an exploitation of flashpoint events that has only intermittently attracted political attention in Britain. Nearly a third of all 43,000 posts on X relating to the two incidents contained racist or anti-immigration comments. Almost one in 10 relating to Belfast contained calls for violence or paramilitary or vigilante action. Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, said the data demonstrated that X had become “a weapon of choice” for hostile foreign actors seeking to manipulate shocking and divisive content. Their goal, he added, was “to amplify local tragedies and crises, intensify racist narratives, and incite violence in communities they have never set foot in and to whom they have no real connection.” A post from Musk after the life sentencing of the killer of 18-year-old Henry Nowak, who had been falsely accused of racism by police after being stabbed in Southampton, has been viewed more than 28m times. “Legacy mainstream media, same ones who wrote about George Floyd millions of times, are dead silent about Nowak,” Musk posted shortly before 3pm on 2 June, in effect promoting his own platform at a time of heightened tension and disorder in the Hampshire port. Eleven police officers were injured on the night of 2 June in Southampton as people claiming to protest over Nowak’s murder marched to the site of his death. This followed a rally, addressed by the far-right activist Tommy Robinson, outside the city’s main police station. Musk is based in the US and has not visited the UK since November 2023. A Guardian analysis last month found he posted about race and immigration in the UK twice as often as he did about SpaceX in the run-up to the aerospace company’s initial public offering in June. Security experts including Fiona Hill, a former adviser to the US and UK governments, have warned that the UK is a soft target for online manipulation by overseas actors because it does not take the idea of civil, or “psychological”, defence seriously. Dr Julia Ebner, a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the University of Oxford, said flashpoint episodes such as in Southampton and Belfast had become “strategic events” for far-right actors seeking to amplify and exploit them. “They are using the UK as a negative example, smearing the UK to promote their own narratives of western civilisational decay or social collapse,” Ebner said. “But the other purpose is to influence UK politics, and European politics more widely,” using crisis moments to “promote a strong, strengthened far-right wave across the world”. Four of the top 12 most-seen tweets came from UK accounts: two were by the leader of the Restore Britain party, Rupert Lowe, whom Musk has endorsed; another was from GB News, while the most popular, with 37.6m views, was written by the “anti-woke” rightwing political commentator Konstantin Kisin. Other accounts located in the US were anonymous, though familiar. @EndWokeness posted a blurry still image of a black man attacking a white man in Belfast on 8 June, saying the full video was “too graphic” to post. It attracted 16.3m views. The assault, a stabbing in which the victim, Stephen Ogilvie, lost an eye, prompted three nights of racially motivated rioting targeting non-white people in Belfast. An asylum seeker from Sudan was charged with attempted murder and at least 23 people were arrested. The @EndWokeness account, which has 3.9m followers, was cited by a parliamentary committee after it amplified a false claim that the 2024 attack in Southport, in which three girls were killed, was carried out by a Muslim man. The account has been linked by an open source analyst to Jack Posobiec, a rightwing influencer who promoted the Pizzagate conspiracy, a false accusation that leading US Democrats were engaged in satanic child abuse at a child-friendly pizza restaurant in Washington DC. Another leading poster was the US rightwing influencer Benny Johnson, who accused the New York Times of writing nothing about Nowak and thousands of pieces about the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 – though Nowak was murdered in the UK. The analysis of the most-viewed accounts did not reveal any posts from Russia or China – both countries that have been behind online disinformation campaigns – though it is possible that posters successfully disguised their locations using virtual private networks (VPNs). X shows location data for most profiles, inferred by the platform from user IP addresses, though government accounts are excluded. Last November, after the feature was introduced, X’s then head of product, Nikita Bier, said it was more than 99% accurate. When it was launched, it revealed that some pro-Scottish-independence accounts were based in Iran. But there were signs of inauthenticity in popular posts. Two of the top most-seen tweets came from the US-based C3 (@C_3C_3) account, accusing “legacy media” of not reporting about the Nowak case. Its profile picture is a baby wearing a Make America Great Again cap; the username has changed 14 times previously. One UK account, which tweeted at least six times about the murder of Nowak, with almost 3,800 combined views, had changed its name more than 400 times. NewsSceneUK – subsequently changed to BritifyFooty – wrote in one tweet about the “huge crowd of patriots outside #Southampton Police Station”. Accounts posting from overseas that changed their usernames more than 20 times included one in Kenya that wrote after the Belfast stabbing: “When the state fails to protect people, the streets find their own language.” Another, from Europe, described the Nowak case as “a globalized, calculated and malicious evil” affecting “every White person and every White nation”. Close to a third – about 13,000 – of the Belfast and Southampton tweets, whether from the UK or abroad, were racist or anti-immigrant, according to the Guardian analysis. When analysed separately, a quarter of the posts that were only about Southampton were racist or anti-immigrant, compared with a third of those that were only about Belfast. One UK-based poster, writing a day after the Belfast stabbing, claimed they hoped the attacker was British-born because “race is the issue, not immigration status”. The post registered 2m views. Valerie Wirtschafter, an expert on online foreign influence operations from the Brookings Institution, a US thinktank, said she believed violent events such as those in Belfast and Southampton were “a point of exploitation” in which “outside agitators” had an opportunity to make a disproportionate impact. Their position was helped by X and other social media companies cutting content moderation, she said, but in particular by “algorithms and how they collide with the basic cognitive processes of humans. We are more attracted to things that are shocking.”

