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Ukraine war briefing: Disastrous drone expo’s organiser appears in Kyiv court

A Ukrainian court remanded in custody the organiser of a weapons exhibition that was struck by Russia in an attack that killed at least 11 people. Prosecutors brought a case against Vasyl Goncharuk, head of the Armada weapons industry association, accusing him of negligence leading to loss of life after the Russian ballistic missile strike on a shooting range outside Kyiv on Friday. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it “certainly should not have been taking place there”. Russia’s defence ministry confirmed it hit the site during “a demonstration of Ukrainian and foreign-made” drones. Goncharuk appeared at the Kyiv court limping and said he sustained light injuries in the attack. Prosecutors have said the weapons association invited more than 300 people including military personnel, state representatives and business figures without official authorisation, providing only a small shelter. The event was even promoted on social media. Agence France-Presse said its reporters saw homes in ruins and victims in body bags after the attack. Previous incidents of Russian attacks on openly held Ukrainian military gatherings have also triggered outcry and resignations. The Pentagon official tasked with building ⁠a domestic drone industry said on Monday the US was still far behind Ukraine’s production capabilities. Travis Metz, chief operating officer of the Defense Innovation Unit, told Reuters that Ukraine would produce 6m-7m small first-person-view attack drones this year – roughly 500,000 a month. By comparison, the ‌Pentagon’s $1.1bn programme will have ordered ‌just under 200,000 altogether by February. But the US would catch up and lead the sector, he predicted. The Pentagon is insisting military drones must be made with US parts to foster “a wholly domestic” supply chain. None of the drones from the 19 companies competing an August test event may contain banned parts like Chinese-made motors or battery packs. “It’s an increasingly difficult thing,” Metz said. Ukrainian companies competing in the test, called Gauntlet II, are being required to localise production in the US as a condition of future orders. All ⁠100 members of the US Senate have been invited to ⁠a meeting ⁠on Tuesday evening with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukraine’s president will be in Washington for the funeral of the late Republican senator Lindsey Graham, who was a strong and influential supporter of Ukraine. A Senate aide said voting might also begin during Zelenskyy’s visit on a bill to impose sanctions on Russia that was championed by Graham. Zelenskyy is due to meet on Tuesday with Donald Trump. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the war in Ukraine has changed dramatically. The Guardian’s Luke Harding looks at who has the advantage in the war now and how Zelenskyy’s strategy has shifted. Andy Burnham welcomed Zelenskyy in his first meeting with another world leader since becoming the UK prime minister, writes Pippa Crerar. “It is intended to send a very clear message,” Burnham told him. “We are with Ukraine 100%, I am personally with you 100%, and I will honour every commitment this country has made to Ukraine in full.” Burnham said Britain was providing new jamming technology to Ukraine that would “help them to hit their targets and help save Ukrainian lives”. The system is known as Stone Cloak. Zelenskyy posted that he was “grateful” to Britain for “today’s decision to provide Ukraine with electronic warfare technologies” that would “certainly be useful on the battlefield”. Romania’s ⁠foreign ministry ⁠said it had expelled a ⁠diplomat at Russia’s embassy after repeated violations of ⁠its national airspace by drones. Romanian F-16 fighter jet pilots have shot down three drones in as many days. The Russian ambassador was shown drone fragments that Romanian authorities identified as a Russian “Shahed model”. Two people were hurt in May when a drone smashed into an apartment building in the Romanian city of Galati near the border with Ukraine. Ukraine ⁠struck a Russian export ⁠terminal in ⁠the Rostov region, as well ⁠as oil facilities in ⁠the Yaroslavl and Udmurtia ‌regions, Zelenskyy said on Monday. “Last night, our long-range sanctions were effective in the Rostov region. An export terminal approximately 250km (155 miles) from the frontline was hit,” he posted. “Deep strikes also targeted oil facilities in the Yaroslavl region and the Udmurt Republic, which is 1,300km from Ukraine’s state border.” Five people were reported killed in Russia’s Rostov region bordering Ukraine. Russian ⁠forces meanwhile struck three Ukrainian ports, including ⁠fuel ⁠loading and storage facilities at the port ⁠of Odesa, the defence ‌ministry in Moscow said ‌on Monday. Russian strikes on frontline localities in eastern Ukraine killed ⁠seven people and ⁠injured more than 20 on Monday, officials said. Prosecutors in the Donetsk region said three people died ⁠in two areas near the contested city of Kostiantynivka. A fourth person was killed near Kramatorsk, a heavily defended “fortress” city considered critical to Ukraine’s defences. Prosecutors said a total of 18 people were ‌injured throughout Donetsk region. In Ukraine’s adjacent Dnipropetrovsk region, the governor, Oleksandr Hanzha, said three people were killed and six wounded in more than 50 drone and artillery attacks on five districts. Two people died near the town of Nikopol and one person was killed near the town of Syneklykove. Over the border in Russia’s Belgorod region, a Ukrainian drone struck a building, killing one person and injuring two. Donald Trump’s administration has told members ⁠of Congress it will not finish spending $400m in aid to Ukraine until fiscal year 2029, even as Kyiv runs critically low on weapons. Democrats and some of Trump’s fellow Republicans have criticised the Pentagon for sitting on aid for Kyiv that members of both parties pushed through last year. In May, the Pentagon sent a letter to lawmakers outlining its spending ⁠plan. It covers $200m for weapons, ammunition and explosives, $99.9m for vehicles, spares and equipment and $100m for services such as transportation of defence articles to Ukraine. The funds still have not been put to use.

