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‘We are talking about energy security for Europe’: Norway doubles down on oil and gas production

In case of any doubt about Norway’s commitment to maintain – and expand – its production of gas and oil offshore, the energy minister, Terje Aasland, has a pithy response: “We will develop, not dismantle, activity on our continental shelf.” This week, to the alarm of environmental campaigners, he announced that three gasfields off the country’s southern coast would reopen by the end of 2028 – nearly three decades after they closed – to meet a shortfall caused by the impact of the war in Ukraine and disruption to supplies from the Middle East. The decision will help keep gas and oil production at about the 2025 level – which has been stable for almost 20 years – and stay broadly the same for the rest of this decade. Norway has 97 offshore oilfields, three of which came on stream last year, and its Norwegian Offshore Directorate expects “100 and beyond” within the next two years, still producing at least the present level of 2m barrels of oil daily. The Barents Sea, in the high north, is the new gas and oil frontier – with the prospect of mining for seabed minerals between northern Norway and Greenland, a more distant prospect after initial surveys by the Norwegian Offshore Directorate – an agency of Aasland’s department – showed potential. “Norwegian offshore production plays an important role in ensuring energy security in Europe,” says Aasland. “The world, and Europe, will have a need for oil and gas for decades to come and it is crucial that Norway continues to develop its continental shelf to remain a reliable and long-term supplier … and (with) a high level of exploration activity.” The sector generates vast wealth for Norway, but the decision this week to reopen the Albuskjell, Vest Ekofisk and Tommeliten Gamma gasfields in the North Sea, which were closed in 1998, has received heavy criticism in some quarters. It goes against the advice of the country’s environment agency, and the Socialist Left party accused the government of “greenwashing”. Lars Haltbrekken, the deputy leader and environment spokesperson for the party, says: “It shows that the government is once again blatantly ignoring environmental advice from its own experts. All the talk about responsible oil extraction is nothing but nonsense. It’s greenwashing through and through, with vulnerable and important natural areas being put at risk with full awareness.” The Norwegian energy company Equinor (formerly Statoil), in which the state owns 67%, says it is making a “big effort” to maintain its own 2020 production levels of 1.2m barrels daily up to 2035. The Norwegian’s state holding should yield about £2bn in dividends this year. “It’s very important for the market value of the company to keep production higher now than in 2001 – yes, we had a lower production then than now,” says Equinor’s Ola Morten Aanestad. To arrest any decline, he says Equinor is committed to investing $6bn (£4.4bn) annually up to 2035 – “more drilling … a lot of new development, more pipelines … maybe smaller fields developing, but still important.” Aasland – Norway’s longest-serving oil minister, a 61-year-old former electrician and trade union leader – says Norway has “a responsibility”. “In Europe, before the war in Ukraine, there was much talk of how to get rid of oil and gas on our continental shelf … now they ask me every day ‘can you deliver more oil and gas’? We are talking about energy security for Europe and we have to increase investment. We have a responsibility. Our focus is very clear.” Aasland also stresses the importance of job security for the 210,000 people employed by the energy industry in Norway. “It is really important that they wake up in the morning knowing they have a safe job for the future.” Aanestad says Norway’s consistent tax rate on oil and gas firms has made it attractive to investors. “We’ve had a 78% taxation level since the 1970s – a high tax, I know – but investors know what to expect; it’s predictable,” he says. That tax is a mainstay of Norway’s £1.5tn sovereign wealth fund, which helps it run a sizeable surplus. Norway’s unashamed approach is at odds with the UK, it’s North Sea neighbour, where the government has ruled out new oil and gas exploration licences. Terje Sørenes, the chief economist at the Norwegian Offshore Directorate, says the aim is to prolong production as long as possible, and increase output, that currently provides gas for a third of Europe’s consumption. For now, Europe’s energy superpower is prioritising ever more drilling and offshore production well into the 2030s and beyond.

‘They have screwed each other pretty badly’: tensions emerge in Netanyahu-Trump alliance

