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‘We can see that courage’: Greece recovers long-lost photos of Nazis’ May Day executions

In his book-filled office, Vangelis Sakkatos took in the images of the men lined up before a firing squad. The executions on May Day 1944 have haunted him since he was a boy. “Their heroism was the stuff of myth,” said the veteran leftist, casting his eyes over the photographs that have dominated Greece’s press in recent days with a mixture of fury and awe. “The years may have passed, but I haven’t forgotten.” At 96, Sakkatos never imagined the time would come when he would be able to “put a face” to the protagonists of a tragedy that would go down as one of the worst atrocities of Nazi occupation. The 200 communists, executed by machine gun fire in the Kaisariani shooting range, barely a mile away from his first-floor flat, were killed in retaliation for the fatal attack on a German general ambushed by communist guerrillas a few days earlier. The pictures depict the men walking into the firing range in Athens, their heads held high as they stare, seemingly unafraid, into the camera. Famously, they went to their deaths chanting partisan songs in a final act of resistance. “That is what we have always heard,” said Sakkatos, who for years lobbied with other leftists for a monument to be erected in their honour. “And now we can see that courage before our eyes.” Until last week, when the photographs were posted on eBay by Tim de Craene, a Belgian collector specialising in Third Reich memorabilia, it was not known whether the images existed. In the absence of pictorial evidence, testimony of the communists’ last moments rested on the handwritten notes the men had thrown out of trucks as they were driven to their deaths from Block 15, the notorious camp in Chaidari, on the western fringes of the Greek capital, where political prisoners were detained. On Friday, after days of outcry in the wake of the pictures’ emergence, the Greek culture ministry said it had signed a preliminary agreement with De Craene to buy the photos and he had withdrawn them from sale. The prints, believed to have been taken by Hermann Heuer, a Wehrmacht lieutenant, amounted to “a monument of exceptional historical importance”, it said. Few events in the collective memory of a nation that endured more than three years of German occupation have held such sway. The May Day executions – seen as the high point of the country’s communist-led anti-Nazi resistance – would inspire some of the country’s greatest contemporary artists. Poets, songwriters, painters and film-makers have all drawn on an episode that ever since has gripped the popular imagination. “It’s one thing to hear about their bravery and quite another to see it,” said Yiannis Eris, a communist party volunteer who gives guided tours of the firing range and national resistance museum in Kaisariani. “Now we know they faced the firing squad not only with immense pride but raising their fists. The night before they had made sure to wash and shave. They weren’t afraid of what was about to happen. They saw it as an honour.” The executions occurred months before Hitler’s defeated forces began withdrawing from Greece in October 1944, more than three years after the Wehrmacht marched into Athens and four after Mussolini ordered a full-scale invasion of Greece from Italian-occupied Albania. Heuer, who was stationed in the country from 1943 was probably part of a unit dispatched by Joseph Goebbels’ ministry of enlightenment and propaganda to document daily life in territories under occupation. “The images allow us to frame the drama of occupied Greece also through the eyes of the occupier,” Lina Mendoni, the culture minister, said in a statement. The collection is thought to include 262 photographs. Some bear the handwritten note “Aten 1.5.44” – the date of the massacre. Greek historians, who have long lamented the paucity of archival material from the period, have described the pictures as exceptional, saying their unexpected discovery will not only help research into Nazi-era atrocities but “open up the space” for further discussion into the bloody 1946-49 civil war that followed the country’s liberation. For decades, Greece’s communist KKE party was deemed illegal and commemoration of events such as the May Day executions was prohibited, in part because access to sites such as the Kaisariani firing range was off-limits. Until the collapse of military dictatorship in 1974, successive rightwing governments marginalised the role played by the leftist-led resistance during the second world war. In recent days, relatives who have recognised ancestors in the photographs have come forward demanding that the events of a period steeped in such trauma be finally acknowledged. “At last, we have pictorial confirmation of what has haunted the Greek left for decades,” said Kostis Karpozilos, a professor of history at Panteion University in Athens. “These images will open up the space for much-needed debate around the politics of memory in contemporary Greece which for so long have been overshadowed by the divisions of the civil war.” Indicative of that rancour, the marble plaque commemorating the 200 was vandalised and smashed by far-right vandals within hours of the photographs coming to light last weekend. On Friday, the memorial honouring the dead, in front of the wall where the men were shot, was covered with a mound of red carnations, testimony, say officials, to the surge in visitors wanting to pay their respects. “There has been a huge emotional response to these images,” said Anastasis Gkikas at the history department of the communist party’s central committee. “We’ve been inundated by calls from descendants of our dead comrades asking for the photographs to be returned to Greece. This is where they belong and this is where they should be put on public display for all to see.”

