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Middle East crisis live: Trump claims that Israel and Iran are ‘looking to do an immediate ceasefire’

In a Truth Social post, Donald Trump said Israel and Iran are “looking to do an immediate ceasefire” and that “final negotiations on peace” are under way, without giving any further details. He said the US blockade of Iranian ports – put in place to counter Iran’s effective closure of the strait of Hormuz – will remain in place until a final deal is secured. “Things should move quickly,” Trump added. In an earlier Truth Social post, Trump said Israel and Iran must immediately stop “shooting”.

Xi Jinping arrives in Pyongyang on trip to revitalise China-North Korea ties

Xi Jinping has arrived in North Korea for a two-day trip, his first in nearly seven years, as China’s leader looks to revitalise ties with his junior ally. Footage published by China’s Xinhua state news agency showed an Air China plane carrying Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, touching down at Pyongyang’s Sunan international airport. A red carpet lined with North Korean honour guards greeted Xi and his entourage, which included the foreign minister, Wang Yi, and Cai Qi, the Chinese leader’s de facto chief of staff. Xi and Peng made their way to Kim Il-sung Square in central Pyongyang, where they were greeted by the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, and his wife, Ri Sol-ju. Children presented them with flowers at a colourful welcome ceremony featuring a military band playing the countries’ national anthems along with a 21-gun salute. Crowds of people carrying flags, flowers and balloons were flanked by banners reading “We warmly welcome Comrade Xi Jinping”, while another hailed the countries’ “unbreakable friendship”. After the ceremony, Kim and Ri reportedly escorted Xi and Peng to the Kumsusan guesthouse, a luxurious state-owned villa compound completed in 2019 to host visiting world leaders. North Korea is China’s only formal treaty ally but in recent years their relationship has been strained by a virtual freeze in trade during the Covid-19 pandemic and Pyongyang’s increasingly close relationship with Russia. Xi’s trip comes ahead of the 65th anniversary of the signing of the friendship and mutual assistance treaty between China and North Korea, a pact that is still China’s only defence agreement with another country. Chinese and North Korean troops fought alongside each other against South Korea in the Korean war in the early 1950s. But North Korea and Russia have a much more recent history of military cooperation. North Korea has sent more than 10,000 soldiers to fight for Russia in the Ukraine war, and in 2024 Moscow and Pyongyang signed a mutual defence pact. “Within North Korean propaganda, there are really over the top paeans to the closeness with Russia forged in fighting a war together. Whereas with China it’s kind of nostalgic,” said John Delury, a senior fellow for the Asia Society. “They don’t want to let North Korea’s closeness with Russia outpace the ties with China too much.” Xi, Kim and Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, stood side by side at a massive military parade in Beijing in September last year. That event projected a show of strength from the would-be leaders of a new, autocrat-led world order. But behind the scenes the men navigate a delicate balancing act to preserve their individual self-interests. More so than Russia and North Korea, China also wants to maintain a strategic relationship, at least when it comes to trade, with the US. In comments published on Monday by the Rodong Sinmun state newspaper ahead of his arrival, Xi said ties between Beijing and Pyongyang are at a “new historical starting point”. “We must oppose hegemony, authoritarianism and all attempts and conspiracies to revive militarism that endanger regional security and stability,” Xi said. The Chinese leader’s visit to Pyongyang comes less than one month after the US president, Donald Trump, visited Beijing for a highly anticipated summit that was framed by China as re-stabilising the fraught US-China relationship. Although the Trump-Xi summit was low on tangible deliverables, the US president later said that that he discussed North Korea with Xi. There has been some speculation that Trump could have asked Xi to pass on a message to Kim. Trump has repeatedly said he would like to meet the North Korean leader again. In recent years Beijing and Washington have departed from their previously united front of opposing North Korea’s nuclear buildup. When Xi and Kim met in Beijing last year, their official readouts omitted any mention of denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula for the first time, and although the White House said Trump and Xi “confirmed their shared goal to denuclearise North Korea” after their meeting in May, Beijing did not confirm this statement. On Sunday, Kim Yo-jong, Kim’s sister who wields considerable power within the regime, called claims that Xi and Trump discussed denuclearisation “false”. Last week North Korea unveiled a new nuclear material production factory and Kim called for an “exponential” expansion of the country’s atomic arsenal. A bigger priority for Xi than nuclear talks will be defending China’s own security interests in north-east Asia, most likely the threat he sees from Japan. Xi is understood to have become unusually animated when discussing the issue of what China sees as Japan’s increasing militarism with Trump, and with the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, who visited Beijing in January. Japan rejects the claim that a more proactive defence policy amounts to the “new militarism” described by China. Delury said any cooperation between Beijing and Pyongyang on Japan was likely to be rhetorical rather than practical. The visit is also notable for being a trip abroad for Xi. In recent months he has hosted a flurry of world leaders and now travels internationally less frequently than before the pandemic. That he is willing to travel to North Korea reflects both the proximity of China’s ally – just a short flight or even a train journey from Beijing – and the importance of the bilateral relationship. William Yang, a senior analyst at the Crisis Group, said: “In light of North Korea’s recent waves of missile tests, including the announcement of successfully testing AI-guided missiles, Xi likely sees the need to show up in Pyongyang in person to prevent tension on the Korean peninsula from escalating.” Xi’s goal is to “not let North Korea spin off too far out of the Chinese orbit, which is always something that Beijing would worry about”, Delury said.

