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The Bond effect? How MI6 fascinates spy watchers around the world

MI6 has the swagger of James Bond; its French equivalent, DGSE, the complexities of the television drama Le Bureau. The film and TV shows may be fictional, but a survey run by a French magazine that placed the British spy agency above the French as No 1 across all of Europe this week is not. L’Express, a news weekly, conducted a Eurovision-style poll of 60 current and former spies from across the continent, plus the CIA and Israel’s Mossad. Each was asked to rank their top five foreign intelligence agencies, in secret, naturally enough. MI6 was first with 251 points ahead of DGSE on 169, with other agencies trailing behind. The result did not surprise Alexandra Saviana, a deputy editor at the publication, specialising in defence and intelligence, but the margin of victory did. “It is a huge point gap,” she said, reflecting the opinions of insiders and allies, 17 of whom are or were agency chiefs in a interconnected, covert ecosystem. At MI6’s headquarters in Vauxhall, London, there has been no sign of a public reaction from its chief, Blaise Metreweli. But there is a quiet satisfaction at the unexpected verdict, not least because the agency values how it is perceived by both allies and adversaries. “Reputation matters a lot in the espionage game,” said a former Whitehall insider. “British spies fascinate Europe, and beyond,” L’Express explained in its cover story. Saviana added that MI6’s success in the poll was principally down to its record in recruiting and running high-level human sources over generations: a focus on human intelligence in an era dominated by technology, intercepts and satellite monitoring. “The British have the ability to play the long game, to bet on sources over 10 years, a bit like the Russians,” a former French DGSE spy told the magazine, adding “and they have a penchant for underhand tactics” without revealing what they meant. One ex-spy voiced scepticism about the survey and added that a human intelligence service such as MI6 was only as good as the high-value agents on its books. Under Richard Moore, MI6’s previous chief, there were worries that it no longer had enough. Others, including Saviana, accept that greater credit might have been given to MI6’s sister agency, the signals intelligence experts at GCHQ, but it was not in the poll. MI6’s reputation among its peers, the French publication said, was built on “long standing tradition”, including recruiting cold war assets, most notably the KGB’s Oleg Gordievsky, a double agent through late 1970s and early 80s, who helped convince Margaret Thatcher to take Mikhail Gorbachev seriously before he had to be dramatically smuggled into Finland in 1985, his cover finally blown. Not every mole evaded capture. Alireza Akbari, a former Iranian deputy defence minister who had become a British citizen, was arrested on a return to Iran in 2019 and executed in 2023. Prior to his death, he confessed to being an MI6 agent. Though the confessions appeared coerced, spies from a number of countries indicated he was the person who had passed on the existence of the Fordow nuclear enrichment site in 2008. In the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war, MI6 was accused of simplistically supporting the case for war, promoting what turned out to be false sources, claiming that Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, could attack UK targets within “45 minutes”, and relied on one source who described supposed chemical weapons devices that were remarkably similar to one in the Hollywood movie The Rock. It was a low point. L’Express argued that MI6 had rehabilitated itself in the run-up to the Ukraine war in February 2022, correctly warning in conjunction with the CIA that Russia was about to invade, while French and German counterparts were sceptical up until the last minute, having misjudged the situation. The chief of the German BND agency even flew into Kyiv the day before the invasion, seemingly unprepared. It reflects MI6’s close and longstanding relationship with the CIA, part of the wider Five Eyes arrangements for intelligence sharing, between the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, that are the envy of continental Europe, even allowing for the complexities posed by Donald Trump’s chaotic presidency. “Every other country wants to say they are the sixth eye,” Saviana said. Fiction also has its advantages. Gordon Corera, a co-presenter of The Rest is Classified podcast, recalled that a former MI6 chief once told him a story of a young officer going somewhere far flung, not knowing whether the person he was trying to cultivate spoke English. “As he walked into the room the contact extended his hand and said: ‘Hello, Mr Bond.’ The former chief remarked: ‘I doubt if he would have received such a warm welcome if he’d been from the Belgian secret service.’”