Benjamin Netanyahu interrupted an uncharacteristically long silence over the Iran conflict this week with a video commentary insisting he had “full coordination” with Donald Trump, with whom he spoke “almost daily”. The insistence that all was rosy in the US-Israeli relationship followed weeks of reports in the domestic press that Israel was no longer being consulted over the Iran conflict, and even less over Pakistani-brokered peace talks. Such is the scepticism over Netanyahu’s trustworthiness among the general public and independent press that the immediate reaction among observers to his video statement was speculation that the reality could be even worse than they had imagined. “He is doing so much talking about how great the relationship is that it makes me rather concerned about how much tension there is,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, an American-Israeli political consultant and pollster. “I wouldn’t be surprised, as the war is clearly going very poorly from all perspectives related to the original goals.” The US president and the Israeli prime minister have long presented mirror images of each other. They have both pioneered populist methods to dominate domestic politics, cutting away at the constitutional underpinning of the very systems that brought them to power, with little regard for past norms or constraints. Since 28 February, when they brought the Gulf to a standstill with a devastating US-Israeli assault on Iran, they have bound their fate together so tightly that it will be very hard for either of them to unstick themselves from its legacy. Netanyahu spent decades trying to persuade a succession of US presidents to join Israel in a war against the Islamic Republic. He went to unprecedented lengths for a foreign leader wading into US domestic politics, in particular when it came to undermining the multilateral nuclear deal with Iran of 2015, which had been Barack Obama’s flagship foreign policy achievement. Netanyahu helped coax Trump to walk out of that deal in 2018, which in turn led to a ramping up of Iran’s nuclear programme and accumulation of a stockpile of highly enriched uranium sufficient for a dozen nuclear warheads. And in February this year, according to extensive reporting in the US press, Netanyahu was instrumental in convincing Trump that war was the only solution to the threat, and one that would be easily won. By then, the Israeli leader was pushing at a door that was already ajar. The month before, US forces had pulled off an extraordinary coup, swooping into Caracas in a surprise raid and whisking away the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro. “Netanyahu, being the conman that he is, used Venezuela as an example,” Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat, said. “He said to him: ‘Look what you did in Venezuela. It was painless. It was effortless. It was beautiful. You changed the regime.’ “Then he begins bombarding Trump with intelligence data showing that Iran had expanded its missile production and its missile-launching capabilities, and still has 450kg of highly enriched uranium,” Pinkas said. With the help of the Mossad director, David Barnea, Netanyahu portrayed the Tehran regime as an overripe fruit ready to drop from the branch. “He told Trump: ‘The Iranian economy is in shambles. The people are on the precipice of revolt. The Revolutionary Guards are losing control. Life in Iran is intolerable. This is our time,’” Pinkas said. “‘What we could do together is bring down the regime … think that together, jointly, we can win the war in three, four days.’” According to multiple reports, US intelligence and military officials stressed the risk that Iran could attack US allies in the Gulf and close the strait of Hormuz. But Netanyahu – and US administration hawks including the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth – prevailed, arguing that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards were overrated and would not have the strength to hit back. They were proved wrong on every count. The Iranian people did not rise up, the regime did not fall, the Kurds did not attack from the north-west and the Revolutionary Guards were able to inflict withering damage on US bases and Gulf monarchies, close the Hormuz strait and trigger a global economic crisis. “Some 30 days into the war, by the end of