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Ukraine war briefing: Russian oil hub of Tuapse hit for fourth time as environmental disaster mounts

Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s Black Sea port of Tuapse on Friday for the fourth time in 16 days as authorities struggled to cope with a growing environmental disaster from toxic black smoke clouds and oil leaking into the sea. Ukraine’s SBU security service said drones had again struck the seaport and refinery that make Tuapse an important hub for Russian oil exports. Local Russian officials said a major operation was under way to put out a fire at the port but no casualties were reported. The refinery has been hit and set ablaze at least twice since 16 April, halting production, in attacks that have thrown up dense black clouds over the town and caused oil slicks along the coastline, ruining the beaches of the popular resort. Russian authorities had so far cleared more than 13,300 cubic metres of fuel oil and contaminated soil along the coast, they said on Friday. State TV showed a reporter standing on a blackened beach and using a spade to show how deep the oozing filth had seeped. Russia launched almost 410 drones at Ukraine in a daytime attack that including injuring 10 people in the western city of Ternopil, Ukrainian officials said on Friday. Air force units downed or neutralised 388 of them in the north, south, centre and west of the country, Ukraine’s air force said. In Ternopil, about 150-200km from the Polish border, 10 people were hurt in the attack, which hit industrial and infrastructure facilities, the city’s mayor said. In central Ukraine, 19 drones were downed over the Cherkasy region, the regional governor said, reporting damage to a nursery, a school, seven private houses and a power line. A woman was hurt in the central Vinnytsia region, the local governor said, adding that a building was destroyed. Near the southern city of Odesa, which had come under the overnight attack, another daytime attack damaged the roof of a shopping centre and caused a fire, the regional governor said, while Zelenskyy said at least five people were wounded in the region. Ukraine has announced plans to carry out reforms of the army this summer to address problems with infantry shortages and the discharge of the longest-serving soldiers, four years into the war with Russia. Manpower shortages have become an even more pressing issue as enthusiasm for service has waned amid reports of poor training and support, as well as heavy-handed draft officers. “Now, in May, all key details will be finalised,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram on Friday. “In June, the reform will begin – and the first results must already be delivered in June.” He promised higher pay for the infantry, saying: “A Ukrainian infantryman who holds the front line must feel that our state truly respects him.” Ukraine had to be ready to fight on if a peace deal could not be reached, Zelenskyy said. Mykhailo Fedorov, who was named defence minister in January, said the changes announced amounted to a “systemic” transformation of the army. Public prosecutors in Peru said they were investigating an alleged trafficking network offering fake jobs in Russia to Peruvians before forcing them to fight in Moscow’s war on Ukraine. Individuals including former military personnel and police officers were allegedly recruited through social media with deceptive offers of well-paid work as security agents and other jobs in Russia, the attorney general’s office said. According to information provided to the police, “victims were reportedly taken to Russia and, once on foreign soil, forced to take part in combat operations in the context of the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine”, it said. Thirteen Peruvians had died in the Ukraine war, a lawyer for the victims’ families told local media.

Cuba says Trump’s fresh sanctions on its economy amount to ‘collective punishment’

Cuba’s government has said new sanctions imposed on the island by Donald Trump amounted to “collective punishment”, as an enormous 1 May procession outside the American embassy in Havana vowed to “defend the homeland”. In an executive order on Friday, the US president said he would impose sanctions on people involved in broad sections of the Cuban economy, as he seeks to put more pressure on Havana after ousting Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, earlier this year. The latest sanctions constituted “collective punishment” of the nation’s people, said Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez. “We firmly reject the recent unilateral coercive measures adopted by the #UnitedStates government,” he posted on X in English. Trump has mused about taking over Cuba, which lies 145km from Florida and has been under a nearly continuous US trade embargo since Fidel Castro led a communist revolution in 1959. On Friday, Trump used a speech in Florida to again suggest the US could launch operations against Cuba. “On the way back from Iran, we’ll have one of our big – maybe the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, the biggest in the world, we’ll have that come in, stop about 100 yards offshore and they’ll say, ‘Thank you very much. We give up.’” The economic situation has worsened for Cuba since Washington imposed a fuel blockade in January, with only one Russian oil tanker making it through since then. Supply shortages and power cuts have become the norm, and tourism – once Cuba’s most lucrative industry – has plummeted. Trump’s Friday order targets people known to “operate in or have operated in the energy, defence and related materiel, metals and mining, financial services or security sector of the Cuban economy, or any other sector of the Cuban economy”, as well as Cuban officials judged to have engaged in “serious human rights abuses” or corruption. Jeremy Paner, a former sanctions investigator at the US Treasury’s office of foreign assets control, said the move was the most significant one for non-American companies since the US embargo against Cuba began decades ago. “Oil and gas, mining companies and banks that have carefully segregated their Cuba operations from the United States are no longer protected,” said Paner, who is now a partner at Hughes Hubbard + Reed, a law firm. Friday’s sanctions come despite moves toward dialogue between the two countries, with senior US officials visiting the island for talks in April. The US has long demanded Cuba open up its state-run economy, pay reparations for properties expropriated by the government of former leader Fidel Castro and hold “free and fair” elections. Cuba has said its form of socialist government is not up for negotiation. Friday’s fresh measures took effect during 1 May celebrations that saw huge crowds in Havana march to the US embassy under the slogan “Defend the Homeland”. The march was led by the Cuban president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, and former revolutionary leader Raúl Castro. The day before, Diaz-Canel had called on Cubans to mobilise “against the genocidal blockade and the crude imperial threats to our country”, referring to US actions and rhetoric. With Agence France-Presse and Reuters