Israel and Iran exchange strikes as Middle East crisis threatens to escalate

The Israeli military has launched airstrikes on Iran after the Iranians fired missiles at northern Israel in the first exchange of fire between the two countries since a ceasefire was reached on 8 April, raising fears of a return to a full-scale regional war in the Middle East. Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebels also fired at Israel and warned they would target Israeli-affiliated ships in the Red Sea, further escalating tension. The Israeli strikes came in apparent defiance of Donald Trump, who told Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that he did not think Israel needed to respond further. He added that Netanyahu did not “call the shots”. In a message on his Truth Social platform on Monday, Trump wrote: “Israel and Iran must immediately stop ‘shooting’. President DONALD J. TRUMP.” Trump has leaned on Israel to stop its attacks in Lebanon to allow room for a deal to end the wider war with Iran, including an obscenities-filled rebuke of Netanyahu in a phone call to the Israeli leader last week. However, Israel launched strikes on the Beirut area early on Sunday, the first since the US announced a truce plan for Lebanon last week. Iranian officials said they did not believe Israel launched its attacks on Iran without the approval of the US, rejecting any suggestion that Netanyahu had defied an instruction from Trump. “No one believes that the Zionist regime would carry out any action without prior coordination and cooperation with the United States,” said Esmaeil Baqaei, a foreign ministry spokesperson. “It is perfectly natural that the diplomatic process initiated to put an end to this imposed war would be affected.” The White House did not respond to messages about the Israeli strikes and whether they were done in coordination with the US. Israel’s attacks included a strike on an Iranian petrochemical complex. The Israeli military said it had also struck and dismantled Iran’s defence systems deployed across several areas in the country. Iranian state television reported the sound of explosions being heard in Isfahan, Karaj, Tabriz and Tehran. Officials offered no details on what had been struck, nor any information about the damage. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said Israel used air-launched ballistic missiles in its attack on Monday morning, without elaborating. The IRGC said it had targeted two military bases in Israel, describing the attacks as being part of Operation Nasr, or “Victory”. The Israeli army said it had worked to intercept a fresh wave of Iranian missiles. A series of explosions were heard in Jerusalem, where people took shelter. An Iranian missile fragment caused damage to several homes in a West Bank settlement, but no injuries were reported. A senior US official told Associated Press that Trump had called Netanyahu to urge him not to retaliate immediately after the Iranian missile attack. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Trump believed he had convinced Netanyahu to wait. The US president “got Bibi to hold off for the time being”, the official said. The official would not offer any other details about the call, and there was no immediate comment from Netanyahu’s office. Speaking to the Financial Times before Israel hit Iran, Trump said he dictated terms to Netanyahu on how the war should be prosecuted. “He won’t have any choice,” Trump told the newspaper in a telephone interview, adding that he called “all the shots”, not Netanyahu. Houthi rebels announced a missile attack on Israel on Monday, the first since early April, and declared a ban on Israeli shipping in the Red Sea, raising the spectre of a return to significant disruption on the main trade route. “We declare a complete and total ban on Israeli maritime navigation in the Red Sea,” said a statement from the Houthis’ armed forces. Trust between Iran and the US has been at a minimum for a long time, but if Tehran feels there is evidence the White House covertly endorsed the Israeli attack there is likely to be consequences for the stalled peace talks that Trump has claimed could end in a deal in days. The Iranian negotiators have been under pressure internally from a small but vocal group of hardliners based in the parliament to abandon the talks altogether. Others claim specific aspects of the deal are too ambiguous and need to be tightened. Ehsan Movahedian, an international relations specialist at Tehran University, pointed to videos he claimed proved the US did not just approve but was involved in Israel’s attack on Iran. ‘Footage shows the launch of cruise missiles from the eastern Mediterranean toward Iran, meaning Trump has lied again,” he wrote. “American warships are deployed in the eastern Mediterranean … Israel lacks the capability to launch long-range ship-fired cruise missiles.” Brent crude jumped $3.50 to $96.59 a barrel on Monday, while stocks in Asia, a region heavily dependent on oil imports, fell sharply in early trading. Additional reporting by Associated Press and Reuters