Alleged crime boss Daniel Kinahan’s return to Ireland ends global game of cat-and-mouse

A decade after escaping assassination and fleeing into exile, Daniel Kinahan is on his way back to Ireland – but it is not the homecoming he wanted. The alleged leader of the Kinahan organised crime group was extradited from Dubai in an Irish government jet on Sunday and headed to a huge security operation in Dublin, marking the end of a global game of cat-and-mouse with European, US and Gulf authorities. If all goes according to plan, the 49-year-old will land at Casement aerodrome in Dublin on Sunday evening and be taken in a bomb-proof van to the criminal courts of justice in central Dublin where he will be charged with directing organised crime before being taken 50 miles outside the city to his new home in Portlaoise prison. Tabloid headlines anticipated his return with glee. “Du-Bye!” said one. “Dan and Dusted,” said another. “Kin Air: He’s Coming Home,” said another. It is a moment long sought by law enforcement agencies that named Kinahan as a leader of a cartel said to control about a third of Europe’s cocaine supply, along with running criminal sidelines in firearms and racketeering. As the founder of the boxing management company MTK Global the Dubliner was also an influential figure in sports and boasted of friendships with Tyson Fury and other champions. Kinahan has not been tried but is braced for conviction and a long sentence, according to clips of an interview that he gave by phone from Dubai to the podcaster James English. “I think I’ve already got life in prison. And we have to go through the dance now.” The married father of five said he had “not been an angel” but that accusations against him were overblown. “I believe in a way I’m a scapegoat.” He had not laundered money through boxing promotion, he said, rebutting one of the allegations against him. Kinahan said he looked forward to familiar Irish treats such as a crisp sandwich. “Get back home and have a little bit of batch bread and a packet of King crisps or Tayto.” The bravado, or fatalism, could not disguise a dramatic fall. From gilded opulence in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), allegedly at the helm of a criminal empire worth hundreds of millions of euros, Kinahan will reportedly become an inmate at the maximum-security A5 unit within A block at Portlaoise. His father, Christopher Kinahan, launched a family enterprise in the 1980s by importing heroin into Dublin. A polished figure with university degrees and a facility for languages, Kinahan senior, better known as Christy, was convicted of drug and money laundering while creating a network that spanned Latin America, north Africa, the UK and continental Europe. In 2009, a US diplomatic cable named his son Daniel as “an Irish businessman involved in narco-trafficking throughout Europe”. Soon after, Spanish authorities arrested Christy and Daniel and seized assets, but the Kinahans emerged largely unscathed. That changed when a murderous feud with the rival Hutch gang piled up corpses and led to an audacious but unsuccessful attempt on Daniel’s life at a boxing weigh-in at Dublin’s Regency hotel in February 2016. The death of one man, David Byrne, fuelled further killings. Kinahan was never again seen in public in Ireland and operated from southern Spain before settling in Dubai in the UAE, which had no extradition agreement with Ireland. With his father and brother Christopher junior, Daniel remained alert to surveillance attempts but lived openly and turned MTK Global into a boxing powerhouse. That apparent untouchability evaporated in 2022 when the US offered a reward of up to $15m for information that led to the arrest or conviction of the trio. Washington had been reluctant to get involved until lobbied by the then assistant garda commissioner, John O’Driscoll, Greg Gatjanis, who ran the US national security council’s strategy for transnational organised crime, told the MacGill summer school last month. “To this day I hold Ireland, the gardai, as the model [for international manhunts] of how they handled the Kinahan organisation,” said Gatjanis. “Their drug empire probably did not touch the US, but then he started talking about the effects of the Kinahan organisation and the terror they were inflicting. I went from telling him I couldn’t accommodate sanctions because I could not make a case for it to agreeing to starting up an investigation, and that began the entire sanction investigation.” In May 2025 Ireland agreed an extradition treaty with the UAE and the net began to close. Sean McGovern, a cartel lieutenant wanted for murder and directing organised crime, was extradited that month and jailed for 24 years. Daniel Kinahan was arrested in April this year. UAE authorities rejected his appeal last month, clearing the way for extradition. Irish military personnel are expected to reinforce police during Kinahan’s transfers to court and prison. Kinahan told the podcast he would be subject to a “circus” and “character assassination”. Gatjanis said no organised crime group lasted for ever. “It’s born, it crawls, walks, runs, starts to decline, ultimately dies.”