US appeals court blocks mail-order access to abortion drugs

Access to mifepristone, the FDA-approved medication used to end pregnancy, could become severely limited following a ruling from US appeals court on Friday, which temporarily blocked the drug from being dispensed through the mail. The decision is for now the most sweeping threat to abortion access since the supreme court rolled back abortion rights in 2022, said Kelly Baden, vice-president at the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights advocacy group. “If allowed to stand, it would severely restrict access to mifepristone in every state, including those where abortion is broadly legal and where voters have acted to protect abortion rights,” she said. The so-called “abortion pill” is part of a two-drug regimen backed by decades of evidence for its efficacy and safety, and is used in the majority of abortions in the US. Usage has risen in recent years, especially in the aftermath of the 2022 ruling from the supreme court that overturned federal protections for a right to an abortion. In the year after that decision, the FDA formally modified its regulations to allow the drug to be prescribed online, expanding its use even in states where abortion care was being constricted. The drug has become a key target for the anti-abortion movement, and a series of lawsuits have challenged the drug’s initial approval in 2000 and the subsequent rules making it easier to obtain. Friday’s ruling came in response to a Louisiana lawsuit against the FDA. The state sought to pause distribution of the drug through the mail while the litigation proceeds. A conservative three-judge panel of the fifth US circuit court of appeals in New Orleans agreed with Louisiana that the FDA had failed to justify eliminating the in-person dispensing requirement. The ruling was hailed by Louisiana’s Republican attorney general, Liz Murrill, who in a statement said she would “look forward to continuing to defend women and babies as this case continues”. Meanwhile, with the FDA now under Trump, the agency has opened a review of the medication. Once this analysis is completed, officials at the agency said, they will determine if changes to its regulations are warranted. Reproductive rights advocates have voiced concerns that the review could further limit mifepristone’s use, despite the evidence supporting its safety. Developed in France in the 1980s, mifepristone is used around the world and is authorized in 96 countries. Its use is backed by roughly four decades of peer-reviewed research, according to a 2025 brief written by public health experts at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. “Anti-abortion politicians have just made it much harder for people everywhere in the country to get a medication that abortion and miscarriage patients have been safely using for more than 25 years,” Julia Kaye, a senior staff attorney for the Reproductive Freedom Project of the ACLU, said in a statement. “Louisiana’s legal attack on mifepristone shamelessly packaged lies and propaganda as an excuse to restrict abortion – and the fifth circuit rubber-stamped it.” Use of mifepristone has enabled abortions to continue in states that have enacted bans, including 9,350 provided via telehealth in Louisiana in 2025, according to Guttmacher. This ruling, however, will have a far wider impact. “The decision is a stunning and deeply alarming development,” Baden said. “Reimposing medically unnecessary in-person dispensing requirements for mifepristone will send shockwaves of chaos and confusion across the country and dramatically upend patients’ ability to obtain abortion care. Reuters contributed reporting.