Pro-western but populist: how Nikol Pashinyan retained power in Armenia

For most candidates, campaigning on the loss of an ancestral homeland and advocating reconciliation with a longtime enemy would amount to political suicide. Not in Armenia. On Sunday, the prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, secured re-election in the Caucasus nation of 3 million people, despite having led Armenia through a devastating military defeat to Azerbaijan just three years ago. Pashinyan’s victory came against a field dominated by pro-Russian opponents, chief among them Samvel Karapetyan, a billionaire businessman who made much of his fortune in Russia and emerged as the prime minister’s most prominent challenger. Central to Pashinyan’s election vision was a future peace deal with Azerbaijan, with which Armenia has fought a series of bloody wars since the final years of the Soviet Union, and the normalisation of ties with Turkey, whose border with Armenia has remained closed for more than three decades. Reopening those routes, he argued, would create new trade opportunities and bring Armenia closer to Europe and the US, helping to loosen Moscow’s longstanding grip on the country’s economy. To get there, however, Pashinyan has had to persuade Armenians to draw a line under the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh, the disputed territory that Armenian forces controlled for nearly three decades before Azerbaijan retook it by force in 2023, triggering an exodus of more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians. Days before the election, Pashinyan described his decision not to continue the struggle to reclaim Nagorno-Karabakh as one of his greatest achievements. “The most important thing that has happened is that the Republic of Armenia has been freed from the conflict trap,” he told supporters. In taking that position, Pashinyan was betting that many Armenians were more concerned with the future than the past, said Richard Giragosian, the director of the Regional Studies Centre, a thinktank based in the Armenian capital, Yerevan. “Armenia wants to cut its losses and move on,” said Giragosian. “The taboo around normalising relations with Turkey largely disappeared years ago. As for Azerbaijan, many Armenians have come to accept the reality that they lost the war and have few alternatives.” Not everyone agreed. The loss of Karabakh remains an open wound, and emotions repeatedly spilt into the campaign. On several occasions, Pashinyan was filmed in heated confrontations with refugees from the region who scolded him for abandoning Armenia’s historic claims in pursuit of peace. Karapetyan’s campaign frequently circulated AI-generated videos depicting buses picking up vast numbers of Azerbaijanis to settle in Armenia under a future peace agreement. These messages were amplified by Moscow. In the run-up to the election, Russia unleashed what researchers described as an unusually intense barrage of overt and covert influence operations. Alongside this, Moscow has simultaneously increased economic pressure on Armenia, imposing restrictions on key imports and warning that future subsidised gas supplies could be at risk. A divisive reformer Born in the small northern town of Ijevan, Pashinyan began his career as a journalist before emerging as one of Armenia’s leading opposition figures in the 2000s. He swept to power in 2018 after mass street protests ousted the country’s entrenched political elite, campaigning on an anti-corruption and anti-oligarchy platform. A firebrand campaigner, Pashinyan possesses a rare combination in a region dominated by strongmen and oligarchs: a strongly pro-western outlook coupled with a populist and at times divisive style that has resonated with many Armenians. He filmed TikTok and Instagram videos of himself wearing hats stoically grooving to music – from Adele to Kendrick Lamar – staring directly into the camera before breaking into a smile and a hand-heart gesture that has become the symbol of his movement. At his headquarters on Sunday night, Pashinyan opened his victory address with a passage from the Bible, a nod to the deeply held religious beliefs of many Armenians in a country that prides itself on being the world’s first Christian nation. Those who know Pashinyan say his appeal lies in his ability to connect with ordinary Armenians. “He’s a guy from the street, and he knows what people on the street want to hear from him,” said Tatul Hakobyan, an Armenian political commentator who studied with Pashinyan and has known him for more than three decades. “That’s why his rhetoric speaks to the hearts of many Armenians,” Hakobyan added. Yet concerns about Pashinyan’s democratic credentials are growing among observers. In the run-up to the election, authorities arrested a number of opposition figures on charges ranging from vote buying and financial crimes to plotting to overthrow the government. “His style of government is highly personalised rather than institutionalised,” said Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow with the global analysts Carnegie Europe. “Pashinyan displays a worrying lack of interest in building durable institutions,” De Waal added. Those worries are likely to intensify after the election. In his first remarks following his victory, Pashinyan suggested that leading opposition figures should be arrested, referring to his main rivals – Karapetyan, Robert Kocharyan and Gagik Tsarukyan – as a “three-headed war party”. Much of Pashinyan’s success can be explained not only by his own appeal, but also by the weakness of the alternatives. “The biggest problem Armenia has is the absence of a democratic opposition,” said Areg Kochinyan, the president of the Yerevan-based Research Center on Security Policy. “The opposition parties capable of entering parliament are widely viewed as corrupt and closely aligned with Russia. That leaves many voters with few credible alternatives.” Despite his victory, Pashinyan still faces significant challenges. Russia has threatened economic retaliation if Armenia moves further towards the west, and the prime minister will have to carefully manage relations with a country on which Armenia remains heavily dependent for energy and trade. Crucially, Pashinyan failed to secure the supermajority required to amend the constitution. That could complicate efforts to conclude a final peace agreement with Azerbaijan, which has demanded the removal of constitutional language that it says implies territorial claims to Nagorno-Karabakh. Still, Pashinyan struck a triumphant tone on Monday. In a trademark social media video, he gazed into the camera while Queen’s We Are the Champions blared in the background.