Can the Mounties regain Canada’s trust after race, sexism and public safety scandals?

With their bright red tunics, dark blue breeches and beige Stetsons, the officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police offer a globally recognised symbol of Canada. The Mounties, as they are colloquially known, have been featured across popular culture for decades, from Hollywood films to the Simpsons. But the RCMP is now facing an increasingly uncertain future amid questions about its core role and because of a string of scandals that range from systemic racism to sexual harassment and public safety failures. “We need to modernise and transform the RCMP, but we are a very long way away … unfortunately, the future doesn’t look particularly bright,” said Kent Roach, a law professor at the University of Toronto, who this week published a book about the pressures on the RCMP. On a national level, the RCMP handles security, including foreign interference and terrorism, but also offers local policing in 150 municipalities and 600 Indigenous communities, which cover eight of the country’s 10 provinces and all three territories. Those local policing contracts are set to expire in 2032, and even though the date is six years away, provincial leaders have called on the federal government to “urgently begin negotiations” for “new police service agreements”. “The federal government must provide a clear decision on the future of RCMP contract policing,” provincial premiers said in a joint communique following a meeting in Prince Edward Island last month. The request for clarity on the contracts appears to have been prompted in part by the resignation of Justin Trudeau and his replacement as prime minister by Mark Carney. As one of his last acts in office, Trudeau argued in March 2025 for widespread reform of the RCMP, recommending the force abandon boots-on-the-ground policing to focus on national security. But the Carney government has bucked Trudeau’s suggestions and instead has increased pay for RCMP cadets and has committed an additional $1.8bn in spending over four years to the RCMP’s policing budget. One of the reasons for the investment in the RCMP is pressure from the US Donald Trump administration to crack down on supposed border issues, said Roach. But Roach argues that it is unfeasible for the RCMP to continue in its current form because of structural issues: Mounties typically operate in small, often temporary detachments in Canada’s rural communities and territories where they do not speak local Indigenous languages. That language gap feeds a historical lack of trust among First Nation communities, due to the force’s colonial roots as a force of repression. Canada’s first prime minister, John A MacDonald, created the North-West Mounted Police in 1873, which eventually became the RCMP in 1920. From its inception, the force enacted government rules that restricted the movement of Indigenous people and, from the 1930s, RCMP officers were used to force Indigenous children to attend abusive residential schools, according to the force’s own records. The strained relationship between the RCMP and Indigenous peoples has been exacerbated by a series of high-profile cases. The deaths of the Indigenous men Dale Culver in 2017 and Jared Lowndes in 2021 after violent interactions with RCMP officers led to a public outcry. And after the 2016 murder of Colten Boushie, the official watchdog for the RCMP found that the force discriminated against his family. The Mounties are also accused of systemic sexual harassment: a 2021 class action lawsuit resulted in the federal government paying more than $125m to 2,304 female RCMP members who said they had experienced sexual assault and harassment while on duty. In the past decade, the RCMP has contended with two mass killings that led to wider criticisms around the force’s abilities to keep the public safe. In April 2020, a man dressed as a Mountie killed 22 people in a rampage in Nova Scotia. A government inquiry found that a string of RCMP missteps worsened the attack, as the force failed to share information with the public and with its own officers. Then, in September 2022, the RCMP came under further criticism over its slow response to a stabbing attack which killed 11 people in the James Smith Cree Nation community in Saskatchewan. In recent years, several scholars have called on the RCMP to be disbanded and replaced with a national service better equipped to confront 21st-century security threats, including cybercrimes. Roach argued that Canada should be looking to other models rather than the RCMP’s “one size fits all” approach to all jurisdictions. “The way the RCMP trained … is very much out of touch,” he said. “The RCMP seems stuck in a very paramilitary and frankly colonial approach,” he said. Public Safety Canada, the federal agency responsible for national security, said Ottawa was in discussions with provinces and territories on “policing needs beyond 2032”. It said community protection would be achieved through hiring more RCMP officers and investing more in the force.