Bluster and backdown have turned Iran war into Trump’s own Groundhog Day

Being the subject of mockery may be the most intense of all Donald Trump’s known aversions. Yet more than five months after embarking on a war of choice against Iran, the US president risks attracting ridicule as he struggles to secure a military victory – while repeatedly threatening devastating bombardment against the Tehran regime, only to back down on the pretext of renewed negotiations. Critics suggest the ultimatum-climbdown sequence has acquired a Groundhog Day quality. By one count, he has adopted the same tactic seven times since launching the war in tandem with Israel on 28 February. Last weekend saw the latest episode, as Trump told reporters onboard Air Force One that he had suddenly called off “a massive” attack that he said would have been “the biggest since world war two” after an appeal from US allies and because “I think there’s a deal”. Despite negotiations between Iran and Oman over shipping in the strait of Hormuz, no deal has thus far materialized, and the strategically vital waterway – conduit to a fifth of the world’s oil supply before the war – remains closed. The pattern resembled one that unfolded on a string of other occasions – including Trump’s memorably dire threat in April that Iranian “civilization will die tonight” unless Tehran capitulated to his demands only to retreat at the 11th hour and agree to a ceasefire. The US president has also claimed multiple times that the US has “virtually” won the war and that Iran’s regime was clamoring for a deal. Increasingly, such claims are prompting ridicule. A recent CNN montage showed 14 separate pieces of footage dating back to March, with Trump insisting peace was at hand because Iran’s leaders “want to make a deal” after being supposedly rendered militarily impotent – assertions belied by a continuing Iranian ability to inflict damage on US and allied targets in the Middle East. The veteran British journalist and commentator Andrew Neil pilloried Trump’s boasts as worthy of the Nobel peace prize he is known to covet. “He, in the past five months, has brought peace to the Iran war eight times,” Neil said sarcastically on Times Radio. “What more do you have to do to merit a Nobel peace prize?” He added: “We waste our time even analyzing it, because it’s either meaningless, or he’s done a U-turn on it within 24 hours … You might as well read the shipping forecasts.” Trump’s wildly zigzagging messaging on the war betrays an absence of strategy and a profound ignorance of his enemy, analysts say – and threatens to deliver an electoral disaster in November’s US congressional midterms. Mehrzad Boroujerdi, vice-provost and a political scientist at Missouri Science and Technology University, believes the US president’s failure to understand the individuals leading Iran’s authoritarian Islamic system has misled him into a dead end of ineffective and counterproductive threats. “One of the most terrible mistakes that Trump made was invoking this type of a language,” said Boroujerdi, who argued that regimes who come into being through mass revolutions such as the one in 1979 that swept Iranian revolutionaries to power are much harder to topple than other governments. “First, these are not people who are going to bend the knee,” he said. “Second, you have just killed the top of their leadership (including the former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei). Their psychology is only an invitation for Trump to become more aggressive.” Understanding Tehran Boroujerdi made it his life’s mission to understand the motivations of the men inside the Islamic regime after his father, Malek-Mohammad Boroujerdi, a senior executive with the national oil company, was assassinated by an Islamist guerrilla group in December 1978, on the eve of the revolution that overthrew the western-backed monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. He kept his personal stake in scrutinizing the regime under wraps, lest it be seen as impairing the impartiality of his academic studies Nearly half a century later, key members of the group, the Mansouroun, occupy some of the regime’s most sensitive military posts. They include Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr, secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council, and Mohsen Rezaei, the founding commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who is now military adviser to the present supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, whose father was killed in an Israeli military strike at the start of the war. Having compiled over two decades a vast database of about 2,700 members of the country’s elite, Boroujerdi has co-authored a 900-page book, Post Revolutionary Iran: A Political Handbook, that puts its political leadership under the microscope. Understanding it helps to explain how the outwardly ramshackle regime has withstood US hostility, international sanctions, diplomatic isolation and periods of war over 47 years all while staying resilient, he argued. “I have looked at their nepotism ties, who is connected to whom,” said Boroujerdi. “These are folks who came from very modest backgrounds. They are predominantly the sons of farmers, peasants. And then secondly, clerics, who basically enjoyed social mobility thanks to the revolution. “These were mister nobodies who became mister somebodies thanks to the revolution. And therefore, their attachment to this system and wanting to defend this system makes absolute sense because they owe everything they have currently, their whole career, to what this revolution has given them. “If we want to understand Iran’s resilience, its performance, we need to better understand the psychology and upbringing of these individuals. But that requires serious work that the political class in Washington isn’t necessarily interested in.” Having not undertaken such work, Trump has been reduced to railing in frustration at a regime whose defiance is a source of confusion and bewilderment to him. After a ceasefire agreed in June collapsed over differing interpretations of a memorandum of understanding Trump had signed in the Palace of Versailles, he shocked fellow attenders at last month’s Nato summit in Ankara by calling Iran’s leaders “scum”. “All they do is make me angry,” he told reporters, while also calling their behavior “unbelievably duplicitous”. Such incomprehension means Trump’s pattern of ultimately unfulfilled blood-curdling threats is likely to continue, according to Boroujerdi. Other seasoned Iran observers agree. Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s deputy program director for the Middle East and north Africa, called explaining Trump’s approach in strategic terms “an impossible task” and lamented what he called the lack of a clear policy process in the current administration. But he also said Iran’s leaders had strengthened their negotiating position in the strait of Hormuz since the collapse of the June ceasefire, while triggering a painful debate in Washington about military choices after recent strikes on a US base in Jordan that killed three US service personnel. The possibilities for a renewed military onslaught against Iranian targets are believed to be limited because of concerns that US missile and interceptor stockpiles have become depleted. Trump’s approach “boils down to his frustration that he really doesn’t have any good military options in front of him”, suggested Vaez. “A lot of it is emotional reactions, like when he does a deal with Iran that produces a political backlash, even among Republicans. “That criticism gets under his skin, so he tries to extract better terms from Iran by bombing them. But when he ends up in an even worse position, he returns to the negotiating table and tries to pursue a diplomatic solution. “This war started based on a lot of misguided assumptions, which are a clear reminder that half the battle is understanding your enemy – and clearly, President Trump and his administration didn’t understand the enemy.”

Greenland issues ‘strong warning’ as Trump-linked oil firm prepares to drill

An American oil company connected to Donald Trump is preparing to sink wells in remote Greenland despite not having received permission from the local authorities. As the US president renews his threats to claim the vast Arctic territory, materials to prepare for drilling were brought ashore in recent days on Greenland’s eastern coast. That has prompted Greenland’s government to issue a “strong warning” that no approval had been granted to land the kit. “All future logistical matters must be advised and approved by the mineral resources authority – before they are carried out,” the government said in a statement. Two days later, Trump made his latest menacing post on Truth Social, showing himself looming over a Greenlandic village. Executives of Greenland Energy, a Texas company set up last year, have claimed that $1tn of crude may lie beneath the Jameson Land region. They announced plans to spend $60m drilling two wells to find out. Although Greenland stopped issuing new oil licences in 2021 on environmental grounds, a UK company called 80 Mile had secured exploration rights in Jameson Land. Greenland Energy’s corporate filings say it will take a majority stake in the project in exchange for funding the exploration, though it still needs government permission to proceed. Greenland Energy has retained Phil McGraw, better known as Dr Phil, a prominent rightwing former chatshow host who served on Trump’s religious freedom commission, to make a documentary series that will “capture the mission of these modern-day wildcatters”. It has also appointed as a director a US navy veteran who is working on Golden Dome, the missile defence plan for which Trump says controlling Greenland is “vital”. Larry Swets, Greenland Energy’s chair and a big shareholder, appears to enjoy access to Trump’s circle. He has said the oil project is “not related to American annexation”. After a company representative falsely claimed at a Jameson Land community meeting in June that it had permission to land drilling equipment, Swets said: “Our enthusiasm for the project led us to communicate in a way that created confusion.” But the next month, local people in the sparsely populated region noticed a tug pulling a barge shorewards and unloading a dozen containers. “The goal was to get the equipment onshore at Nunap Qeqqa [Jameson Land] in connection with planned oil exploration drilling,” the Greenland government’s statement said. The Danish investigative outlet Danwatch quoted the head of the shipping company as confirming the delivery was for Greenland Energy. Greenland Energy has declined to respond to questions from the Guardian. A letter it sent to shareholders on Thursday said: “Recent high-level meetings between project leadership and Greenlandic regulatory and oversight authorities have been constructive, and we continue to be encouraged by the progress being made toward the remaining approvals required for drilling.” It said that after those discussions, just one well would be drilled to begin with. As a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, decisions about Greenland’s natural resources rest with its local elected leaders, who now face a delicate decision. They could grant permission for oil drilling, even though the planned wells appear to fall within a conservation area protected by the Ramsar convention on wetlands. Or they could refuse and, some worry, give Trump a pretext to advance his imperialist agenda. The Greenland government’s statement said it “would not be proportionate” to demand the equipment be removed. An application for permission remained under processing, it added. A Greenland Energy representative has said a vessel carrying its 300 shipping containers of drilling equipment is to set sail from Canada on 12 September. Sinking the wells would begin in October. Jeff Landry, the hard-right Louisiana governor serving as Trump’s Greenland envoy, has said Greenland could be pumping oil next year.