‘Extreme fear’ among immigrants as backlash sweeps South Africa

African migrants in South Africa say they are living in fear after a series of marches calling for illegal immigrants to leave reignited long-held xenophobic sentiment in the country. March & March, a campaign group at the forefront of recent protests, has given people living illegally in the country until 30 June to leave, without specifying what will happen to those who do not. Mozambique said five of its citizens were killed in “xenophobic attacks” at the end of May. South African police said two Mozambicans and one South African had died during an outbreak of violence in Mossel Bay on the south coast. Roughly 60 miles south-east of Cape Town, about 100 people from Mozambique and Malawi sought shelter in Kleinmond town hall last week after an angry crowd told foreigners in an informal settlement they had to leave. Many told Reuters news agency they wanted help from their governments to return home. Ghana has arranged flights for several hundreds of its citizens to leave South Africa. “Every day and almost everyone I meet, they are in fear, extreme fear,” said an Ethiopian entrepreneur who moved to South Africa in 2000 and is married to a local woman. The couple have a 19-year-old daughter. “The sad part is it’s not because they are undocumented … But none of the legal documents will protect you from the violence.” South Africa has long imported migrant labour, particularly to work in its mines. After his election in 1994 ended white-minority rule, Nelson Mandela welcomed African migrants. Meanwhile, poverty and economic strife in many neighbouring countries, including hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, pushed people south. Endemic unemployment and inequality led many South Africans to blame African immigrants for their problems, with resentment periodically erupting into violence. Sixty-two people were killed during riots in 2008, among them 21 South Africans, and more than 150,000 were displaced. In 2015, at least five people were killed. The proportion of South Africans who said they would welcome all immigrants fell from a quarter in 2020 to 15% last year, according to surveys by the Human Sciences Research Council, a state body. The unemployment rate has risen by 3.4 percentage points to 43.1% since 2020. Sharon Ekambaram, who leads the refugee and migrants’ programme at Lawyers for Human Rights, said: “People are struggling to hold the government to account and it’s easier to blame the migrants.” South Africa’s foreign-born population almost trebled to 2.4 million between 1996 and 2022, according to census data, which aims to include undocumented people. That represented 3.9% of the 62 million population, up from 2% in 1996. The March & March leader, Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, who has campaigned for mass deportation, claims that illegal immigration “ranges from 15 million to about 30 million”. “South Africa is currently being invaded. South Africans have become refugees in their own country,” she said last month. Founded in March 2025, March & March has crisscrossed South Africa organising protests. On 30 March, the group led a demonstration in KuGompo City (formerly East London), after local people were angered by later-disproven reports that a Nigerian had been crowned king. Since then, marches have taken place in cities including Durban, Johannesburg and Pretoria. Asked how the group was funded, Ngobese-Zuma told local outlet Daily Maverick: “We get our funding from concerned South Africans, but we also have a social media page where our supporters can contribute. They contribute financially, but some contribute in kind.” Another prominent figure in the marches has been Ngizwe Mchunu. The radio DJ was acquitted of charges of instigating riots in July 2021, during which more than 350 people were killed after the former president Jacob Zuma was sent to prison. In the run-up to local elections in November, some smaller parties, including ActionSA and Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), are trying to gain support by associating themselves with the protests. African National Congress politicians have tried to tread a finer line. “South Africans from every walk of life have raised concerns about migration and illegal immigration … These concerns are real. They deserve to be heard. They deserve to be addressed,” South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, said in a televised address on Sunday night. He promised a tougher crackdown on illegal immigration and on corruption within the country’s border authorities, and emphasised that only state officials were permitted to demand proof of nationality. “We will and must not allow groups to use the legitimate concerns of South Africans to destabilise our country through inciting lawlessness and violence,” Ramaphosa said. Otlotleng Mokgatle, a political analyst at Control Risks, a consultancy firm, said: “The issue is highly volatile and even for those parties that might see it as an opportunity it does carry for them pretty big reputational and even internal stability risks.” He noted that parties that supported anti-migrant marches could be blamed for outbreaks of looting. Meanwhile, African immigrants continue to face huge uncertainty. “Of course I’m worried, because I don’t know what’s going on, what’s happening,” said Sandy Khumalo, who has a residency permit and runs Makhumalo, a restaurant in downtown Johannesburg catering to fellow Zimbabweans. “Since 2009, I’ve been here, so this is my home. I’m so stressed.”