‘Like being in prison’: the ship crews stuck in Gulf since February

The panicked crew of a cargo ship broadcast a distress signal late on Monday night from their location in the strait of Hormuz. About 20 nautical miles north of the coast of Oman, the Minoan Pioneer bulk carrier was hit by an unknown projectile, causing a blackout in the engine room and a fire in the accommodation area. The crew scrambled to put out the blaze and called for help from nearby vessels. When they managed to disembark from the Greek-owned, Liberian-flagged ship on Tuesday morning, they realised the third engineer was missing. Days later, he is yet to be found. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre is investigating but has not yet officially confirmed the origin of the projectile, although analysts at the maritime intelligence company Windward noted: “Prior kinetic attacks at this exact location have been Iranian in origin, though Iran denies involvement.” In the preceding 24 hours two other vessels in the region, a large- and a medium-sized oil tanker, had reported near-misses. The flurry of incidents casts a spotlight on the danger facing the thousands of seafarers who remain trapped in the Gulf as the US-led war on Iran extends into its sixth month. What should have been a normal journey when they passed through the strait and entered the Gulf back in February has turned into a long and stressful waiting game. Iran has in effect blockaded the waterway, trapping 20,000 seafarers for weeks on end and inflicting a huge psychological toll. One seafarer stuck in the Gulf told the Guardian in the early weeks of the conflict of the “impossible” situation they and their crew were in, which had contributed to another sailor having a breakdown. As the war has dragged on, sailors have become casualties: 17 seafarers have died since hostilities began, the majority following Iranian strikes. The crews stuck in the strait have had their hopes of departure raised several times, before being dashed. April’s ceasefire and the peace deal signed in June by Washington and Tehran both broke down shortly after being announced. Several dozen oil and gas tankers seized the brief window offered by the memorandum of understanding (MOU), the ceasefire deal signed by both sides, to exit through the channel, but not all made it through in time. There are still 6,000 seafarers on 500 vessels, encompassing all types of ships, trapped in the Gulf, according to the UN’s International Maritime Organization. “We need to remember that these are innocent people who are trained to do the work, that they are not trained for combat, and the vessels are not prepared to defend themselves against missiles and drones,” said the IMO’s secretary-general, Arsenio Dominguez. For the crews stuck waiting to exit it is like being in “prison”, the head of one of India’s maritime trade unions said. “For the guys who are on board, the question that arises is, when is this going to end? The uncertainty of the ongoing geopolitical tension is causing them stress,” said Savio Ramos, general secretary of the Maritime Union of India, which represents merchant navy officers. “It is like putting somebody in prison and not giving them freedom to move,” added Ramos, a tanker captain with more than two decades of experience moving large oil carriers around the globe. “You don’t know where you’re going, you don’t what you’re doing. It gets to you after some time.” Most vessels – at least those with responsible owners – are receiving regular supplies of fresh water, food and other goods ferried by small boats from shore, yet most crews have no way of getting out of a perilous situation. Ramos said some of the union’s members who wanted to return home had been able to do so, provided other senior officers were willing to enter the region and replace them. Talks have been taking place, mediated by Oman, which along with Iran borders the waterway. However, the two countries’ proposed deal suggested Tehran would have control over the flow of traffic entering the Gulf. This would not be popular with shipowners or the wider industry and would be a significant deviation from the freedom of navigation for vessels before the conflict. Traffic is still passing through the strait, albeit at extremely low levels, since hostilities and attacks on ships resumed following the collapse of the MOU peace deal. Only 52 non-Iranian linked vessels transited the strait in the week from 27 July to 2 August, according to analysts at the shipping publication Lloyd’s List, of which 60% exited the channel and 40% entered. A further 32 Iranian-linked ships passed through the strait during the week. In total, these 84 vessels represent just over 10% of the average 700 ship movements each week before the conflict broke out. This means 70 large oil and gas tankers, owned by mainstream companies that are not subject to sanctions, have been stranded in the Gulf since February, according to Lloyd’s List analysis. A further 65 tankers entered the region following the announcement of the MOU, only to find themselves unable to leave. It is not clear how the stranded seafarers break down by nationality, but the biggest cohorts are likely to be Indians and Filipinos. India is the second largest global supplier of seafarers, with 312,000 working in the industry, after the 460,000 from the Philippines, according to the latest global seafarer report from the shipping associations the Baltic and International Maritime Council and the International Chamber of Shipping. Since the war on Iran began, hostilities have spread to other regions including the Red Sea and Iraq. In addition, Russia and Ukraine have been attacking each other’s vessels in the Black Sea in an escalation of a maritime conflict in which 24 seafarers have been killed since the start of July. This prompted analysts from Lloyd’s to call July “one of the deadliest months ever for commercial seafarers”. Many in shipping are concerned that the longer the Iran conflict drags on and crews are stuck on vessels in a dangerous region, the fewer seafarers will be willing to travel to dangerous regions – or go to sea at all. The IMO chief, Dominguez, pointed out that without seafarers the “90% of goods that are transported by ships will not be able to reach their final destinations and all of us are going to be impacted”.