Decline in remote jobs risks shutting disabled people out of work, study finds

A decline in the number of jobs for people who need to work remotely, including those with disabilities, could undermine the government’s efforts to reverse rising unemployment, according to a two-year study. More than eight in 10 respondents to a survey of working-age disabled people by researchers at Lancaster University said access to home working was essential or very important when looking for a new job. Almost half (46%) of the participants in the Inclusive Remote and Hybrid Working Study wanted to work remotely all the time, with disabled women and disabled carers more likely to want to work fully from home. The needs of disabled job applicants run against the trend for employers to reduce hybrid and remote working, the study found. Analysis of Adzuna job vacancy data showed declining levels of remote job opportunities. In the financial year 2024-25, only one in 23 job adverts on Adzuna (4.3%) were fully remote – half the level seen during the pandemic peak of 8.7% in 2020-21. “Growth in the availability of hybrid jobs appears to have stalled, with only one in seven (13.5%) job vacancies offering hybrid work in 2024-25,” the report said. The findings followed official job figures earlier this week covering the three months to December, which showed one in 11 disabled people were unemployed (9.2%), double the 4.4% average. The Office for National Statistics found there were 547,000 unemployed disabled people, an increase of 110,000 since the same period in 2024. “Unemployment has risen across the UK economy in the last 12 months, but analysis indicates that the rate has risen far more quickly for disabled people than non-disabled people,” said the Work Foundation, a thinktank based at Lancaster University, which coordinated the remote-working project with Manchester Metropolitan University. Billed as the largest study of disabled workers’ experiences of remote and hybrid work in the UK, with funding from the Nuffield Foundation, it involved interviews with more than 1,200 disabled people. The report said that while remote and hybrid working remain more common than before the pandemic, the proportion of fully remote roles had fallen, and the rate of growth in hybrid jobs had slowed. It found that 64% of fully remote disabled workers said their work pattern positively affected their physical health, compared with 31% of those working remotely less than half the time. There was also demand for hybrid working from a quarter of respondents who wanted to work from home four days a week and 27% for three days or fewer. Only a tiny fraction – 1.6% – wanted to stop working from home. One of the respondents, Vera, who is in her 20s and works for a healthcare company in London, said she was based at home following stem cell treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS). She was unable to return to a frontline role. “Remote work has made it possible for me to stay in employment – without it I couldn’t work,” she said. “While I’ve reduced my hours to four days a week, working from home means I can manage cognitive fatigue and rest during lunch breaks so I can stay productive. “But I feel stuck, as there are so few remote-only roles. These are realistically the only roles I can apply for if I want to keep working and progress in my career.” A recent study by the Work Foundation and the MS Society found that nearly half of people with MS (47%) look for job locations that require little or no travel. Lead researcher Paula Holland said: “The increased availability of remote and hybrid working since before the pandemic has improved many disabled people’s experience of work. Our findings indicate disabled employees gain significant benefits including improved mental and physical health, better work-life balance and increased productivity. “However, companies mandating people to return to the office have seen remote-only opportunities plummet and this could prevent some disabled workers from returning and staying in work. At a time when the government wants to get people working, disabled workers report that access to suitable home-working roles can be the difference between working or not working.” A recent House of Lords report called for ministers to ensure remote and hybrid working is being prioritised to boost disabled people’s employment.