Asia ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel’ as Red Sea oil blockade worsens energy crisis

Governments in Asia are scrambling to avoid their second major energy crisis in six months, as another maritime chokepoint in the Middle East faces a violent blockade, leaving only the Suez canal completely open for the free movement of gulf oil. Countries like Japan, the Philippines, Thailand and South Korea – which rely on Middle East oil for up to 90% of their imports – are working to secure supplies after Yemen’s Houthis launched a blockade of Saudi Arabian shipping passing through the Bab al-Mandab strait, which forms the southern entrance to the Red Sea. Many countries in Asia are still reeling from Iran’s effective closure of the strait of Hormuz in March, which forced governments across the region to compete for increasingly dwindling supplies of Middle Eastern crude oil. “They’re scraping at the bottom of the barrel in terms of global reserve capacity … there’s very little inventory now,” says Ahmed Helal, from the Asia Group thinktank. Japan – along with neighbouring countries – is already spending billions on fuel subsidies to keep the cost of petroleum down, hitting government budgets hard. ⁠After the announcement from the Houthis, some like South Korea were quick to extend those fuel tax cuts. Meanwhile, the spike in the cost of imports has led to a rise in inflation, piling pressure on the governments of regional giants such as Japan and Indonesia. Now, the threat to Red Sea shipping is set to increase the pressure. In March, Saudi Arabia responded to the closure of the strait of Hormuz by rerouting oil exports from the gulf on the country’s east coast, to the west coast port of Yanbu in the Red Sea which now handles more than 70% of Riyadh’s crude oil exports. That proved to be a lifeline for many Asian nations, like China – which is the largest buyer of Saudi oil – and India, Japan and South Korea, which follow close behind. Some Japanese and South Korean refiners are reportedly seeking to circumvent the Houthi threat by rerouting cargos north through the Suez canal, to the Mediterranean and around Africa. But this lengthy detour comes with huge costs. A VLCC, the largest size of oil tanker, is too big to pass through the Suez canal fully loaded, meaning cargos would need to unload up to half of their oil in the Red Sea, have it transported through Egypt’s Sumed pipeline to the Mediterranean coast, where they would then pick it up after transiting through the canal, adding costs and logistical complications to the journey. Rerouting the oil via the Mediterranean and around the Cape of Good Hope would also more than double the voyage time for most Asian importers, further adding to freight and fuel costs. For now, it’s a cost many may be willing to incur. The Houthis targeted at least two Saudi oil tankers exiting the Red Sea last week and launched attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure this week. The number of vessels transiting through Bab ⁠al-Mandab has fallen to the lowest level in months, with international shipping apparently paralysed by the Houthi threat. “Changing behaviour by tankers tells us that they are ⁠taking the threats seriously,” says Matt Smith, a commodity research director at Kpler, a market tracker. Insurers have responded in kind, with war risk premiums paid by tankers reportedly doubling in the last week, potentially adding hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of a voyage. Those costs will inevitably be passed on to consumers in Asia, who are already reeling from the energy shock imposed by the US-Iran war. “Businesses are going to have to close. You might have attempts to reduce consumption at peak hours. And you might have, in some extreme cases, higher risk of default,” says Helal. A vulnerability exposed After transits through the strait of Hormuz slowed to a halt in March, many countries in Asia rushed to mitigate the effects of the disruption. Coal-fired power plants blazed back into use, a four-day working week was imposed in Sri Lanka, while staff in Vietnam were urged to work from home. But now, resources and patience are running low. The Houthi threat has inspired the Philippines, India and South Korea to all bolster their strategic reserves of oil and gas. Meanwhile across the region, the crisis has added a renewed urgency to the renewables transition. But with no short-term solutions, Asian importers are reportedly looking farther afield for supplies, with Russia once again likely to benefit from chaos in the Middle East. Earlier this year Japan and South Korea reportedly bought Russian oil for the first time since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in ‌2022. In the past week, Reuters reported that Chinese refiner ramped up purchases ⁠of sanctioned Russian crude oil to counter the latest disruptions. The disruption and chaos points to a truth that experts say governments in Asia have ignored for too long: their energy systems remain far too vulnerable. Helal predicts this crisis will force many governments to reckon with their supply chains and their capacity to store strategic reserves. But for now, they simply have to secure supplies, he says, because “there’s very little in the tank for them to draw on.”