‘We have no tents or blankets’: Ceuta migrants struggle to survive brutal heat and freezing nights

Along the wide avenues and tree-lined plazas of Ceuta’s centre, there were few hints of the recent events that catapulted the Spanish enclave on the north African coast into global headlines. But less than a mile away from the bustling bars and restaurants, at the nearby El Trampolín beach, the lingering impact was impossible to ignore. “We’re sleeping here on the beach, out in the open, without tents or blankets,” said Imad, 26, one of several thousand people believed to be still in Ceuta after last week’s extraordinary influx of more than 72,000 migrants into the Spanish territory on the edge of Morocco. “We don’t have bathrooms,” added the Yemen national. “I barely manage two hours of sleep, as it’s incredibly cold by the sea at night, and during the day the heat is unbearable.” One week on, while questions continue to swirl over what exactly prompted the incident, the city’s shops and markets have reopened and many of the 84,000 residents have resumed their daily routines. The scenes of normality clashed jarringly with a population left deeply rattled by the crisis, said Ceuta’s long-serving conservative leader. “Ceuta is on edge,” Juan Jesús Vivas told the broadcaster TVE. “Things have yet to return to normal – it’s as if 50 million people had entered Spain in a day.” One week after tens of thousands of people, referencing posts on TikTok, Instagram and WhatsApp among other platforms, swam or waded into the Spanish territory, there was little consensus on just how many people had arrived and how many had been returned, said Vivas. The Spanish government estimated that about 72,000 people had crossed into Ceuta and about 2,500 remained, while Vivas believed that about 80,000 had entered, with between 3,000 and 5,000 still in Ceuta. The precise number of people killed in the crossing also remains murky, with estimates as high as 141. Dozens of people remain missing, suggesting the death toll of the crisis, already one of the worst humanitarian tragedies at Europe’s borders in recent years, will worsen. Adding to the tension are the fresh online posts that have called for another mass crossing in mid-August, said Vivas. “People in Ceuta are nervous, they are worried. And this is absolutely logical, because the question we keep asking ourselves is: ‘Will this happen again?’” Many had been shaken by migrants’ reports of their crossing being encouraged, at times even facilitated, by Moroccan officials. “It has been demonstrated that our security and border are vulnerable and that both are in the hands of a third country that doesn’t recognise the sovereignty of Ceuta,” said Vivas. “Morocco is not a reliable country.” As Spain and the EU wrestle with the wider political implications, the migrants who remain in the city have been left struggling to survive. Immediately after the influx the situation was terrible, said Imad, the 26-year-old from Yemen. “Everything was closed, and we were on the verge of dying of hunger and thirst,” he said. “They used hunger to pressure us into deciding to return on our own. We ate leaves from the trees and drank dirty water.” Things had improved slightly in recent days, he said, as NGOs such as the Red Cross had begun providing them with food. On Thursday the Spanish government said it was installing toilets and additional showers on the beach, while police said they would open an information point. When Imad arrived in Spain, making his way across the border in an eight-hour, flipper-powered swimming odyssey, he envisioned it would be the end of an arduous journey that began in 2019 when he fled attempts by the Houthis to recruit him as a fighter. “I thought that, upon arrival – since I was arriving from a country at war – it would be easier for us to apply for asylum. But we found the reception centre for migrants closed. There were no exceptions for anyone; all the doors were locked.” He scrambled each day to find food and shelter, while the question of whether he would manage to request asylum loomed. “I have nightmares every day. I dream that my family is being bombed, that they are killed, or that I’m deported to Morocco,” he said. “Psychologically, I’m shattered.” Those who remain in Ceuta include an estimated 1,300 unaccompanied children, with NGOs expressing concerns that hundreds more – including some as young as 10 – could be wandering the city unprotected. One 16-year-old told the Guardian that she had made her way to the city’s reception centre for minors on arrival, only to be told it was full. She had instead been sleeping rough on the streets of Ceuta. “I went days without food. When a woman brought food for the migrants, the men got there first, and we didn’t get anything. The same happened with clothing, when we managed to get to the front of the line, there was nothing left.” She had briefly considered going home. But she decided to stay after realising that this could be a singular opportunity to find a job that could help lift her family in Morocco out of poverty. “I just want to be a normal girl. I want