March there were signs that Trump was very disappointed with Netanyahu,” Pinkas said. The president stopped mentioning Israel and Netanyahu in his relentlessly upbeat public statements about the war. When US negotiators started talking to their Iranian counterparts and Pakistani mediators in the run up to a ceasefire announcement on 8 April, Israel was left out of the loop. Israeli officials complained to the press that they had to use their intelligence assets to try to find out what was going on. There are varying accounts of what is on the table in the peace talks, but there has been no mention of Iran’s missile arsenal or its use of regional proxies, both of which are Israeli priorities. When Trump did mention Netanyahu, it was mostly to tell him off. After Israel bombed Iran’s South Pars gasfield, for example, Trump said he had told Netanyahu “not to do that”. “On occasion, he’ll do something, and if I don’t like it … we’re not doing that any more,” the president said. When the ceasefire was agreed, Trump initially sided with Netanyahu’s interpretation that Lebanon was excluded and then, with the truce in jeopardy, swiftly reversed himself and made Israel follow suit. “Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the U.S.A. Enough is enough!!!” he said in a social media post on 17 April, in an unprecedented public rebuke to Netanyahu. Since this nadir, Israeli government officials have been briefing reporters that the ceasefire cannot last and that a return to hostilities was inevitable. Last weekend, there was a flurry of reporting in Israeli newspapers that intensive US-Israeli military coordination had resumed at their earlier tempo, in anticipation of further joint strikes. Those strikes have yet to materialise, however, and the Trump administration has sought to downplay the significance of recent exchanges of fire around the strait of Hormuz. Daniel Shapiro, a former US ambassador to Israel, said Trump is already looking beyond Iran to his next major challenge: a 14 May trip to China and a critical meeting with President Xi Jinping. “President Trump is going to want to have this war more or less behind him by the time he goes to Beijing,” Shapiro said. “Otherwise, he will be in the position of a supplicant seeking Xi Jinping’s help to get them to convince Iran to accept his terms or to make concessions they haven’t made. And that’s a very weak position to be in when he would rather focus on getting some of the Chinese-US economic relations on a more stable ground.” From prior experience in the Gaza and Lebanon conflicts, Netanyahu can draw some confidence that even if he is forced to accept a temporary peace deal that runs counter to his own interests, Trump’s attention will inevitably be diverted elsewhere, and Israel’s hands will be freed again. “If Trump reaches a deal, the Israelis will have to accept it for the time being, and then perhaps they will revisit it to ‘mow the grass’, as they say, on the missile programme or on the nuclear programme at some later time,” Shapiro said. Netanyahu also knows there are limits to the extent Trump can free himself from their geopolitical embrace. As Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, points out, Netanyahu can always make waves in US politics. “I think Trump’s jealous of Netanyahu because Netanyahu is one of the few people who can generate more press than he does,” Bolton said, pointing out that despite Trump’s imposition of a ceasefire, “he’s still giving Netanyahu a pretty free hand in Lebanon.” Pinkas, who served as adviser to prime ministers Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres, argues that strategic failure in the Iran war will also prove to be too powerful a glue for Trump to dissolve quickly. “The problem Trump has is that if he lashes out at Netanyahu, if he expresses his disillusionment or desperation, he basically admits he was led into this war,” Pinkas said, adding that the conflict looks certain to hurt both men at the ballot box. Netanyahu must hold an election by October, which by current polling would finally end his premiership. The elections in the US are congressional, but they could still render Trump a lame duck, at least in domestic politics. “This affects Netanyahu politically and this affects Trump politically,” Pinkas said. “In other words, they have screwed each other pretty badly.”