Russia and North Korea finalising first road crossing amid concerns it serves as Ukraine war supply route

Russia and North Korea are close to completing a bridge that will form the first road link ever built between them, amid concerns the two increasingly close allies are creating infrastructure to boost military cooperation in the Ukraine war. The bridge spans the Tumen River, between Khasan in Russia’s far east and Tumangang in North Korea, a remote, thinly populated stretch of borderland where the river marks the final few miles of the frontier before it reaches the coast. The crossing is now largely complete. North Korea finished its side of the project, including customs and quarantine facilities, ahead of a planned opening on 19 June, but Russia has fallen behind on its own side of the border, and no new opening date has been confirmed. Russian and North Korean authorities have made no secret of the bridge project, saying it is intended to expand trade and tourism. North Korea’s state media news agency, KCNA, has similarly cast the bridge as a way to boost “travel of persons, tourism and circulation of commodities” between the two countries. However, a new investigation by Ukrainian human rights group Truth Hounds and shared with the Guardian suggests it is intended more to provide a discreet military logistics corridor than to boost trade. Nazar Myhun, who led the open-source research at Truth Hounds, said a key reason behind its conclusion was the fact that it is much easier to evade satellite monitoring – a surveillance method used by the west to understand Russian and North Korean activities – by using roads compared with a rail network. The new crossing over the Tumen River runs alongside the Friendship Bridge, which is the only rail link between the two countries. Russia and North Korea’s road network is far bigger than their rail network, he said, making it harder to watch in its entirety. Loading and unloading of trucks can also take place much more quickly than for railcars, which are exposed to satellite passes for a longer period of time. “The type of railcar visible in an image reveals a great deal about the cargo, and certain categories of goods are transported in open railcars, which allows them to be identified,” Myhun told the Guardian. “Trucks, by contrast, almost always look the same in satellite imagery.” Road cargo can also be loaded anywhere, as opposed to trains, which rely on a handful of fixed rail hubs, Myhun said. Russian officials have presented the project as a way to expand trade and tourism. Andrey Nikitin, Russia’s transport minister, said: “The opening of the new road bridge will increase mutual trade, optimise logistics, strengthen cultural ties, and transform border areas into dynamically developing economic hubs.” However, Truth Hounds argues that the bridge’s economic rationale is weak. The crossing is estimated to have cost more than $100m, versus bilateral trade that was reportedly worth just $34m in 2024. Tourism from Russia into North Korea remains tightly controlled and largely limited to escorted tours, with around 10,000 Russian visitors in 2025. Pyongyang, where most foreign tourists visit, lies over 500km from the crossing. Instead, the investigation concludes that the crossing is better understood as strategic infrastructure: a corridor for moving North Korean troops, construction brigades and military officials into Russia, and for Russian technology and resources to move in the opposite direction. Myhun said Truth Hounds monitors Russia-North Korea cooperation closely because it considers it “one of the key factors affecting Russia’s strength in this war” on Ukraine. The deepening relationship has also made the two-way exchange of weapons and technology between the two countries “easier and less transparent”, he said, which also poses a threat to North Korea’s neighbours. The Kremlin has been contacted about the claims made in the investigation but has yet to respond. A growing military alliance The bridge over the Tumen River is about 1km long and seven metres wide, with two lanes, part of a wider 4.7km crossing that includes approach roads. Satellite imagery also shows supporting infrastructure being built on the Russian side, including a helicopter landing pad. However, the rail line is hobbled by a mismatch in rail gauge between Russia and North Korea, meaning wheelsets must be changed to allow trains to travel further into either country’s network, a limitation the new road bridge does not share. Open-source researchers have previously relied on satellite imagery of the rail crossing to monitor suspected weapons transfers between the two countries. Construction of the bridge began after Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un signed a comprehensive strategic partnership pact in June 2024, cementing military ties that have since seen North Korea provide troops, artillery ammunition and ballistic missiles to support Russia’s war in Ukraine. It forms a small part of a much broader military relationship. More than 14,000 North Korean troops have fought alongside Russian forces in the Kursk region, after Ukraine staged a surprise counter-invasion in August 2024. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has now warned that Russia is preparing to receive a further 30,000 soldiers. Moscow and Pyongyang have expanded cooperation on weapons, military technology and reconstruction. In 2023, Reuters reported that satellite images showed an estimated 2,000 containers exported from the North Korean port of Rason to Russia, believed to have contained artillery shells and possibly short-range missiles. Kim has praised North Korean soldiers who fought and died for Russia and unveiled housing for the families of those killed. At least 2,000 North Korean servicemen are believed to have died fighting in Russia’s war, with two badly wounded soldiers taken prisoner.