Trump claims hostilities have ended in Iran in letter to congressional leaders

Donald Trump said in a letter sent to congressional leaders on Friday that hostilities with Iran have “terminated”, suggesting that the 60-day deadline to seek approval from the legislative branch no longer applied. Friday marks 60 days since the US president notified members of Congress that the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on 28 February. Under the War Powers Act of 1973, the president can deploy troops to respond to an “imminent threat” but must receive congressional approval within 60 days to continue military operations. In the letter, dated 1 May, Trump said he initiated Operation Epic Fury against Iran and notified Congress on 28 February “consistent with my responsibility to protect Americans and United States interests at home and abroad, and in furtherance of United States national security and foreign policy interests”. “On April 7, 2026, I ordered a 2-week ceasefire,” the letter, addressed to Republican House speaker Mike Johnson and Republican senator Chuck Grassley, the president pro tempore of the Senate, continues. “The ceasefire has since been extended. There has been no exchange of fire between United States Forces and Iran since April 7, 2026. The hostilities that began on February 28, 2026, have terminated.” The letter effectively waves off the 1 May legal deadline, which was already expected to lapse without intervention from Republican lawmakers, most of whom have been reluctant to challenge the president’s unilateral use of force. As he departed the White House on Friday, Trump told reporters that he had no intention of seeking congressional approval for the military campaign because “it’s never been sought before” and suggested the War Powers Act was “totally unconstitutional”. “Nobody’s ever asked for it before. It’s never been used before. Why should we be different?” he said. Trump’s letter underscores an interpretation of the War Powers Act that is fiercely contested by legal scholars and Democrats, who have argued for weeks that the president’s war in Iran tramples the separation of powers between the three branches of government. “That’s bullshit” the Senator minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said on X. “This is an illegal war and every day Republicans remain complicit and allow it to continue is another day lives are endangered, chaos erupts, and prices increase, all while Americans foot the bill.” Jeanne Shaheen, the ranking member of the Senate armed services committee, said Trump’s declaration “doesn’t reflect the reality that tens of thousands of US service members in the region are still in harm’s way, that the administration continually threatens to escalate hostilities or that the strait of Hormuz remains closed and prices are skyrocketing at home”. “President Trump entered this war without a strategy and without legal authorization and today’s announcement doesn’t change either fact,” Shaheen wrote. On Friday, the ACLU sent a letter to the White House, expressing “profound concern” that the president was “carrying out an illegal war”. “Even a quick reading of the short and clearly written War Powers Resolution makes clear that there is no pause button – and certainly no reset button – under the statute,” the ACLU letter states. The letter comes one day after Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, put forward a similar argument in his testimony before the Senate armed services committee, on Thursday. In an exchange with the Democratic senator Tim Kaine, who has forced a vote on several ultimately unsuccessful war powers resolutions on the Iran war, Hegseth claimed that “the 60-day clock pauses or stops in a ceasefire”. “I do not believe the statute would support that,” Kaine said, adding that Trump’s prosecution of the war raised “serious constitutional concerns”. On Thursday, Senate Republicans again blocked a war powers resolution brought by Democrats aimed at ending the conflict in Iran. “Even if you accept the premise that Trump’s war in Iran was responding to an imminent threat, which I certainly don’t, under the War Powers Act he has no authority to continue this war past 60 days,” Adam Schiff, a California Democratic senator who brought the latest war powers resolution, said in a statement after the failed vote on Thursday. Though Trump has previously claimed that the war would be over “very soon”, his letter made clear that the operation was very much ongoing. “Despite the success of United States operations against the Iranian regime and continued efforts to secure a lasting peace, the threat posed by Iran to the United States and our Armed Forces remains significant,” Trump stated in the letter, adding that the Pentagon would continue to “update its force posture” across the region “as necessary and appropriate, to address Iranian and Iranian proxy forces’ threats”.

Iran offers new peace proposal to US but Trump ‘not satisfied’