France has a record number of presidential hopefuls. Will any of them be able to hold back the far right?

At a Paris meeting hall this week, hundreds of leftwing voters braved a rainstorm to gather chanting: “Unity! Unity!” They were celebrating the 90th anniversary of France’s Popular Front, a leftwing alliance that was formed in the 1930s amid fears that the far right could take power. But their concerns were more immediate. A year before the 2027 French presidential election, Marine Le Pen’s far-right the National Rally (RN) – already the biggest single opposition party in parliament – is high in the polls. The party is closer to power than it has ever been before, and the business community that once shunned it is now openly meeting with senior party figures. “Voters on the left want unity – so let’s cut the bullshit and build it,” said Danielle Simonnet, a Paris MP for the leftwing party L’Après, who said divisions would allow the far right to cement its gains. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, cannot constitutionally run again for a third consecutive term next spring, leaving the presidential race more open than it has been for a decade. But an unprecedented and bewilderingly high number of figures from across the political spectrum – about 30 – have expressed an interest in running, almost all of them focused on attempting to hold back the far right. The political debate is more about tactics, polling and which personalities may have the charisma to face off against Le Pen or her protege Jordan Bardella, than deep policy issues. The leftwing parties who gathered in Paris this week – including the Socialist party leadership, the Greens and several smaller groups – vowed to press on with a leftwing primary race for a united candidate in October, seeking to reproduce the New Popular Front, the leftwing alliance that grouped together to hold back the RN in the 2024 snap parliamentary election. But the initiative is struggling, as the left remains fragmented, with key figures preferring to run alone. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, 74, the veteran radical left leader of La France Insoumise (LFI), announced this week that he would run for president for the fourth time, having come third in 2022. He brushed aside polling that showed a high level of antipathy towards him outside his own party. Many others on the left are contemplating their own presidential bids, including the centre-left member of the European parliament Raphaël Glucksmann. Even the former Socialist president François Hollande is seeing a potential opportunity for a comeback – despite the fact that in 2016 he renounced running for a second term because he was the least popular French president since the second world war, with a satisfaction rating that had dropped to just 4%. Hollande said in a recent magazine interview that he felt he had crucial international experience. On the far right, Le Pen is awaiting an appeal trial verdict scheduled for 7 July to see if her conviction for the embezzlement of European parliament funds and the ban stopping her from running for public office will be upheld. If so, Bardella, 30, would run in her place. Both are polling high. On the right and centre, there are a multitude of personalities vying for space. Edouard Philippe, Macron’s first prime minister, will stand on a centre-right ticket. Another former prime minister, Gabriel Attal, wants to represent Macron’s centrist party, Renaissance, but faces rivalry from several others, including the justice minister, Gérald Darmanin. On the right, Bruno Retailleau, a former hardline interior minister who served in government under Macron, wants to be the rightwing candidate for Les Républicains, but faces rivalry inside his party from figures such as the MP Laurent Wauquiez, and from several outside the party, including the mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard. The former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin, who gained international fame articulating France’s opposition to the 2003 war in Iraq, and has been recently vocal on war in Gaza and the Middle East, is also seeking to run. For him and many candidates, the challenge will be gathering obligatory backing signatures from 500 elected officials. Amid the high number of men seeking to be candidates, some senior women at the left’s meeting this week warned that “testosterone” or “ego” should not be deciding factors. Antoine Bristielle, the director of opinion at the Fondation Jean-Jaurès thinktank, said it was crucial for candidates to understand the desire among French voters for an in-depth policy debate on social and economic issues. At the last presidential election in 2022, which took place against a backdrop of war in Ukraine, Macron beat Le Pen without an in-depth discussion of his policies. Then a 2024 snap election left parliament without an absolute majority and rudderless. Bristielle said: “The risk is that this presidential election focuses solely on rejecting the RN, a kind of strategic vote with the message: ‘This person is the most central, the most consensual, maybe they can beat the RN’ – even if that person is proposing nothing concrete and we don’t know where they’re going. That would be dramatic because it means that no in-depth policy issues would be settled.” Top of French voters’ concerns is healthcare – including difficulties accessing doctors in remote or deprived areas, and cuts to the hospital system – as well as the cost of living and the French social security system. But Bristielle said voters’ main socioeconomic worries were not at the centre of the political debate in France, “reinforcing the idea among French people that politicians are cut off from their concerns”. Crucially, polling last month by Ipsos showed 74% of French voters wanted either a radical transformation or deep changes in France – a substantial increase in the past three years. Bristielle said: “There has been a real feeling of immobilism in France, namely since the start of Emmanuel Macron’s second mandate. People want this presidential election to be a real democratic moment which settles the key issues for the future on the basis of tangible facts and clear directions put forward, but we’re still very far from that.” Christelle Craplet, the director of opinion at Ipsos BVA pollsters, said the election was impossible to predict at this early stage. She said the only key candidates in place right now were Mélenchon on the radical left and either Le Pen or Bardella for the RN. Craplet said: “Between these, we have a space which is not clear politically, with a large amount of candidates. This shows the fragmentation of the French political landscape and the difficulty of personalities to emerge in a consensual way, through ideas or charisma, or a selection process.” The prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, has called for policies to be put forward. “When a real presidential campaign kicks off … with a real debate on ideas, that will create a more dignified atmosphere,” he said.