France and Spain race to contain huge wildfires before fresh heatwave begins

Firefighters in France and Spain are racing to bring huge wildfires under control before another heatwave this week that will complicate efforts to tame the flames. Spain’s interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, said Monday and Tuesday were “absolutely crucial days” before temperatures rise again from Wednesday. EU officials have said wildfires could still be burning until early November in what threatens to be a record-breaking year for the area of land burned. A fire in the hilly terrain of Ávila, west of Madrid, has become Spain’s largest on record, burning 50,000 hectares (125,000 acres). Authorities are battling two separate fires north-west of Madrid, taking the total area of scorched land near the capital to 70,000 hectares. France was also in “a race against time” to control wildfires before another heatwave this week, said Eric Brocardi, a fire service spokesperson. Weather forecasters have said temperatures could reach 40C (104F) is some parts of the country from Tuesday. This would complicate efforts to control the wildfire in Gironde in south-west France, which the interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, described as “extremely intense and unpredictable … generating its own winds and advancing erratically toward the Bordeaux metropolitan area”. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, on a visit to Bordeaux, said: “The coming weeks will be tough and we have to hold out.” But he said a smaller fire in the adjoining Landes – which forced the evacuation of more than 30,000 people – was “contained” but remained “virulent”. “We must be extremely cautious over the next few hours and the coming days,” he said. The Gironde fire has so far burned 42,000 hectares, making it one of the biggest devastations of land in France since the second world war. In the Cestas commune, about 10 miles from the city of Bordeaux, firefighters used mechanical diggers to uproot trees in an attempt to create a firebreak. The vast fire, which has triggered the evacuation of 220,000 people, had not progressed during the early hours of Monday but was “not contained” and remained “very complicated to control”, Nuñez said. Speaking after an emergency meeting of the French government on Monday, he described this year’s wildfires as “completely exceptional”. More than 116,000 hectares of forest and vegetation have been burned since January, far exceeding the 70,000 hectares reported for the whole of 2025. Spain’s government said the 172,000 hectares of forested land burned this year was six times greater than the equivalent figure for 2025. The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, told a climate conference the wildfires were not isolated incidents. “It is the most painful manifestation of a climate emergency that is making … wildfires more voracious and heatwaves more frequent, and as a result our land more vulnerable,” he said. “It is no longer an exception. It is the rule.” The European Commission’s lead official on the green transition, Teresa Ribera, said Europe was not prepared for the consequences of the climate crisis. In an interview with El País she said the commission would propose an adaptation strategy in October that would be much more comprehensive than policies implemented so far. A series of heatwaves, including record-breaking temperatures in June, that scientists say would have been impossible without the climate crisis, has left parched soils and tinder-dry vegetation that have fuelled this summer’s fires. A European Commission official said the wildfire season had begun in April and could last until early November. Officials also stressed the rising risks for fighting wildfires from the middle of the week in France, Spain and Greece. The EU executive has coordinated the dispatch of seven planes and four helicopters to France, as well as six planes and three forest firefighting teams to Spain, after the countries triggered the bloc’s emergency assistance mechanism. EU officials have also been sent to the Bordeaux region to assist local authorities. Officials stressed the unprecedented nature of recent fires, which have spread rapidly over large areas. A commission official said that a recent fire in southern Spain that killed 13 people had reached speeds of 4 mph, while firefighters are able to react only to fires moving 300 metres an hour or less. The scale of Europe’s wildfires has raised questions about the continent’s ability to respond. Italy is among about 10 European countries that have sent firefighting equipment or teams to France and Spain while grappling with its own blazes. Firefighters fought to extinguish a major wildfire in Italy’s southern region of Puglia on Monday. More than 400 people, many of them tourists staying in campsites set among pine forests, were evacuated by sea from the Gargano peninsula on Sunday as the blaze, fanned by strong winds, encroached on beaches. A further 58 people were evacuated from their homes in Maratea as a wildfire swept through neighbouring Basilicata. Italy is bracing for its fourth heatwave this year as temperatures edge up towards highs of 38C to 40C from Wednesday. Smoke from the fires in France is continuing to cause a “marked deterioration” in air quality across a swathe of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region and beyond, with health authorities warning about the danger. Elderly people, pregnant women and those with respiratory issues and chronic conditions were advised to take precautions. Local health authorities said people should close windows, wear an FFP2 mask outside and avoid strenuous activity. The prime minister’s office said more than 1.5 million FFP2 masks had been sent to the region.