Armenia’s pro-Europe party wins election and cements shift away from Russia

Armenia’s ruling pro-Europe party has won parliamentary elections, confirming the country’s pivot towards Europe and away from its traditional ally, Russia. Final results in the small South Caucasus country showed the prime minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party securing a slim majority, while the Strong Armenia alliance, led by the Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, won 25% of the seats in parliament. The result, which will be welcomed in Brussels but viewed with dismay in Moscow, strengthens Pashinyan’s hand as he pursues his signature and politically sensitive goal: a peace agreement with Armenia’s longtime adversary Azerbaijan and the normalisation of relations with Turkey. “The people of Armenia voted for peace, regional prosperity and regional cooperation, and I hope this will be met with a positive response from Turkey and Azerbaijan,” Pashinyan said at his campaign headquarters as the results began to trickle in. Pashinyan added that Armenia would continue to deepen ties with the west while maintaining its membership of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union. A former journalist who swept to power during the 2018 Velvet Revolution promising to dismantle Armenia’s oligarchic system, Pashinyan has campaigned on a platform of peace, arguing that ending the country’s decades-long confrontation with its neighbours would unlock economic opportunities, improve security and reduce its dependence on Russia. The prime minister, known for his populist and at times divisive rhetoric, has sought closer ties with Europe, suggesting that Armenia’s future lies in deeper integration with the west and expressing hope that the country could one day join the EU. European leaders were quick to congratulate Pashinyan. In a message on X, the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, hailed his victory as evidence of “a democratic Armenia” that was “drawing ever closer to Europe”. She added: “Armenia can count on us.” Pashinyan had also received an endorsement from Donald Trump, who described him as “a great friend and leader”. The US has taken an increasingly prominent role in efforts to broker a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Sunday’s vote is the first national election since Armenia’s loss of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan in 2023, a traumatic defeat that ended more than three decades of Armenian control over the disputed region. The opposition has sought to portray the loss as evidence of Pashinyan’s failures, accusing him of surrendering historical Armenian lands to its enemies. Pashinyan has tried to turn the issue into a political asset. Arguing that Armenia’s pursuit of Karabakh helped trap the country in perpetual conflict and dependence on Russia, he has presented the painful chapter as the necessary starting point for a more secure and prosperous future. Yet difficulties remain for Pashinyan, who failed to secure the supermajority needed to call a referendum on amending the constitution, including removing references that Azerbaijan says imply territorial claims to Nagorno-Karabakh – a crucial condition for signing a final peace agreement. Lilit Mkrtchyan, a shopkeeper from the capital, Yerevan, said Pashinyan’s victory would bring “peace and stability to Armenia”. “Armenians are tired of war. We want to be an open, European country that develops and prospers, where I don’t have to worry that my son will be called up to fight,” she added. Pashinyan’s