Iran has passed a new proposal to Pakistani mediators in the latest effort to end the war with the US, but Donald Trump said he was not “satisfied” by it. “Right now, we have talks going on, they’re not getting there,” he told reporters, adding that his options remained “either blast them away or make a deal”. Trump did not elaborate on what he saw as the latest proposal’s shortcomings, but said: “They’re asking for things I can’t agree to.” In Washington, Trump waved off a Friday deadline imposed by the war powers act, requiring the US president to seek congressional authorisation to continue hostilities beyond 60 days. In a letter to congressional leaders, Trump claimed that the White House did not need to seek approval from the legislative branch because the ceasefire agreement forged with Iran had in effect paused the 60-day clock – an interpretation disputed by many legal experts. Speaking to reporters, Trump suggested the Vietnam war-era law was “unconstitutional”. Meanwhile, Iranian state media reported that Tehran handed the offer to Pakistan on Thursday night, to pass on to Washington, though its contents were not immediately clear. The new proposal had initially been seen by Pakistan’s government as an outcome of its energetic back-channel diplomacy. Islamabad’s role switched in recent days to the lower-profile but urgent task of passing messages between the two sides after the momentum behind direct talks stalled. Islamabad has said it believes a deal is within reach. But it faces Iranian officials in danger of overplaying their hand and a US administration that is seeking total victory rather than a compromise. Pakistani officials say they are conscious that it is not only regional peace at stake, but the health of the global economy and the livelihoods of millions of the poorest people in the world – including in Pakistan, whose monthly energy import bill has almost tripled because of the war. The decision to submit proposals to Pakistan followed a debate inside Iran on whether it should pursue the diplomatic path at all, or instead rely on the leverage provided by the ad hoc blockade of the strait of Hormuz. Iranian officials hope Trump will want to end the conflict before his summit with Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, on 14 and 15 May. Islamabad views the continuation of the ceasefire, in place for more than three weeks, as a major achievement. Tehran and Washington have said Pakistan remains the primary conduit for negotiation. Both Iran and the US hardened their positions after the breakthrough of getting them into the same room in Islamabad for an all-night negotiation session in April, the highest-level engagement between the two sides since the 1979 revolution. According to Tehran, those talks got close to a deal but the US abruptly walked out. Washington said Iran was not prepared to go far enough. An attempt to engineer a second round in Islamabad last weekend fell apart after the Iranian side refused to meet the US team, which was ready to fly in. US officials briefed this week that Washington was considering returning to war. Some voices in Iran have expressed frustration that Pakistan has not been able to hold the US to commitments given in the negotiations. Masood Khan, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US, said Pakistan was not only transmitting messages between the two sides. He said Islamabad’s intervention had led to an initial two-week ceasefire and the US-Iran meeting with Pakistani officials as referees. Islamabad persuaded Trump to extend the ceasefire, he said, which now has no stated deadline. The next task was to convince both sides to simultaneously lift their blockades on the strait of Hormuz, he said. But Trump this week said the blockade was more effective than bombing, while Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, hailed a “new chapter” for the strait, suggesting neither side was about to back down. The US Treasury Office warned on Friday that any shipping companies that paid tolls to Iran for passage through the strait of Hormuz, including charitable donations to organisations such as the Iranian Red Crescent Society, would risk punitive sanctions. Tehran has proposed charging fees on vessels passing through the strait, as part of a deal to end the war. Pakistan’s military chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, spent three days in Tehran in April, meeting Iran’s different power centres, while the prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, worked on regional support for the peace process, visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. Islamabad has enlisted countries as far afield as Japan to put their weight behind the diplomacy, and Pakistan’s foreign minister also spoke this week to Yvette Cooper, the UK foreign secretary. “The clock on diplomacy has not stopped,” said Tahir Andrabi, the spokesperson for Pakistan’s foreign ministry, before the reports of the new Iranian proposal. “We remain hopeful of a negotiated settlement of this issue.” The previous Iranian bid offered to reopen the strait but defer resolving the issue of the country’s nuclear programme. Trump said Iran must commit to not acquiring nuclear weapons, so Tehran would need to tackle this issue to satisfy Washington and set up the possibility of a new round of direct talks. Two outstanding issues on the nuclear front are agreeing to a pause on Iran’s uranium enrichment, and coming up with an arrangement for its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Regional diplomats with knowledge of the discussions said it should be possible to agree on a moratorium on enrichment of about 10 years – roughly halfway between the negotiating positions of the two sides. In place of the US demand to hand over the highly enriched uranium, it could be sent to Iran’s ally Russia, a possibility discussed this week between Trump and the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin. Iran remains exasperated by the inability of the US to adopt a coherent public position after Trump said he opposed Iran being allowed to enrich uranium even for medical purposes, a concession Iran believed the US delegation had already made. Jauhar Saleem, formerly Pakistan’s top diplomat, who is now president of the Institute of Regional Studies, a thinktank in Islamabad, said Iran’s apparent strategy of dragging out the negotiation in the expectation of getting a better deal was highly risky. But Washington also had to recognise that its pressure tactics had not worked on Iran over the years, he said. “It is not realistic that Iran would give in to all demands,” said Saleem. “An agreement has to be a win-win situation for both sides.”