Trump warns of return to ‘strong military action’ if Iran diplomacy fails

Donald Trump has once again warned that the US will return to “strong military action” against Iran if diplomatic efforts do not bring a rapid resolution to the crisis in the Middle East. “We are in very deep talks with Iran. If they don’t work out, we will go back to very strong military action,” the US president told Axios on Monday. Asked for how long he would allow the talks to proceed, he answered: “Not much time. Either it goes fast or not at all.” He reiterated the line to reporters later the same day on Air Force One. “They want to meet, and we’re meeting. Without what we did, they wouldn’t even be talking to us … They would not have requested the meeting if we were doing poorly. The only reason they want to meet is because we’ve been hitting them very hard.” He doubled down at a rally in Michigan soon after. “You ⁠can’t bribe them. You’ve ‌got ‌to beat them, ‌and we’ll beat the hell out of them. But we’ll ‌see how it turns out,” he said . “Right now, ⁠there are very friendly negotiations going on.” Earlier, Tehran said there were no direct talks with the US to end the conflict, which began in late February with a wave of US-Israeli strikes and has rocked the region and the global economy. “Mediators may convey messages from the American side to us regarding current developments in the region. But at present we are not engaged in any negotiations with the United States,” said the Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei. The diplomatic back and forth came as Oman and Iran drew closer to an agreement in principle on the future management of the strait of Hormuz, but remained unable to resolve Tehran’s demand that all ships passing through the strategic waterway must pay some type of transit fee or toll to a consortium led by the two countries. Oman and Iran met for technical talks in Tehran on Friday and Saturday that may hold the key to preventing a further round of fighting. Perceived progress in the talks – backed by China, Qatar and Pakistan – was understood to have fed into the US decision to pause its attacks on Iran after nearly two weeks. Senior US officials are also reported to have warned Trump over dwindling US munitions stockpiles and the impact of Iranian reprisals on US bases in the region, including Kuwait and Jordan. The top US military commander in the Middle East, Adm Brad Cooper, reportedly recommended stopping the bombing campaign around the strait because it had reached the limit of its effectiveness. The US attacks have been described by Washington as a response to repeated Iranian breaches of the memorandum of understanding signed in June, including by trying to prevent commercial shipping from transiting the strait through a southern route overseen by the US. Iran argues the southern route breaks the ceasefire agreement, which it insists left the country in sole charge of how the strait was reopened. A diplomat said: “The aim of the Tehran talks is to marry the Iran and Oman proposals so what emerges is clearly compliant with the law of the sea, and internationally acceptable.” At a Tehran press conference, Baqaei denied that the pause in US fighting amounted to an informal ceasefire. Oman has been trying since May to persuade Tehran that any plan for charging fees in the strait must be voluntary, to comply with the law of the sea. It has proposed a model similar to that which governs the strait of Malacca: countries that use it voluntarily contribute to a fund that provides for environmental and safety services to shipping. Oman argues that a similar entity could be set up in the strait of Hormuz with the agreement of the UN and the International Maritime Organization. The IMO secretary general, Arsenio Dominguez, has told the Guardian that the Malacca strait model is worth considering for the strait of Hormuz. Iran’s department of environment has drafted its own plan, under which “the annual passage of over 50,000 ships and oil tankers through the strait of Hormuz and their role in polluting the Persian Gulf” must be compensated for. Under the plan, Iran would be able to collect “fees” from passing vessels proportional to the type of ship, cargo volume, navigation history and history of pollution. The comparison between the straits of Malacca and Hormuz is imperfect since fewer ships see ports in the Malacca strait as a destination point. But the Iranian media appear increasingly drawn to the Malacca model. The Khabaronline news agency argued such an agreement would be “a win-win situation for Iran”. Baqaei described the talks with Oman as useful and constructive but said they had nothing to do with the US. “The goal is for Iran and Oman, as two coastal states, to develop mechanisms to ensure safe shipping in the strait of Hormuz, while respecting the sovereign rights of the two coastal states and also preserving Iran’s security and national interests,” he said. Oman is in a tight spot since it knows the US is opposed to the introduction of tolls, but it may accept a very clearly delineated system of fees for specific services. The talks come as the US continues to encourage commercial shipping to test the strength of the Iranian blockade of the strait. Iranian officials reported that six vessels with their navigation systems switched off attempted to pass through the southern route of the strait on Sunday. One of them was fired upon and the others were turned back to the Persian Gulf. The US has reimposed a blockade of Iranian oil exports and ended a sanctions waiver on its oil exports. The United Nations Office for Project Services said on Monday that transits through the strait of Hormuz had fallen to an average of approximately five ships a day over the past week, compared with nearly 130 a day before the war.