Iran prepares nuclear counterproposal as US considers limited military strikes

Iran’s foreign minister has said he expects to have a draft counterproposal ready within days after nuclear talks with the US this week, while Donald Trump said he was considering limited military strikes. The US president has ordered a massive buildup of naval forces in the Middle East, including repositioning aircraft carriers and other warships, leading to fears of an imminent war. But it is not clear if the military movements are intended as an intimidation tactic to put pressure on Iran to make concessions on its nuclear programme. Two US officials told Reuters that US military planning had reached an advanced stage, with options including targeting individuals as part of an attack and even pursuing leadership change in Tehran. On Thursday, Trump gave Tehran a deadline of 10 to 15 days to make a deal to resolve their longstanding nuclear dispute or face “really bad things”. Asked on Friday if he was considering a limited strike to pressure Iran into a deal, Trump told reporters at the White House: “I guess I can say I am considering” it. Asked later about Iran, Trump added: “They better negotiate a fair deal.” Tehran began stepping up its nuclear programme after Trump – during his first term as president – exited an internationally backed deal that had restricted Iran’s programme. He disliked the pact, signed by one of his predecessors, Barack Obama, and was encouraged to abandon diplomacy by Iran’s arch-enemy, Israel. Emboldened by Trump’s support for aggressive action, Israel then led a 12-day war against Iran in June 2025, which the US joined – although the campaign had a questionable impact on Tehran’s long-term nuclear ambitions. Speaking to US cable news network MS Now, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said there was no “military solution” for Iran’s nuclear programme. “That has been tested last year. There were huge attacks on our facilities – they killed and assassinated our scientists – but they couldn’t kill our nuclear programme,” he said. Araghchi held indirect discussions in Geneva this week with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and said that the sides had reached an understanding on main “guiding principles”, but that did not mean a deal was imminent. Araghchi added he had a draft counterproposal that could be ready “in the next two or three days” for top Iranian officials to review, with more US-Iran talks possible in a week or so. Trump began threatening strikes again in January as Tehran crushed widespread protests with deadly force. Referring to the crackdown on Friday, Trump said that “32,000 people were killed over a relatively short period of time”, figures that could not be verified. “It’s a very, very, very sad situation,” Trump said, adding that his threats to strike Iran had led the leadership to abandon plans for mass hangings two weeks ago. “They were going to hang 837 people. And I gave them the word, if you hang one person, even one person, that you’re going to be hit right then and there,” he said. The US-based group Hrana, which monitors the human rights situation in Iran, says it has verified 7,114 deaths and has another 11,700 under review. Hours after Trump’s statements on the death toll, Araghchi said the Iranian government had already published a “comprehensive list of all 3,117” killed in the unrest, which he referred to as a “recent terrorist operation”. “If anyone disputes accuracy of our data, please share any evidence,” he posted on X. UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric reiterated concerns about heightened rhetoric and increased military activities in the region. During the Geneva talks, the US did not seek zero uranium enrichment and Iran did not offer to suspend enrichment, Araghchi told MS Now. “What we are now talking about is how to make sure that Iran’s nuclear programme, including enrichment, is peaceful and would remain peaceful forever,” he said. Asked about Araghchi’s comments, a White House official said: “The president has been clear that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons or the capacity to build them, and that they cannot enrich uranium.” Reuters contributed to this report

‘Psychological torture’: Spanish tenants fight back against housing ‘harassment’