to be able to get dressed, take a shower, eat well, have a place to sleep, study, work, and help my family,” she said. The situation had prompted neighbours in the Sidi Mbarek neighbourhood on the outskirts of Ceuta to take matters in their own hands. “We’re particularly concerned about the women and minors,” said Abdullah Abdullah Mustafa, the head of the Sidi Mbarek neighbourhood association. “Many are sleeping hidden in the hills for fear of being found and sent back to Morocco. That means there are minors living with hundreds of men in a situation of extreme vulnerability.” What they came up with was a makeshift shelter, setting up tents in a courtyard that were watched over each night by residents. “All we can offer them is a place to sleep with some degree of safety. We don’t have bathrooms, beds or any other resources,” he said. “We know that this isn’t a real solution and probably isn’t even legal, but leaving minors unprotected seemed much worse.” It is one of the many examples of solidarity that have sprung up across Ceuta in recent days, from the dozen volunteers who have been cooking day and night in a local flat to feed up to 400 people a day to the mammoth operation launched by the local NGO Luna Blanca to hand out about 5,000 meals a day. One resident, Aisha Ahmed Ammar, has taken to stopping by El Trampolín beach each day with her two children, bringing food and clothing, and broadcasting her mobile phone’s wifi signal to allow people to connect with their families back home. She said she had been moved by the people she had met, many of them asylum seekers from Sudan, Egypt or Yemen, and their readiness to care for those around them even as they had been seemingly abandoned by the international system meant to protect them. “I’ve been impressed by how respectful and polite they are,” she said. “When you offer them something, they often reply: ‘No, give it to someone who needs it more.’” But the enormity of the situation and the way in which it leaves residents such as herself on the frontlines, scrambling to do what she could in the face of Europe’s hardening borders, left her constantly fighting back tears. “You want to do more, but you can’t, and that fills me with immense sadness and a profound sense of helplessness,” she said. “It’s never enough.”

Germans hogging the sunloungers? Poll finds Italians and French are worse

Germans are sunlounger hoggers, or so the longstanding stereotype goes. But not only is that cultural trope mostly confined to British – and, even more so, German – perceptions, surprising new data reveals that in fact Italian and French holidaymakers are the ones most likely to use their towel to stake their claim to a sunlounger. A poll by YouGov of Europeans holidaymakers found that while many Germans (51%) and Britons (46%) associate Germans with the ritual of waking up at the crack of dawn to mark their spot, the perception barely exists elsewhere in Europe, with just 5-17% of those surveyed in other countries sharing the stereotype. Furthermore, just 38% of German holidaymakers – as in those who stay in places that have pools and sunloungers – said they have ever reserved a lounger with a towel compared with 45% of their Italian and French counterparts. Britons were the least likely to admit to hogging a lounger (33%). Across all countries polled, YouGov found that most people (60-82%) considered the practice unacceptable. Still, it appears to be rampant, with 51-63% saying they had found themselves deprived of a sunlounger because they were all taken, and 14-28% admitting to resolving matters by removing somebody else’s towel. When the Guardian asked a number of Italians in Rome, nobody admitted to the practice, although they could believe the data. “I would never do it but I have seen it happen,” said Claudia Morani, a teacher, adding that during a recent stay in a hotel with a swimming pool she had witnessed plenty of fellow Italians “leaving their towels on the loungers at the end of the day so they could use the same ones the next morning”. Morani added: “This kind of thing happens a lot on beaches here, too – the free ones.” Indeed, possibly even worse than sunlounger hoggers, some Italian beachgoers are cultivating a reputation as furbetti dell’ombrellone, or umbrella cheats, a name coined by the press to refer to people who leave their umbrellas pitched overnight in their quest to reserve coveted spots by the sea. The practice is a growing trend on free-access beaches, unlike the private concessions that dominate much of Italy’s coastline during summer and from which Italians are increasingly turning away because of high prices. Such is the extent of the problem, coastal authorities across Italy specifically target the furbetti dell’ombrellone as part of their national beach and lake safety campaign. In late July, authorities in a suburb of Naples seized 40 items, including umbrellas, loungers and deckchairs, during a dawn sweep of a popular free beach. Similar blitzes have recently occurred on beaches in Puglia and Sardinia. Fines of up to €500 are in place for those caught, while reclaiming the confiscated