Europe wildfires: Officials warn that wildfires could still be burning in November – as it happened

Firefighters in France and Spain are racing to bring huge wildfires under control before another heatwave later this week that will complicate efforts to tame the flames. Spain’s interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, said Monday and Tuesday were “absolutely crucial days” before temperatures rise again from Wednesday onwards. EU officials have said wildfires could still be burning until early November in what threatens to be a record-breaking year for the area of land burned. A fire in the hilly terrain of Ávila, west of Madrid, has become Spain’s largest on record, burning 50,000 hectares (123,000 acres). Authorities are battling two separate fires north-west of Madrid, taking the total area of scorched land near the capital to 70,000 hectares. The wildfire in Gironde is “unlike any we have ever seen in France” as it “follows its own logic rather than any known pattern,” the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region’s prefect Sophie Brocas warned. Updating the media on the fight against the blaze, she said the constantly evolving nature of the fire forced firefighters to “constantly adapt” to the circumstances. Spanish state meteorological agency Aemet has just issued a new warning, saying the heatwave expected to start on Wednesday will be “long” and “last, at least, until Sunday,” with “the risk of fire rising to extreme levels, hindering firefighting efforts.” Aemet’s note warns of “a significant of even extraordinary level of danger” for those involved in outdoor activities and vulnerable groups, including elderly people and people with cardiovascular conditions. The wildfires around Bordeaux in southwestern France have delivered a shock to the regional economy, finance minister Roland Lescure said. The region is one of the centres of French wine production and a major centre for tourism, Reuters noted. Firefighters battling devastating fires in France have had to contend with a new threat: immense fire clouds that create their own wind and even lightning that can spark fresh blazes. Known as “fire clouds” or pyrocumulonimbus clouds, these ominous-looking thunderstorms are created by extreme wildfires and can exacerbate already extremely dangerous conditions. The European Union is ramping up the number of firefighting planes and helicopters sent to help tackle blazes raging in southwest France, the bloc’s crisis management chief told AFP. “We currently have nine aerial assets deployed on site, and tomorrow we will have 11, drawn from our European strategic reserve,” EU commissioner Hadja Lahbib said. Provisional data on wildfires in Spain shows that more than 170,000 hectares of forest land have been affected since the beginning of the year – a nearly sixfold increase on the almost 29,000 recorded in the same period in 2025.