Evacuation of hantavirus-stricken cruise ship could face delays due to bad weather

The evacuation of the hantavirus-stricken MV Hondius cruise ship must be completed within 24 hours of the vessel reaching Tenerife on Sunday or face days or even weeks of delay because of bad weather, authorities in the Canary Islands warned on Friday. The Dutch-flagged vessel, which was sailing from Argentina to Cape Verde, is due to arrive in the Spanish archipelago this weekend, triggering what Spain’s health minister has termed an “unprecedented operation” to receive, assess and repatriate the 149 passengers and crew members onboard. But the operation now faces the additional complication of changing weather. “The only window of opportunity we have to carry out this operation is around 12 o’clock on Sunday morning and until conditions change from Monday,” Alfonso Cabello, a regional government spokesperson, told reporters on Friday. “Otherwise, the ship must leave and no operation could be carried out again in theory … until the end of May,” he said, citing wind and swell. The MV Hondius is estimated to arrive at the port of Granadilla, Tenerife, in the early hours of Sunday. After negotiations between the Spanish government and the archipelago’s regional authorities, it will not dock but will instead remain at anchor in the south-eastern port of Granadilla. Passengers will be evaluated on the ship and will not have any contact with the local population when they are taken from the ship to be repatriated or, in the case of the 14 Spanish nationals onboard, transported to a military hospital in Madrid for compulsory quarantine. “This is an unprecedented operation in response to an international health alert involving 23 countries,” the Spanish health minister, Mónica García, told Spain’s state radio broadcaster, RNE, on Friday morning. “We’re coordinating this from Spain and the World Health Organization has entrusted Spain with this operation – which, as I’ve said, is unprecedented. We’re going to do what we have to do, which is work and deliver the necessary health and logistical management.” García confirmed that non-Spanish citizens who did not need urgent medical attention would be evacuated to their home countries even if they showed symptoms of hantavirus. “The international protocols will be followed – as will all the strict measures when it comes to health prevention,” she said. “The protocol is based on no one needing urgent medical attention. And we think that won’t be the case because everyone was asymptomatic when they left Cape Verde and they’ve been on the boat for many days now, which makes us think that the risk that they’ve been infected is diminishing each day.” Three people – a Dutch couple and a German national – have died in the outbreak on the ship. Four others confirmed to be infected – two Britons, a Dutch and a Swiss national – are being treated in hospitals in the Netherlands, South Africa and Switzerland. On Friday, the British and Spanish authorities said they were investigating two possible new cases. One involves a British national on the South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, where the cruise ship made a stop on 15 April. The other involves a woman who was on the same flight as a Dutch patient who died in Johannesburg after travelling on the MV Hondius and contracting the virus. She is being treated in a hospital in the eastern Spanish region of Alicante. Also on Friday, authorities in Singapore announced that two men who had been on board the Hondius tested negative for hantavirus but would remain in quarantine for 30 days as a precaution. They would be tested again before release, said Singapore’s Communicable Diseases Agency (CDA). The men, aged 65 and 67, had been on the same flight as a confirmed hantavirus case from St Helena to Johannesburg on 25 April, the CDA said a day earlier. The confirmed case died in South Africa. On Saturday, Australian consular officials advised they were travelling to Tenerife to assist and possibly repatriate four Australian citizens and one permanent resident onboard the vessel. The CDA’s laboratory conducted testing with “multiple samples collected from the individuals” and confirmed that hantavirus, including the Andes virus, was “not detected”. The WHO said on Friday that the risk the hantavirus strain in question posed to the public was minimal, as it spread only through “very close contact” and was “not spreading anything close” to how Covid had spread. “This is a dangerous virus, but only to the person who’s really infected, and the risk to the general population remains absolutely low,” the WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told a press briefing in Geneva. He said that even the people who had stayed in the same cabin as an infected person on the MV Hondius “don’t seem to be both infected in some cases”. Based on previous outbreaks in Argentina, it is thought the Andes strain of the virus can be spread between people through very close contact. Exactly how easily it is transmitted is unclear, with experts studying the virus and its transmission carefully given the relatively limited scientific data currently available. Despite these uncertainties, the WHO has stressed the hantavirus outbreak is not the start of a pandemic, and that the public health threat is low. The Guardian understands experts think transmission primarily occurs when patients have symptoms. However, out of an abundance of caution, public health teams involved in contact tracing are also considering the two days before symptoms develop. The UK and the US are among the countries that have agreed to send planes to Tenerife to repatriate their citizens. Health authorities across four continents are scrambling to track down and monitor passengers who left the ship before the outbreak was detected. They are also trying to trace others who may have come into contact with them since then. On 24 April, nearly two weeks after the first passenger had died onboard, more than two dozen people from at least 12 different countries left the ship without contact tracing, the ship’s operator and Dutch officials said on Thursday. According to the WHO, health authorities did not confirm hantavirus in a passenger on the MV Hondius until 2 May. The looming arrival of the ship has prompted considerable unease in the Canaries. Fernando Clavijo, the regional president, had objected to the ship coming into port at Granadilla and convinced the central government that it should instead remain at anchor. In an interview with the Spanish newspaper ABC on Friday, he said Spain had been under “no legal obligation” to take in the ship and that it should have put into port in Cape Verde, which refused it permission to dock. Speaking later the same day, Clavijo said a plan had been devised to minimise the time and contacts that the passengers being evacuated would have while on Tenerife, adding: “We know with certainty that no one will get off the ship if their plane is not already waiting on the runway.” The authorities’ insistence that everything possible was being done to protect people on Tenerife and across the wider archipelago appeared to have reassured locals. Visitors, too, appeared unfazed as they lay on sunloungers, soaking up the sunshine and the 23C heat. “It’s no problem,” said one local woman, who was selling tourist trinkets by the beach near Los Cristianos, in the south of the island. “The Canarian government has confirmed that the ship will not dock in the port but on the high seas.” The woman, who did not want to give her name, said her only concern was of the possible effects on Tenerife’s lucrative tourism industry. “People get scared quickly,” she added. Ima, who runs a shop selling traditional handmade goods, was similarly relaxed: “The news says it’s no problem.” But the view was not shared by everyone. Joao Decastro, who runs La Siesta Excursions, said he felt Spain was always the country that came to the rescue in international emergencies. He was worried about the possible cost to local people. “To be honest, I’m not very happy about what they’re doing because I think [the cruise ship passengers] have many places to go, right?” he said. “This is a very touristy area and right now that would make the tourists more afraid.” He added: “If there are three dead on a boat, imagine a population that reaches a million people here.” Additional reporting by Nicola Davis

Ukraine war briefing: Zelenskyy ‘hereby decrees’ Moscow can hold Victory Day parade