course has put him in the crosshairs of Moscow, which has long projected influence over Armenian politics and the economy. Many Armenians became disillusioned with Russia after Moscow failed to come to their aid when Azerbaijan seized Nagorno-Karabakh, despite the presence of Russian peacekeepers in the region. The fallout prompted Pashinyan to suspend Armenia’s participation in the Collective Security Treaty Organization of six post-Soviet states, including Russia, marking the most dramatic rupture in relations with Moscow since the country’s independence. In the run-up to the election, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said Armenia, which has not formally applied for EU membership, was heading down the same path as Ukraine. Armenian officials and analysts have accused Russia of attempting to influence the election through disinformation campaigns in favour of pro-Russian candidates, and efforts to fly Armenians living in Russia back home to vote against Pashinyan. In recent weeks, Moscow has adopted a more overt approach, imposing a series of trade restrictions affecting everything from flowers and fish to fruit and Armenian brandy. Mindful of Armenia’s deep economic dependence on Russia and its reliance on cheap Russian gas, Pashinyan promised after the vote to pursue a balanced foreign policy, saying that the was “no question of choosing” between Russia and the west. Pashinyan has been buoyed up by strong economic growth after the influx of Russian businesses and capital following the invasion of Ukraine, leading him to invest heavily in Armenia’s regions, where his support remains strongest. Yet observers have also pointed to his increasingly personalised style of politics, and what critics describe as growing authoritarian tendencies in Armenia, a country that remains a rare democratic outlier in a region largely governed by strongmen. In the run-up to the elections, Armenian authorities arrested opposition figures, including members of Karapetyan’s party, with accusations ranging from vote-buying and financial crimes to calls to overthrow the government. Karapetyan was detained in June and charged with calling for the seizure of power, leading him to campaign from house arrest. After the election, Pashinyan said his party’s priority for the next term would be the complete dismantling of what he described as a “criminal-oligarchic system”. He also said leading opposition figures should face criminal prosecution. On the campaign, Pashinyan has at times appeared erratic, engaging in angry public disputes with refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh, whom he accused of having “run away” from the region rather than staying to fight. The EU, meanwhile, has largely brushed aside criticism of Pashinyan, making little secret of its support for Armenia’s shift away from Moscow. This week, Brussels announced an initial €50m (£43m) support package to help Armenia withstand Russian economic pressure. Karen Grigoryan, a doctor who voted for Karapetyan on Sunday, said: “Pashinyan is not the man he was when he came to power.” Referring to the Ottoman-era mass killings of Armenians that Yerevan and many western countries recognise as genocide, he added: “We can’t just be friendly with Turkey and pretend the past is erased.” Observers say many voters backed Pashinyan largely because the opposition remained widely discredited and closely linked to Russia. Tatul Hakobyan, a popular Armenian commentator, said: “People are choosing the lesser of two evils. The alternatives to Pashinyan are much worse.”