Russian family denied asylum in Finland fear reprisals for pro-Ukraine activism

A Russian family faces deportation from Finland after repeatedly being denied asylum – despite the threat of arrest, imprisonment and potential torture for their pro-Ukrainian activism. Nikita and Olga Belov fled their homeland in 2022 after attracting the attention of Russian authorities – including military summons, threatening messages and attempts to locate them – after expressing opposition to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Nikita, 25, left his engineering job at a research institute in Moscow specialising in metallurgical technologies after finding out the work he was doing was connected to the Russian war effort. Since arriving in Finland on visas, Nikita and his mother, Olga, 55, a nurse anaesthetist, have been vocal supporters of Ukraine and public in their active support and coordination of aid sent to the country and its armed forces. But the Finnish immigration service told the mother and son that despite this they face “no real risk” if they return to Russia. In April, they were detained by Finnish authorities pending deportation. They were later released after a court intervention but are now awaiting a decision that could result in them being deported within weeks. The Belov case is understood to be one of many of Russians being denied asylum in neighbouring Finland where legal experts deem their future risk and human rights have not been sufficiently assessed. Between February 2022 and June 2026, the Finnish immigration service deported 1,039 Russians according to official statistics: the most of any nationality. During the same period, 1,109 of 1,342 Russians were refused entry to Finland in connection with a negative asylum application. Since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Finland’s relationship with its neighbour has shifted drastically. Previously, Finland was a popular tourism destination for Russians and there were several well-used border crossings. It has since indefinitely closed its entire border, accusing Moscow of directing asylum seekers to Finland in a “hybrid operation”. Russia has also expanded its military bases on the border, while Nato – which Finland joined in 2023 – has conducted training exercises in the country. Nikita said his problems in Russia started when he realised that his boss had lied when he had told him that the project he was working on was not linked to the war effort. When he tried to come off the project, he said his boss threatened him with arrest or being sent to the frontline. “After that I realised I cannot leave this job without consequences and that we had to think about the situation,” Nikita said. His mother, he said, was then called by the military to ask about him and their house was visited by police. They soon came to the conclusion that they had no option but to leave Russia. “Now we realise if we come back we will be arrested immediately and go to jail and be tortured,” Nikita said. In Finland they have volunteered at their local Ukraine centre and contributed to humanitarian support, including help for first aid, food, clothes, Starlink equipment and a 3D printer, for which they received a video thank you message from Ukrainian soldiers. “We try to adapt, try to support Ukraine, try to state our opinion, because it is very important to help Ukraine. Help them strike back,” he said. The mother and son first applied for asylum in Finland in 2022 but it was refused, after which they unsuccessfully appealed. This year they applied again and were refused and were sent a deportation order. They were then placed in a detention centre awaiting deportation but after a court intervention were allowed to go home before a final decision. “There were all bad things in our minds. It was like the start of torture because it was a totally traumatic experience,” Nikita said. “At the time we really tried to prepare for our death.” Since then they have suffered with their mental health and undergone panic attacks as they wait for the decision of the court. Their lawyer, who requested not to be named for security reasons, said the Belovs are very likely to be at risk if they are deported to Russia. Nikita’s work history will also put them at risk, the lawyer said. In a previous role he said he had access to confidential government information. While it has long been difficult to get asylum in Finland, the lawyer said that recent changes on the border and to asylum procedure, including reduced access to legal aid, has made it even harder. “It’s even more difficult to get refugee status, even with clear political opinion showing. We really have to fight these cases to get the status that was earlier easier to get.” The political activist and Putin critic Bill Browder, who is the head of the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign, said the case is “a defining test of Europe’s commitment to protecting those who have risked everything to oppose Putin’s war”. Browder, whose friend and lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died at the hands of Putin’s regime, added: “If people who refused to support aggression, openly opposed the regime, and now face persecution are denied protection, it could create a dangerous precedent that discourages others from taking a stand against authoritarianism.” A Finnish immigration service spokesperson said it could not comment on individual cases. Antti Lehtinen, the director of the department for international protection, which is part of the Finnish immigration service, added: “The situation of each applicant is assessed individually, taking into account their personal circumstances. “For example, opposition to the war in Ukraine and related activities may constitute grounds for persecution based on political opinion. If we assess that a person’s political opinion or activities place them at risk of persecution or serious harm in Russia, they will be granted international protection.”