personal belongings involves a bureaucratic ordeal. “This has become a bit of a habit,” said Danilo Ruggiero, an activist with Mare Libero, a national network fighting to reclaim beaches from private concessions. “I think it’s more related to people not wanting to carry umbrellas, chairs and other equipment back and forth from home, especially in the heat. But there is a tendency to try to get the best position by the sea, and this shouldn’t be done.” As for France, when the Guardian spoke about YouGov’s findings to two people living in the south, they were not surprised to hear that the French were partial to sunlounger hogging. “I see it all the time at my local beach club,” said Chantal Henry, who lives in Menton, close to the Italian border. “I get really fed up with it.” Her friend Virginie Pascual alleged: “It is always the Italians.” However, a Briton living in France, who wanted to remain anonymous as they had German colleagues, was adamant Germans were by far the biggest culprits. “I saw it in Mallorca – it was 5.30am and a German dude was hogging five loungers with towels,” they said.

Ukraine war briefing: Wildberries warehouse struck by Kyiv’s drones more than 2,000km from Russian border

Ukrainian long-range drones hit a warehouse beloning to Russia’s biggest online retailer in the Ural Mountains, more than 2,000km (1,200 miles) from the two countries’ border, local officials and the company said on Friday. Wildberries said its warehouse in Ekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city, was set ablaze in the attack. Most merchandise was not damaged, the company said. More than a dozen other Wildberries depots struck by Ukraine in recent weeks have burned down. The regional governor, Denis Pasler, said three drones hit the warehouse’s roof. The Kremlin’s representative in the region, Artyom Zhoga, said 800 people were evacuated from the warehouse and nobody was hurt. Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting of Russia’s security council on Friday and said in televised opening remarks that the meeting would focus on additional measures to “strengthen … protection of infrastructure facilities” but gave no further details. Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked the ⁠US Senate ⁠on Friday for passing ⁠a bill backing sweeping energy sanctions on ⁠Russia, saying it helped increase pressure on Moscow. The European Commission president, Ursula ⁠von der Leyen, also welcomed the vote, saying it came on the back on the EU’s 21st sanctions package against Russia and showed that with complementary ⁠sanctions “Europe and the United States can once again show what historic partners can ‌achieve when we act together”. The US bill, intending to punish Russia and countries that buy its petroleum exports, advances a long-delayed measure backed ⁠by the late senator Lindsey Graham. Russian strikes killed three people – including a child – in a district north-east of the Ukrainian capital, a regional military official said on Saturday. Three people were also wounded in the strikes on the Brovary district, Kyiv’s regional military administration chief, Tymur Tkachenko, said on Telegram. In the capital, four people were wounded from overnight attacks, the administration said, with mayor Vitali Klitschko saying fires were reported in two districts. On Friday Russian strikes on ⁠Ukraine’s south-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region killed ⁠two people and injured six, regional ⁠governor Oleksandr Hanzha said, amid nearly 50 ‌attacks. Two people were killed ‌near the town of Nikopol on the western bank of the Dnipro River, opposite ⁠the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Russia’s defence ministry said its forces struck two ⁠more cargo vessels in ⁠the Black Sea being ‌used in the Ukrainian military’s interests. In Russian-occupied Crimea, two people ⁠were ⁠killed after a ⁠Ukrainian drone struck ⁠an apartment ‌building ‌in ‌Kerch on Friday, ‌said the peninsula’s Russia-installed governor, ⁠Sergei Aksyonov. A ⁠fire broke out at the ⁠Ilsky ⁠oil refinery and five people were wounded ⁠in Russia’s Krasnodar region after a ⁠Ukrainian drone attack, ‌local authorities said ‌on Saturday. Separately, drones ‌targeted an industrial facility in Russia’s Samara region, the regional governor said, ‌without identifying the enterprise. Zelenskyy on Friday began his first official visit to Serbia to discuss security with a European country still closely allied with Moscow. Welcomed at Belgrade airport by the energy minister, the Ukrainian president had dinner with his Serbian counterpart, Aleksandar Vučić. Zelenskyy said on X: “We will discuss expanding economic ties between our countries, relations with the European Union, other areas that can benefit our nations, and security issues.” Vučić and Zelenskyy are to hold official talks on Saturday at the presidential palace and make a statement to the press, according to the Serbian presidency. A senior Ukrainian official told AFP ahead of the trip it was an attempt to “pull the Serbs away from Russia’s side”, but Vučić has insisted his decision not to sanction