‘Sexist’: Gillard and Albanese condemn ‘ditch the witch’ campaign against Victorian premier

Julia Gillard and Anthony Albanese have joined a chorus of politicians criticising a truck-mounted billboard featuring the Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, alongside the phrase “ditch the witch”. The billboards, which have been seen travelling around Melbourne for about six weeks, also ran AI-generated images of Allan wearing a black pointed hat and with warts on her chin, in between advertisements for a brothel. Albanese told reporters in Canberra on Monday the “sexist” advertising campaign was “totally unacceptable and has no place in public life”. “We want to encourage women to enter public life and it should be a contest of ideas, not personal attacks,” he said. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email Speaking generally, Albanese added that there was a need to “turn the temperature down”. “What I don’t want to do is to have a press conference in this courtyard after a tragedy,” Albanese said, citing an increased number of threats being made against politicians. He also said some of the “personal ways” in which “mainstream media” has “characterised people in public life has just got to stop”, though he did not give specific examples. “You can have a disagreement with people’s policy position by all means. You don’t have to denigrate people in such a personal way. It has got to stop,” Albanese said. In a statement on social media, Gillard said she was “disgusted” to see the phrase used again after being subject to it herself during her tenure as prime minister. “This was a slogan used against me as prime minister fifteen years ago,” she said. “It was roundly condemned then. In the years since, my view has been that things were slowly improving for women in politics. More women are leading, sexism hasn’t gone away but it is less ferocious in the political mainstream, though social media continues to be a toxic sewer. “I am saddened to see that improvement cast aside and this tired old trope resurrected.” In 2011, then opposition leader Tony Abbott spoke at an anti-carbon tax rally with person holding a poster featuring the phrase “ditch the witch” visible behind him. Another poster labeled Gillard “Bob Brown’s bitch”, referencing the then leader of the Greens. Gillard referenced the poster in her famous “misogyny speech” in Australian parliament that went viral around the world and was later voted by Guardian Australia readers as the most unforgettable moment of Australian TV history. “I was offended when the leader of the opposition went outside in the front of parliament and stood next to a sign that said ‘Ditch the witch’,” Gillard said in the rousing speech. On Sunday, one of the AI-generated images from the billboard was published in the Herald Sun alongside a story about a possible leadership spill against Allan, prompting the premier to release a statement saying “sexism has no place in our political debate, full stop”. “A truck using sexist language has been driving around Melbourne as part of a secret and well-funded political campaign,” she said. “People are entitled to disagree with me. That’s democracy. But I care that this attacks women. And I care about who’s next.” The Age reports the trucks with billboards featuring the phrase were paid in part by Franco Puleo, the owner of the Gotham City brothel in South Melbourne. He denied the slogan was sexist. “[Allan] doesn’t answer questions. She’s not accountable to everything … It’s just how people are feeling. That’s what they’re resorting to,” he reportedly said. “That’s not a political ad. It’s basically what the Victorian public feel.” The Victorian attorney general, Sonya Kilkenny, was among several state Labor MPs who criticised the campaign on social media. “Women in public life should not have to accept abuse and misogyny as part of the job. You can disagree with a politician. You can disagree with a government. That’s democracy. Reducing a woman to a sexist slur is not,” Kilkenny wrote. The Victorian opposition leader, Jess Wilson, said the opposition had no involvement in the billboards, describing them as “inappropriate”. “That sort of language, that sort of discourse, should never be used in politics. We shouldn’t see this happening on our streets,” Wilson said. The Nationals leader, Matt Canavan, said while he “wouldn’t be advertising in this particular way”, the Labor outrage was an attempt to “protect what is a failing government down there [in Victoria]”. The One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, went further, telling Allan via Sky News to “suck it up, sweetheart”. She said had been called a witch “long before” Allan, including by politicians. “Besides, Jacinta, I’ll tell you something: I’ve heard on the grapevine you won’t be there in a couple of weeks,” Hanson said. Puleo was approached for comment.