Pinochet-era soldier jailed for killing folk singer Víctor Jara 53 years ago

More than 50 years after the murder of the Chilean folk singer Víctor Jara, the last man wanted in connection with his death has been tracked down and brought to justice. Nelson Haase Mazzei, a retired colonel, fled from authorities in 2023 after he and six other retired soldiers were sentenced in absentia for murdering Jara and another man. Chilean police announced on Saturday that Haase Mazzei had been arrested in Puyehue, in the rural south of the country, with a judge ordering his immediate imprisonment. The Víctor Jara Foundation, set up by his widow, the British dancer and activist Joan Jara, said in statement: “We learned that retired Colonel Nelson Haase Mazzei, who had been a fugitive from justice since 2023, was found and imprisoned. We welcome this news. “However, it is important for us to emphasize that, half a century after the murders of Víctor Jara and Littré Quiroga, it is difficult to see this as this justice.” Jara, a singer and leftwing activist, was arrested in Santiago, the capital of Chile, on 11 September 1973, the day after Gen Augusto Pinochet’s bloody US-backed coup to depose the socialist president, Salvador Allende. Jara was held along with thousands of others at a small covered stadium in central Santiago. Four days later, he was murdered in the changing rooms alongside Allende’s national director of prisons, Littré Quiroga. Haase Mazzei’s arrest is likely to be the final act in the long quest for justice on behalf of Jara, one of the most recognisable victims of the Pinochet dictatorship, which killed or disappeared more than 3,000 people and detained and tortured tens of thousands during 17 years of repressive rule. At the stadium, Jara was tortured and humiliated by officers who played Russian roulette with him before breaking his hands, shattering his skull, and riddling him with automatic gunfire. His body was found dumped near the main cemetery in Santiago with 44 bullet wounds and 56 broken bones. He was 40 years old. The body of Quiroga, who had been shot 23 times, was found at the same time. After evading justice for nearly half a century, seven retired soldiers were found guilty of the murder and sentenced in absentia to varying jail terms in August 2023. Haase Mazzei received a 25-year sentence. He claimed for years that he was not at the stadium, since renamed Estadio Víctor Jara, but sworn testimony placed him at the scene. Haase Mazzei joined the Chilean army’s notorious Tejas Verde brigade in 1972, and was later part of Pinochet’s secret police, the Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia (Dina), where he worked closely with its leader, Manuel Contreras, a renowned regime loyalist who was sentenced to more than 500 years’ jail time for crimes against humanity before his death in 2015. Sentenced alongside Haase Mazzei was 86-year-old Hernán Chacón. When police arrived to arrest him at his home in a wealthy district of Santiago in 2023, he asked officers for a moment to take his medication, before slipping off into a side room and taking his own life. Another Tejas Verde officer sentenced for the killing was Pedro Barrientos, who left Chile for the US in 1989 and was deported back in December 2023, more than a decade after his extradition was first sought. One former soldier testified that Barrientos had the habit of brandishing his pistol and declaring: “I killed Víctor Jara with this!” Barrientos was eventually arrested in the US after a routine traffic stop, and lost his US citizenship not because of his crimes, but on the grounds that he had failed to disclose his military background in his application. Jara’s widow died at the age of 96, just weeks before Barrientos was returned to Chile to face justice. Haase Mazzei’s defence has already requested his transfer from a prison in the southern city of Osorno to Punta Peuco, a well-appointed jail north of Santiago, built to house the human rights criminals of the Pinochet era.