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has issued a decree “allowing” Russia’s Victory Day military parade to proceed and ensuring no weapons are aimed at Red Square. It came after Ukraine and Russia confirmed a ceasefire would take effect from 9 to 11 May. In what may have been a partly tongue-in-cheek announcement, Zelenskyy’s proclamation said: “I hereby decree: to permit the holding of a parade in the city of Moscow (Russian Federation) on May 9, 2026.” The decree continued that “the territorial sector of Red Square shall be excluded” from the planned deployment of Ukrainian weaponry. Ukraine’s president had needled the Kremlin over the past week for wanting a “permit” from Kyiv to hold its Victory Day parade in Moscow, as the Russians clamoured for a ceasefire and warned of reprisals against Kyiv if the somewhat demilitarised anniversary display – expected to lack tanks, missiles and other military equipment – came under attack. Zelenskyy said on Monday that the Russian authorities “fear drones may buzz over Red Square”. A large forest fire was burning through the Chornobyl exclusion zone on Friday after a drone crash near the defunct nuclear plant the previous day, Ukrainian authorities said. Radiation levels at the site were within “normal limits”, authorities reported, adding that firefighters were working to contain the blaze. The fire broke out on Thursday “as a result of a drone crash”, it said. It did not say the origin of the drone. Kyiv has repeatedly accused Moscow of recklessly attacking its nuclear sites, including the Chornobyl complex. In 2025 a Russian drone punctured a hole and started a fire causing extensive damage to one of the radiation shells covering the destroyed reactor unit. The exclusion zone suffered wildfires in 2020, which lasted several weeks and caused a spike in background radiation. Ukraine’s SBU security service said on Friday that it struck a Lukoil-owned refinery in Russia’s city of Perm for the second day in a row, marking the third such strike in the past nine days. It set fire to a key facility for primary oil processing at the refinery, one of the largest in Russia and located about 1,500 km (932 miles) from Ukraine. The SBU said it also again struck an oil pumping station in the area, damaging one of the reservoirs. Zelenskyy hailed a Ukrainian strike on a Russian oil depot in the Yaroslavl region, about 200km (125 miles) north-east of Moscow. At least 13 airports in southern Russia were closed on Friday morning due to the threat of a Ukrainian attack, aviation authorities in Russia said. Zelenskyy on Friday said he visited the frontline in south-eastern Ukraine, where Kyiv’s troops had managed to regain control over small chunks of land in recent months. “Despite the announced ceasefire, the enemy has not reduced the intensity of its assaults,” Zelenskyy said. The Russian defence ministry said on Friday its forces had taken control of the village of Kryva Luka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, state news agency RIA reported. Reuters, which carried the story, could not independently confirm the battlefield report. Ukraine is running short of air defence missiles after Russia’s massive winter attack campaign, the air force said on Friday, as it braces for further strikes. “Today, the launchers assigned to certain units and batteries are half-empty – and that’s putting it mildly. They have a limited number of missiles,” air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat was quoted as saying by the Ukrinform news agency. Ukraine makes its own systems to down long-range Russian drones but for missile interception it remains heavily dependent on foreign kit. The US Patriot is also being used extensively in the US-Israeli war in Iran, putting Ukraine under increased supply pressure. Ihnat said Ukraine has had to ask allies for as few as five to 10 missiles at a time for systems such as Nasams and Iris-T. Russia has increasingly focused its aerial attacks on small Ukrainian power substations, with increased drone capacity allowing it to disrupt Ukraine’s grid over the past winter more than ever, says the London-based research group Centre for Information Resilience. Ukraine struggles to protect such facilities, concentrating limited air defences instead on major assets including power plants. Ukraine’s energy sector has suffered about $25bn worth of damage as a result of Russia’s bombardment, according to World Bank estimates, with the total cost of the sector’s rebuilding and recovery estimated at more than $90bn. Russia complained that Israeli authorities had caved in to pressure from Ukraine by turning away a grain shipment from its Haifa port last week. Ukraine says the grain in question was stolen from regions of Ukraine that Russia has illegally occupied. The Russian foreign ministry said: “Moscow regretted this step, clearly taken under pressure from Kyiv.” Ukraine has said the cargo being turned away showed that Kyiv’s legal and diplomatic actions had worked. Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired 67 drones over Thursday night into Friday – the lowest number in almost a month. Volodymyr Zelenskyy also reported hundreds of Russian attacks on the frontline with short-range drones and attempted assaults. Russia’s defence ministry said it had downed 264 Ukrainian drones overnight and that its troops were “responding symmetrically”. Zelenskyy said on Friday that he expects US envoys of Donald Trump to visit Ukraine in the coming weeks to restart talks on ending Russia’s invasion. It comes after Ukraine’s lead negotiator, Rustem Umerov, attended meetings this week in the US that Zelenskyy said touched on further prisoner exchanges and security guarantees for Ukraine in the event of a peace deal. The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday it had registered more than 3,000 attacks on Ukraine’s healthcare system since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. About 80% hit outpatient clinics, hospitals and other care settings, while ambulances and other health-related vehicles accounted for the remaining 20%. “Every one of these attacks is a violation of international humanitarian law,” said the director of WHO Europe, Hans Kluge. “This cannot be normalised.” According to the UN, 12.7 million people in Ukraine are in need of humanitarian aid.