Moscow will not change. Chancellor Friedrich Merz convened Germany’s national security council on Friday to discuss an explosive-laden drone found near a Ukrainian cargo plane and the midair collision of another aircraft with an unidentified object this week. Germany has not blamed anyone for the incident at Leipzig-Halle airport early on Wednesday, but the Russian embassy in Berlin on Friday claimed the discovery of a “fabricated provocation” was set up to blame Moscow. German interior minister Alexander Dobrindt has called the discovery “a hybrid attack” that spelled “a new level of danger”. Russia’s supreme court said on Friday it would consider a lawsuit to bar Yabloko, the only officially registered party that opposes Moscow’s war in Ukraine, from contesting parliamentary elections in September. The ⁠suit was filed by Rodina (⁠or Motherland), a small pro-Kremlin nationalist party whose leader, Alexei Zhuravlev, denounced Yabloko as a western-backed movement bent on discrediting the elections and Russia itself. Yabloko accused Zhuravlev of making defamatory statements against it and said it would launch its own ‌suit to protect its reputation.

Senior managers at St Basil’s aged care, where 50 died from Covid, can’t remember it all. Grieving loved ones can’t forget

Quiet sobs could be heard in Melbourne’s coroner’s court, as several families attended to finally hear from the pair who were the most senior managers when, throughout July and August 2020, almost a quarter of the 188 residents at St Basil’s aged care home died from Covid-19 or neglect. Following multiple failed legal bids to avoid giving evidence after 50 residents died in the Victorian aged care home they managed, Konstantin Kontis and Vicky Kos were compelled to testify at a coronial inquest resuming on the sixth anniversary of the tragedy. During his evidence on Friday, Kontis said that the board of St Basil’s, operating under the auspice of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia, never signed off on the facility’s Covid-19 management policy and that he believed, as chair, he had the delegated authority to approve it without them. Counsel assisting the coroner, Naomi Hodgson, told the court the policy contained no strong guidance on close contacts of Covid cases, and that the main guidance on symptoms was to follow the directives of the state and federal governments. The policy document was not updated as new directives came in from the government, the court heard. Instead this information was printed and put into a yellow folder for staff to keep up-to-date with. Kontis accepted under questioning that there was no delegation of authority that allowed him to approve “such a significant document” without input from the board. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email Kontis was also questioned about why he did not convene board meetings as the outbreak grew, especially once testing of 116 residents and 95 staff on 15 July 2020 – as organised by the federal department of health – revealed 28 positive cases. “My communication then had switched to the archbishop direct,” Kontis said. “I don’t want to put tickets on myself, but he had full confidence that I would handle the matter in the most appropriate way.” Hodgson put it to Kontis that regardless of whether an approved aged care provider was a not-for-profit, for-profit, or religiously run, the leadership had obligations under the aged care and corporate laws to inform the board. She suggested Kontis was wrong in some of his understanding of these obligations, which he accepted. Kontis said a board meeting was held in April 2020 before the outbreak at the home and after Covid was spreading through aged care elsewhere. Discussions would have occurred then, he said, about what to do if a significant portion of the workforce became infected. The court heard that no minutes from that meeting had been found in about 10,000 pages of briefing evidence provided to the coroner. It prompted the inquest – due to close its questioning of witnesses on Friday – to be delayed to allow St Basil’s representatives to conduct a search. Kontis’ evidence is due to resume on 16 November. The yellow folder Earlier in the week, the court heard that no cohort plan for separating Covid positive residents from uninfected ones could be found in documents provided to the court. Kos, who was director of nursing and facility manager at the time, said this plan was placed in the yellow folder. Some documents from that folder had gone missing, she said. She gave evidence that many documents from the state and federal government were being added to this folder, and that staff were expected to keep up-to-date with it when starting shifts. Information was also shared during handovers, she said. Following this evidence, a search on Monday night of electronic and hard-file repositories of documents, including those previously seized by Victoria police, did not reveal such a cohort plan, the court heard on Tuesday from St Basil’s barrister, Conor O’Bryan. O’Bryan said because some files had been lost it could not be proven that a cohort plan