When the Madrid building where Jaime Oteyza had lived since 2012 was sold to an investment fund two years ago, a local tenants’ union swiftly warned him what to expect. First the tenants would be told that none of their rental contracts – regardless of their expiry date – would be renewed, the union said. Then, as the 50 or so families in the building grappled with what to do next, a series of construction projects would probably be launched in the building to ramp up pressure on them to leave. “One by one, all of the situations that the union described began to happen,” said Oteyza. “Construction work was the weapon they used to make our lives impossible; power cuts, leaks, noise, drilling through walls, ceilings collapsing on top of gas stoves.” It’s a pattern that housing campaigners say is playing out across much of urban Spain, as investors seek to cash in on the country’s roaring housing market. The aim is simple: to force out long-term tenants as quickly as possible to make way for more profitable tourist, short-term or luxury lets. It’s come to be known across Spain as acoso inmobiliario, roughly translating as real estate harassment. The phrase refers to the myriad ways in which long-term tenants are subjected to worsening conditions so that they end their contracts on their own accord. But within the walls of one nondescript building in the madrileño neighbourhood of Lavapiés, tenants may have found a way to fight back. Last year, a dozen tenants, including Oteyza, turned to the country’s courts, alleging that the construction work was a bid to coerce them into ending their leases prematurely. Late last year, a court in Madrid agreed to hear the case, launching what housing campaigners say is the country’s first preliminary investigation into real estate harassment. For residents of the building, the groundbreaking case has added another layer of complexity to their long-running battle. “It’s bittersweet,” said Cristina Gómez, who has lived in the building since 2020. The court’s decision was “nice, as it confirmed we’re not just imagining things,” she said. “But at the same time, this is the result of a lot of suffering. It’s a shit situation for everyone.” The construction work began in November 2024. As the work led to flooding in some apartments and turned parts of the building into no-go zones, residents saw a clear attempt by the new owners to bypass the costlier, more time-consuming process of going through courts to evict them individually. The tenants said they tried to negotiate with the new owners – at one point even offering to buy the building for the same amount that the investment fund had paid for it – as the company offered some tenants a few thousand euros to help with the move. “They were very tough, very long conversations, at no point did they accept anything other than us leaving the building,” said Gómez. Noise levels in the building skyrocketed, as drills and jackhammers rang out and rubble was felled, said Oteyza. For those at home during the day, it was a form of “psychological torture”, he said. “It’s really difficult to live with noise, eight hours a day, day in and day out.” The father of two young children, Oteyza also worried constantly for their safety. “There’s a real fear that there will be an accident,” he said. “There might be a power tool plugged in on the landing. Or they’ve left a hole in the courtyard. These are risky situations.” As one tenant, who asked to be named only as Nani, put it: “We’re resisting and we’ll continue to resist, but it’s really difficult,” she said. “But we have to do it – it can’t be that those who have money can come and buy and sell buildings without caring about the lives of the people inside.” On at least five occasions, police and firefighters were called to the building as tenants wrestled with the fallout of the construction work. About 15 months after it began, residents say that about half of the tenants in the building have opted to leave. It’s a hint of the kinds of situations that are playing out across Spain, said Alejandra Jacinto, a lawyer with the tenants’ union who helped draft the pioneering legal challenge. “From sending in eviction companies to carrying out construction works that cause damage, to putting glue in people’s locks, real estate harassment is a tool that is increasingly being used,” she said. Both the legal challenge and the court’s decision to launch a preliminary investigation were trailblazing steps pushing back against this trend, she said. “I think it’s already sending a message that there’s no impunity and that not everything goes. You can’t act outside the law to achieve your goals.” The court battle had made headlines across the country, she said, offering a glimmer of hope as many in Spain reel from the soaring cost of housing. In January, campaigners in Barcelona announced that a local court had become the second to admit a case alleging real estate harassment. The case argues that the new owners of a five-floor building had left tenants without a working lift for more than a month, stranding elderly tenants and those with mobility issues, including one person who uses a wheelchair, in a bid to get them to leave. In Madrid, weeks after news broke of the court’s investigation, the tenants said it had already had an impact. “Curiously enough, we noticed that when the case made headlines, they continued working but in a more orderly, more systematic way and respecting the noise levels,” said Oteyza. In a statement to the Guardian, a legal representative for the building’s owner said the construction work was aimed at improving accessibility, reinforcing the building’s structure and renovating the roof, noting: “all of which are essential measures to ensure the safety and habitability of the property”. The company had all of the necessary permits to carry out the work, it said. The spokesperson said agreements had been reached with more than 30 tenants in the building, in a show of their “commitment to dialogue and the search for mutually agreed upon solutions”. It added: “Aware of the inconvenience that this type of work can cause, and in order to minimise the impact on the lives of the residents, the owner has offered alternatives from the outset to the residents directly affected by the work, providing them with options for temporary relocation to other homes and accommodation adapted to their needs.” At the building in Lavapiés, the tenants were bracing themselves for a legal battle that could stretch on for months, if not years. But for Gómez, it was an absolute necessity. “What’s happening to us is something that is happening every day, all the time around us,” she said. “I think we need to show them that we’re willing to enforce the law, that we know our rights and are going to assert them.” In a country where the average rent has doubled in the past decade, it also felt as if it was the only option, she added. “It’s not like I can just go to somewhere nearby or another neighbourhood, it’s impossible,” she said. “So where does one go?”