Middle East negotiations continue as US awaits Iranian response to latest peace proposal – as it happened

We’re wrapping up this live coverage now but here is a report on the latest developments regarding US and Iran negotiations over a ceasefire. Below is a recap of the latest in the Middle East crisis. Thanks for reading. The US President, Donald Trump, says he expects a response from Iran soon to US proposals for an interim deal to end the conflict in the Middle East. “I’m getting a letter supposedly tonight,” he told reporters at the White House on Friday night. Asked if Iran was intentionally slow-rolling the negotiation process, he replied: “We’ll find out soon enough.” During a visit to Rome, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio said: “We’re expecting a response from [Iran] today at some point … I hope it’s a serious offer, I really do … The hope it’s something that can put us into a serious process of negotiation.” Rubio also met with the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Miloni, in Rome on Friday at a moment of unusual strain between Trump and Italy, driven largely by the war against Iran. Rubio also met with Pope Leo for a meeting he described as “cordial and important”. US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent says the department is prepared to take financial actions against those providing weapons to Iran’s military. His comments came after the US Treasury announced sanctions against 10 individuals and companies, including many based in China and Hong Kong. Qatar’s prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani has called for renewed diplomacy on an agreement with Iran as he met with US vice-president JD Vance in Washington. The US will hold two days of “intensive talks” between Israel and Lebanon on 14-15 May, to establish long-term border security, and reach a lasting peace agreement to prevent further conflict, the US state department has said. Lebanese authorities reported that five people were killed by Israeli strikes, including on the town of Toura in the southern Tyre district, and wounded at least eight others. In a post on X, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei warned against “adventurism and roguish behaviour” after reported US military attacks on Iranian vessels in the strait of Hormuz. The US Central Command (Centcom) claims it has struck two “unladen” Iranian-flagged oil tankers it said were attempting to violate the US blockade by entering an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman.

Russia and Ukraine confirm three-day ceasefire from 9 May

Donald Trump has announced a three-day ceasefire in the war between Russia and Ukraine from 9 to 11 May. The US president said on social media the ceasefire would include a suspension of all “kinetic activity” and a swap of 1,000 prisoners from each country. It was confirmed by both sides. Trump said in his post: “Hopefully, it is the beginning of the end of a very long, deadly, and hard fought War,” adding that there was constant progress in talks to end the conflict. Russia had previously announced a two-day unilateral ceasefire to mark its 9 May second world war Victory Day on Saturday. Ukraine previously said that it too had offered a truce but that this had been ignored by Moscow. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, confirmed Trump’s announcement and the prisoner swap on Friday night, writing on Telegram: “We received Russia’s agreement to conduct a prisoner exchange in the format of 1,000 for 1,000. A ceasefire regime must also be established on May 9, 10, and 11.” Zelenskyy later wrote on X: “In recent days, there have been many appeals and signals regarding the setup for tomorrow in Moscow in connection with our Ukrainian long-range sanctions. The principle of symmetry in our actions is well known and has been clearly communicated to the Russian side. “An additional argument for Ukraine in determining our position has always been the resolution of one of the key humanitarian issues of this war – namely, the release of prisoners of war. Red Square is less important to us than the lives of Ukrainian prisoners who can be brought home.” He added: “I thank the president of the United States and his team for their productive diplomatic involvement. We expect the United States to ensure that the Russian side fulfills these agreements.” Ukraine had never before said it would abide by Moscow’s call to briefly halt strikes, lambasting Putin for wanting to pause fighting only so he could stage Saturday’s annual military parade on Red Square. Kyiv said Moscow had ignored a Ukrainian proposal to halt fighting earlier this week – a counter-offer for a short-term ceasefire. Zelenskyy had cast it as a test of whether the Kremlin was serious about providing a brief respite in the four-year war. Russia on Friday confirmed the truce and the POW swap. Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov said: “I confirm the acceptability for the Russian side of the initiative just proposed by US president Donald Trump, concerning a ceasefire for a prisoner-of-war exchange between Russia and Ukraine.” Russia had threatened a massive strike on the heart of Kyiv if Ukraine disrupted the Victory Day parade, repeatedly urging foreign diplomats to leave the Ukrainian capital beforehand. Moscow and Kyiv have both accused each other of violating previous ceasefires that each has separately declared.