‘It felt like being in a disaster movie’: uncertainty after evacuation from France’s Gironde wildfire

Sitting in their suburban apartment in Mérignac on the outskirts of Bordeaux, Krishma, an interpreter, and her husband, Nassir, first felt a sense of dread when a strange black cloud turned the sky dark in the middle of the day. Then a bitter burning smell filled the air outside. “The sky changed colour. It seemed like a cloud but it was smoke covering the sun – it wasn’t a natural phenomenon. It didn’t seem real,” said Nassir, an English literature graduate from Kabul who has been living in France for seven years. “We couldn’t breathe easily, you could feel it in your lungs.” The acrid smell, which at first seemed like burning rubber then unmistakably like wood smoke, was blowing on the wind from the massive wildfire in Gironde in south-western France. The blaze has torn through 42,000 hectares, an area four times the size of Paris, causing one of the biggest devastations of land in France since the second world war. The government said on Monday that although the fire had stopped growing, it was still blazing and a new heatwave this week could make it harder to fight. As authorities carried out one of the biggest evacuations in modern French history, Krishma and Nassir were among 220,000 people ordered to flee their homes in Gironde. Many people were evacuated from wooded areas directly hit by fire, where at least 240 homes were destroyed. But in an unprecedented move, tens of thousands more were ordered by police to evacuate from more built-up, urban streets as the fire reached 9 miles (15km) from the outer edge of Bordeaux’s vast suburban area. Krishma and Nassir had to evacuate their suburban street at midnight on Friday. With their two children aged 10 and eight, they quickly packed toothbrushes, toys, one change of clothes and personal documents into their car. On Monday afternoon, they were sitting on camp beds among hundreds of people sheltering in a hangar at Bordeaux’s exhibition centre. They had slept there for three nights and did not know when they would be allowed home. The fire had not reached their residential area, but with the French government warning that the blaze was “extremely intense and unpredictable”, authorities would not yet allow a return, they said. The couple’s main feeling was great sadness to see the Gironde forest destroyed. Krishma said: “When we were in Afghanistan there were lots of explosions, suicide attacks, but that was related to around 30 years of war. When we came here, we never thought there would be a situation like this. It brought us back to the bad memories from our past.” Across the vast hangar, Yves, who used to work on road maintenance in Bordeaux, was sitting with his 13-year-old mastiff dog, Ichka. Yves had fled his suburban house and garden in Le Haillan outside Bordeaux with his dog’s bed under one arm and had carefully laid it out next to his camp bed. He had been ordered to evacuate in the early hours of Saturday morning. “We had to leave because of the smoke,” he said. His wife, an administrator who did not want to be named, said she still felt shaken. “It was terrifying – you would look up at the sky and it was completely orange, even after nightfall. It was bizarre. The fire was causing that, and it really made you anxious. I feel quite a lot of anger that all this forest has burned and been lost. Seeing all that is beautiful in nature just go up in smoke is extremely painful and sad.” Others who had fled slept in their cars. Loïc, 66, a widower who worked in the metals and glass industries before becoming a decorator, had to leave his house in Saint-Jean-d’Illac outside Bordeaux. “I had been watching this strange fog in the sky. It was a darkness almost like an eclipse,” he said. “There was a kind of ochre mist as light from the sun was diffused through falling ash. So much ash was falling that my car was turned completely grey.” At 1am on Saturday, Loïc was woken by banging on the door from his neighbour, a fire officer, saying he had to leave immediately. He grabbed only his wallet and car keys and ran to the car, leaving his mobile phone behind. There were so many people on the road and heading to the evacuation centre that he decided to stop elsewhere and get a bit of sleep in his car. When he woke on Saturday, listening to the news on the car radio, he knew he could not go home and headed instead for central Bordeaux, thinking the cinema would be a safe and comfortable place. “I watched the two-part Charles de Gaulle epic – the wrong way round, with the second film first, but I knew the story already – then I watched The Odyssey. Then I went back to sleep in my car.” The next day, he visited the graveyard where his wife was buried. On Monday morning, he arrived at the Bordeaux evacuation centre to get information on what to do next. He felt deeply saddened by the loss of the forest. “My generation grew up really attached to nature,” he said. Florence, a former teaching assistant in a primary school, sat on a camp bed with her two cats in their travelling cases after having to evacuate Le Haillan outside Bordeaux. “I was distraught,” she said. “I’m asthmatic, I put tape around the windows of my apartment but I could still smell the smoke which was seeping in under my front door, so I put down wet rags. The sky was orange and grey, and there was soot everywhere.” She said having to suddenly evacuate knowing a fire was raging in Gironde felt like something out of a war. “It felt like being in a disaster movie,” she said. “I’ve always really loved disaster movies – but now I feel like I’ve actually been in one, so I don’t ever want to watch a disaster movie again.”