Antiques auction selling neck shackles accused of ‘profiting from slavery’

An antiques auction selling chains linked to the enslavement of African people in Zanzibar has been accused of “profiting from slavery”. Neck irons dated to the Omani-Arab dominated trade in enslaved people in east Africa, which ended after African resistance and British pressure in the late 19th century, will go on sale this weekend in Scotland. The auctioneer Marcus Salter, of Cheeky Auctions in Tain, Ross, said he wanted to ensure history was confronted with the sale of the “sensitive artefact” and did not wish to offend. But the Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group for Afrikan reparations, said trading in such items meant people were “continuing to profit from the slave trade”. Nigel Murray, a retired lawyer in the Scottish Highlands, contacted the Guardian after he saw the chains promoted on Facebook and said “he was never going to buy anything more” from Cheeky Auctions. The shackles, dated to 1780 and valued at about £1,000, are among objects listed in the auction, called “Challenging History”. Salter said he was selling the chains for a dealer whose father had owned them for 50 years, adding: “No matter what happens there’s going to be money made out of it from somewhere.” He claimed if the item was donated to a museum, it could be “put into storage and never seen again”, and that slavery-linked mahogany was sold and used without controversy. “I think it’s important not to upset and offend, but shock people into learning the whole truth,” Salter said. “There are certain things we’re not allowed to sell at auction. We had to check with the platform we’re selling with that we could do this. They consider the slave chains to be a historical artefact, therefore we can. “We’ve had people we’ve never met say they’re boycotting us. We’ve had people who educated us and we educated them. There have been others who just disagree and never want to come in.” In 2024, the Antiques Roadshow expert Ronnie Archer-Morgan refused to value an ivory bangle linked to enslavement. Ribeiro-Addy said of the chains: “If they were to be put in a museum I would understand, but buying and selling them like oddities is the same thing that people do when it comes to human remains – treating them as collector’s items, something to be fetishised rather than items that should be looked at in horror. “Why are you selling it for profit? Unless you’re trying to re-enact the history of enslavement by profiting from something used to inflict pain and oppression. We’ve got people trying give valid reasons for continuing to profit from the slave trade – that’s all it sounds like to me.” Murray said the auction was “vile”, adding: “An auction is the way enslaved people were sold, and here you are auctioning these chains off. “[Descendants of plantation owners] have millions of pounds gained from slavery, to see people making more money out of it just made me feel very angry.” Caecilia Dance, an associate at London law firm Wedlake Bell, has advised on the restitution of Nazi-looted art. Dance said she could not comment on the auction, but that there was “no specific law against” trading objects linked to slavery. She added that “public interest stewardship” – donation, sale, or long-term loan to a museum with relationships with affected communities – would be the “ideal management pathway” for an item linked to slavery. Dance said: “It’s reached a point in the art trade where if there’s any sign an item might have been looted in the Nazi period, no one wants to buy it. “It’s probably only a matter of time that that ethical framework extends to objects associated with enslavement because you risk commodifying trauma, even if the sale is completely lawful. Public opinion is definitely turning in favour of restitution.”