Sabastian Sawe receives hero’s welcome in Kenya after sub-two hour marathon feat

Hugged, cheered and adorned with garlands, the first man to run an official marathon in under two hours has returned as a hero to his home village in Kenya. Sabastian Sawe, who stunned the world when he clocked 1h 59m 30s in the London Marathon last weekend, flew in a Kenyan military plane normally reserved for special operations on Thursday to his home region of western Kenya. Waiting on the runway at a small airport perched on an escarpment 2,150 metres above sea level, Lydia Sawe was trembling with anxious excitement, hands clasped around a huge bouquet of orange roses, as her husband’s aircraft touched down. The plane door opened and the 31-year-old runner locked eyes with his wife and, beaming, made a beeline for her arms. “Congratulations, darling,” she whispered in his ear, tears streaming down her face. Sawe, who broke the world record by 65 seconds, signed a visitor book in the little VIP lounge at Eldoret airport and hugged a line of ecstatic friends and locals. He was given a wreath made from the sinendet plant, which symbolises victory within his Kalenjin ethnic group, and fed fermented milk from a gourd by Lydia to celebrate his win. “The victory that took place last Sunday was not just my victory, it was a victory for all of us,” he said in Kiswahili, addressing the jubilant local community that had gathered to welcome him at the airport entrance. “I’m so happy to be home and … welcomed this much, I’m so grateful,” he told the Guardian. Famous runners are nothing new to this high-altitude part of Kenya. In the towns and villages around the city of Eldoret, in the Great Rift Valley, life is about farming crops, tending to livestock and nurturing the next generation of world record-breaking distance runners. Every day, the red dirt roads that weave between modest homesteads and maize fields are pounded by the trainers of thousands of hopeful, driven young runners. People living in and growing up in Eldoret are often able to become good distance runners because people living and training at altitude produce more red blood cells to deal with the lower-oxygen environment. When competing at lower altitudes, the greater number of red blood cells can boost oxygen delivery to muscles, resulting in better endurance and performance. Sabastian’s grandmother Vivian Kimaru had also had sporting success. “I competed in Munich’s 1972 Olympic Games in 1500 and 800m and reached the semi-final,” she said. “I’m so proud,” she said of her grandson, speaking from his parents’ home in Ndonyongaria village where the celebrations continued. People sat under marquees and women danced on grass in between bursts of torrential rain while traditional music boomed from a sound system. After speeches and prayers, mounds of rice, sauteed cabbage, beef stew and chapati were served. Sawe’s victory on Sunday was followed by days of rushing around, and he arrived in Kenya on Wednesday night to chaotic crowds at Nairobi’s international airport. At a lavish welcome event and breakfast at the presidential residence, the president, William Ruto, who is also from Eldoret and of the same Kalenjin community, said Sawe’s achievement was “not merely a sporting triumph, it is a defining moment in the story of human endurance”. He presented Sawe with two cheques totalling 8m shillings (£46,000), one for winning the race and the other for breaking the world record. Sawe also received car number plates showing his record time. In return, Sawe gave the president one of his racing shoes with 1.59.30 written in marker pen on the sole. Running is not a hobby or pastime in and around Eldoret; it is seen as a route to wealth that is often unattainable by other means. Runners are spurred on by a desire for a better life through sponsorship deals, race wins and athletics scholarships at foreign universities and prestigious academies. Emmy Biwott, 45, the director of Uasin Gishu county government primary school, who had come to the airport to welcome Sawe, said athletes were “our cash crop”. In the area, “90% of those people who are doing well are athletes”, she said. Toby Tanser, an author of books on Kenyan running and the founder of Shoe4Africa, a running and Aids awareness charity, said money was the motivation behind the region’s running success. Six of the 10 fastest male marathoners in history and four of the fastest females marathoners have come from Kenya. In Sawe’s village, Tanser said: “You’ll not see a single fun runner, a charity runner or just running for health. People around here run for a way out of poverty. Nearly every famous Kenyan runner has come from a village setting.” Away from the crowd, in the living room of her parents-in-law, Lydia, sat with close family and friends. How would life change for her family, which includes three sons? “I can’t even imagine,” she said. “It will be so strange,” she said of the future. “We will be [going] somewhere. I will be someone.”

Pope Leo is wise, though not infallible | Letters

Jonathan Freedland is right: in a contest between a former property developer turned politician and the Vicar of Christ, there is only ever going to be one winner (It’s no surprise Trump has met his match in Pope Leo – the US president represents the polar opposite of Christianity, 24 April). The present pope is an intelligent and sophisticated Augustinian, well versed in dealing with subtle and complex disputes within the Catholic church. Crude attacks from Donald Trump and JD Vance hold no terrors. The president’s greetings-card picture of himself as a Christ-like healer was childish and self-defeating, while the vice-president’s pointed gift of volumes of Saint Augustine’s writings, as if the pontiff were unfamiliar with their contents, was simply crass. Nevertheless, not all papal pronouncements are infallible. Pope Leo did open himself to legitimate criticism when he declared in his Palm Sunday address: “He [Jesus] does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.” In the context of the Iran conflict, we know what he meant, but the bald statement invites misunderstanding. It appears at odds with the concept of a just war – the conditions for which are laid out in the catechism of the Catholic church (paragraph 2309). The pope’s remark would hardly apply to the petitions of those who waged war against the Nazis and who liberated the death camps. Francis Bown London • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.