Costa Rican diplomat emerges as strong contender to be first female head of UN

A Costa Rican diplomat and former vice-president whose parents were refugees from the Holocaust has become the surprise frontrunner to lead the United Nations as its first female secretary general. Rebeca Grynspan, whose parents emigrated to Central America from Poland – and whose maternal grandparents were killed by the Nazis – is the current head of the UN conference on trade and development (UNCTAD), a body that has exhaustively tallied the economic damage inflicted by Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. The current secretary general, António Guterres, will complete his second term on 31 December 2026 and under an informal system of regional rotation his successor is expected to come from Latin America. In a secret first straw poll of the UN security council, the five permanent and 10 temporary members were asked to say whether they supported, objected to or were neutral about each of seven candidates. Grynspan secured 10 “encourage” votes, four “no opinion” votes and one “discourage” vote. The identity of the discourage vote is not known, but the fact that she had only one objection places her in a strong opening position. The process is likely to conclude in October. Grynspan’s closest rival is Carolyn Rodrigues-Burkett, Guyana’s former UN envoy, with nine encourages, two discourages and four no opinions. At the close of a Bloomberg-sponsored debate at the general assembly last month she secured 49% of the vote among those attending, with Grynspan second on 14%. “Grynspan is seen by some as the continuity candidate, having the tacit support from Guterres,” said one western diplomat. “But the key is the source of the candidate’s discouragement votes: if [the votes] are coming from Russia, China or the US, there is a risk of deadlock.” The election comes at a critical moment for the legitimacy of multilateralism, as the UN suffers 20% job cuts and the secretary general’s role as mediator is supplanted by other actors, leaving the world body as a largely ignored moral conscience, or as a venue in which all sides vent their well-rehearsed differences. If elected, Grynspan would be the UN’s first Jewish secretary general. The UN has been criticised for overly focusing on Israel in its debates, but Grynspan has invoked her Jewish heritage to argue for the importance of ending conflict. She told the UN general assembly: “Peace is what made it possible for my parents, two refugees from the second world war, to find respect and dignity in a small country, Costa Rica. I am the daughter of this peace, a demonstration of what peace makes possible.” Her sister moved to Israel as a 17-year-old to study chemistry at the Hebrew University. As a result, her niece and nephew have completed compulsory service in the Israel Defense Forces. Under her leadership, however, UNCTAD has factually and starkly documented the economic damage wrought by Israel’s long-term occupation of the Palestinian territories. Its landmark February 2026 report found that “cumulatively, the Palestinian economy lost an estimated $212.2bn (in constant 2015 dollars) from 2000 to 2024. This partial, estimated lost potential, equivalent to nearly 20 times the entire Palestinian GDP of 2024, stems directly from Israeli occupation policies, restrictions, closures, and recurrent military operations.” In November 2025 Grynspan pointed out that Gaza’s GDP per capita had plummeted to $161 per person per year, one of the most severe economic contractions in modern history. Three other candidates, including Michelle Bachelet, have probably met with too much influential opposition to secure the job. Bachelet, the former president of Chile and a former UN human rights commissioner, faces opposition from the US government, which claims she was soft on China’s human rights record. But the Trump administration’s recent suggestion that the Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, should get the job symbolises America’s drift away from the UN mainstream. The secretary general is elected to serve an initial four-year term after the 193-strong general assembly is requested to endorse a single recommendation by the security council. A candidate needs nine positive votes and no veto by a security council member. The new candidate must be elected by the end of the year, and there will be further meetings of the security council to test opinion.