never existed. ‘I didn’t attend’ During his evidence, Kontis was pressed on why he did not attend key meetings, organised by senior management of the home and attended by health officials, once it became clear the outbreak was significant and the entire workforce needed to be stood down. Kontis said he disagreed with a directive from the chief health officer at the time, Prof Brett Sutton, to furlough the entire workforce and replace them with agency staff to prevent further spread. Kontis said he did not trust the staff would be competent and Covid-free. “You’ve just received the news that your entire staff is going to be stood down,” Hodgson said. “Why didn’t you attend [meetings] as the only person on the board with vision of what was happening here?” Kontis responded: “I can’t answer that. I didn’t attend.” He said he was informed about what happened at meetings immediately afterwards by attenders. Kontis said there were also some meetings he did not believe he was invited to. Hodgson said that St Basil’s, as an approved aged care provider, had a duty under law to implement policies and procedures to manage risk and ensure care for consumers. Asked why he did not convene a meeting of the risk and audit committee before or throughout the outbreak, Kontis said, “I couldn’t get anybody to attend a meeting because of Covid.” Hodgson responded this was “an improbable answer in circumstances where you’ve already told me you can get people on the phone”. The court previously heard that agency staff brought in to take over struggled to find the information they needed to run the facility, from passwords and logins for computers, to notes about the clinical care of residents. Kontis said this information could be found in folders. “We had folders in the kitchen, folders with the cleaners, folders with the maintenance people,” he said. Hodgson put it to Kontis that, as an approved aged care provider and chairman, he had responsibility for the agency staff and to assist them to fulfil their duties. “Well, that’s your interpretation,” Kontis said. Hodgson replied: “I’d suggest to you … that it’s not my interpretation, it was your responsibility as an approved provider.” “That’s that’s your assertion,” Kontis said. Signs in ‘simple language’ Kos had earlier told the court that English was a second language for 95% of the original St Basil’s staff, and the majority did not have laptops or computers. Asked how critical and sometimes complicated Covid information was then communicated, she said signs in “simple language” were placed around the facility and information was shared during shift handovers. Kos disagreed under cross-examination that the process of adding documents constantly to folders and expecting staff with English as a second language to keep across these during shifts was a complex task for them. She agreed that having a clear Covid plan in place would make it less likely that people would die. The inquest had previously heard from staff and family members in 2021 that infected residents were mingling with those who had not tested positive to the virus, and that infection control procedures throughout the home were poor. Kos told the court that on 9 July 2020, when the first case in a staff member was identified, she began to follow a Covid-19 aged care checklist issued by the federal government about what to do in the first 24 hours. Kos told the court she did not complete the step that said to alert the commonwealth department of health at a dedicated aged care email address within 30 minutes. She said she spoke with the state public health hotline as the document required, and because she was told to wait to hear about next steps, she did not proceed to the next step on the checklist, which was to email the commonwealth. The checklist said the commonwealth could connect aged care homes with resources to manage the outbreak including testing, additional PPE and a surge workforce, the court heard. Delays in the commonwealth learning of the case meant staff and residents were not mass-tested until days later. The inquest previously heard this was a root cause of the outbreak. Kontis said he did not believe it was his role to email the commonwealth as he trusted facility staff to do so and to follow procedures in place. ‘I don’t remember’ Throughout the five days, Kontis had to be reminded several times not to interject during questioning, and to listen before responding. With years having passed since the tragedy, Kos’ response to many questions throughout the week was, “I don’t remember”. Both Kontis and Kos refused to testify, only doing so after a certificate was granted by the coroner, Liberty Sanger – meaning their evidence can not be used against them in criminal or civil litigation. Spiros Vasilakis, whose mother, Maria, died at the home during the outbreak, attended each day. “It still hurts for all of us families here,” Vasilakis said. “It hurts to hear anyone say that because it’s been six years, they can’t remember. I can tell you that families remember, detail by detail, what occurred. I haven’t forgotten anything.” The inquest continues.