Vatican stresses need for peace as Rubio meets pope amid strained relations

The Vatican has said it raised the “need to work tirelessly in favour of peace” in talks with the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who is in Rome on a trip widely regarded as an effort to ease tensions after Donald Trump’s repeated criticisms of Pope Leo. Amid unprecedented strain on relations between the Holy See and Washington, Rubio was received by the pope on Thursday at the Apostolic Palace, before holding a series of meetings with Vatican officials Vatican video showed the first north American pope shaking hands with his guest and addressing him formally as “Mr Secretary”, to which Rubio, a Catholic, responded: “Great to see you.” Rubio was seen giving the pope a small crystal American football. He joked that he knew Leo – originally from Chicago and known as a fan of the White Sox – ‌was more ⁠of a “baseball guy”. After his 45-minute papal audience, Rubio also met the Vatican secretary of state and de facto chief diplomat, Pietro Parolin, who on the eve of his visit had strongly defended Leo and criticised Trump’s recent attacks as “rather strange”. In a statement, the Vatican said the two sides had exchanged views on current events “with particular attention to countries marked by war, political tensions, and difficult humanitarian situations, as well as on the need to work tirelessly in favour of peace”. A US official briefed reporters that the conversations were “friendly and constructive”. A spokesperson for the US state department said Rubio met Leo “to discuss the situation in the Middle East and issues of mutual interest in the western hemisphere”. “The meeting underscored the strong relationship between the United States and the Holy See, as well as their shared commitment to promoting peace and human dignity,” he added. It was unclear to what extent the meetings would help patch up the ties between Washington DC and the Vatican. On Tuesday, Trump launched a fresh verbal attack on the pope, accusing him of supporting nuclear weapons and “endangering a lot of Catholics” with his stance against the Iran war. On Wednesday, Leo responded: “If anyone wants to criticise me for proclaiming the gospel, let them do so with the truth: the church has spoken out against all nuclear weapons for years, there is no doubt about that. I simply hope to be listened to because of the value of God’s word.” Relations between the Vatican and Washington have never been so fraught. In April, the US president lashed out at Leo over the pope’s criticism of the war in Iran, calling him “weak on crime” and “terrible on foreign policy”, and claiming he had only been elected pontiff because Trump himself occupied the White House. Trump later shared – before deleting – an AI-generated image depicting himself as a Christ-like figure. Rubio’s meeting appeared aimed at trying to smooth over Trump’s insults and repair the increasingly damaged ties between the US and the Vatican. According to several analysts, the secretary of state was expected to have defended Washington’s rationale for launching the war in Iran, while carefully avoiding a direct clash with the church’s position. Asked whether he placed greater trust in Rubio or Trump, Parolin told reporters on Tuesday: “I count on no one. I count only on our Lord Jesus Christ.” He added that Trump attacking Leo “in this way, or reproaching him for what he does, seems rather strange, to say the least”. Rubio will meet the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, on Friday as relations between Rome and Washington have also deteriorated. Lorenzo Castellani, a political historian at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome, said Trump’s attacks on the pope, which have provoked widespread outrage in Italy where the papacy plays a crucial role in the political and cultural imagination, “has effectively forced Meloni to distance herself from the US president”, despite, earlier this year, saying she hoped Trump would one day receive the Nobel peace prize. According to some Italian newspapers, Rubio’s goal in talks with Italy will not necessarily be to mend relations, but rather to reassert Trump’s position after the US president lashed out at Meloni in April, accusing her of lacking courage for refusing to join the US campaign against Iran. According to Castellani, Meloni’s shift from being a staunch Trump ally to adopting a more critical stance towards the US president is driven by political and electoral considerations. “For the first time since the second world war, foreign policy has become a central concern for Italian public opinion,” Castellani said. “This shift had already begun with the war in Ukraine, but the current crisis represents a decisive escalation. The reason is simple: this is a conflict with direct geopolitical and economic consequences for Italy and for Europe as a whole.” He added: “For this reason, Meloni can no longer maintain a clear separation between foreign and domestic policy. In the past, she has taken positions that ran counter to segments of her own electorate. But now, recent polling suggests that across both the right and the left there is broad agreement in condemning the position of Trump. The same sentiments now cut across a vast portion of the electorate – arguably as much as 80 to 90%.” Also expected to feature prominently in the talks is the future of the roughly 13,000 US military personnel stationed across seven naval bases in Italy. Asked last week whether he would consider pulling US troops out of Italy, Trump told reporters: “Probably … Italy has not been of any help to us.”