The splinternet: how online shutdowns are getting cheaper and easier to impose

During the height of Iran’s blackout in January, people could still access a platform that, in some senses, was like the internet. Iranians could message family members on a government-monitored app and watch clips of Manchester United on a Farsi-language video-sharing site. They could read state news and use a local navigation service. What they couldn’t do was check international headlines about thousands of people being killed by government forces during one of the bloodiest weeks in recent Iranian history. Nor, for the most part, could they get evidence out of Iran to the outside world – no pictures, no videos, no testimony of military vehicles being driven into protesters or family members being dragged from their homes and shot. What Iran has, a splinternet, is becoming reality for many millions of people. It is likely to get far worse. More than half of Russia’s regions are able to access only a limited, government-approved version of the internet through their mobile phones. The “great firewall of China” blocks most of the global internet, including sites such as Google and the Guardian. The Myanmar junta has experimented with targeted internet shutdowns and so recently have authorities in Afghanistan and Pakistan. For nearly two decades, the US backed a global effort to make it extremely difficult for governments to divide up the internet in this way. It hinged on funding tools built by groups worldwide to circumvent censorship. These made it very costly and very hard to shut down the internet entirely, and they ensured that governments that did seek to cut off their people often had to isolate themselves and their financial institutions as well. Like many US soft-power initiatives, the programme was imperfect, morally complex and at times at odds with the policies of other governments. Yet it is one foundation of what the internet is: a global commons. Today’s online world is dominated by large tech platforms and awash with illegal content and misinformation. But it is still a structure in which facts, ideas and information accessible from London are largely accessible from Delhi, Johannesburg and São Paulo as well. That could change rapidly. On the one hand is the matter of US funding, now cut or apparently redirected towards a Trumpian, politicised effort to undermine global attempts to regulate US big-tech platforms. On the other is the mounting export of censorship technologies, which are constantly improving and increasingly marketed overseas. These include devices sold by companies in China that give their customers – governments in Pakistan, Myanmar and Ethiopia among others – extremely fine-tuned control over what comes in and out of a country. It is believed that similar technologies are the foundation of Iran’s current shutdown. Censorship technologies are growing more powerful at the same time as programmes designed to stymie them have been decimated. To those who work on the problem, the stakes are high. “When governments want to not be scrutinised for how many people they’re killing in their streets, they’ll shut the internet down,” said a former US official. It is not easy to build a splinternet. The internet is, by design, a decentralised and deeply inter-dependent network. But Iran’s recent example indicates that it is becoming far more plausible. Russia has been attempting to create a similar cut-off internet for some years, and other authoritarian regimes appear to share the ambition. It will become cheaper and easier to achieve. Governments worldwide, including in Europe, are promoting notions of sovereign data, sovereign AI and, in some cases, sovereign internet. Accompanying this is an ambition to nationalise infrastructure, for example to keep UK citizens’ health records stored in UK data centres. This is an understandable goal, given the increasingly authoritarian bent of US tech platforms that are the custodians of much of the world’s data. But if fascist or authoritarian regimes ascend, such an approach risks replacing one set of despots with another. Iran’s ability to cut off its internet was prefigured by a years-long push to nationalise its underlying infrastructure. Shutdowns such as Iran’s become far easier when a country’s data is entirely accessible to its domestic authorities. Those fighting for digital freedoms in harsh environments – in Iran and beyond – are approaching Europe, hoping the EU might pick up some of what the US has dropped and fund anticensorship technologies. It is doubtful that Europe has the money or the willpower to do much, given the other responsibilities it must shoulder. Next to defence, it seems a marginal concern. But the information environment as we know it – the ground of shared fact that allowed this piece to be written and you to read it – is at stake.

Ukraine war briefing: Hungary threatens to block €90bn EU loan to Kyiv in oil row

The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has threatened to veto the EU’s €90bn ($106bn) loan to Ukraine unless Kyiv restores Russian oil deliveries through a pipeline on its territory. Ukrainian authorities say the Druzhba pipeline was shut down after being damaged during a Russian attack in January, angering Kremlin allies Orbán and the Slovakian prime minister, Robert Fico. “As long as Ukraine blocks the Druzhba pipeline, Hungary will block the €90 billion Ukrainian war loan,” Orbán said on Facebook on Friday. “We will not be pushed around!” Slovakian economy minister Denisa Sakova said Ukraine had postponed the resumption of oil deliveries until 24 February. On Wednesday, Fico declared a state of emergency over supplies and threatened retaliatory measures against Ukraine if the pipeline – which runs from Russia through its territory to Slovakia and Hungary – was not reopened. Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, confirmed it was opposing the EU loan, saying on X on Friday: “By blocking oil transit to Hungary through the Druzhba pipeline, Ukraine violates the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, breaching its commitments to the European Union. We will not give in to this blackmail.” Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said his country is not losing its war against Russia, has taken hundreds of square kilometres in a new counteroffensive and that European troops should deploy right on the frontline after any ceasefire. The Ukrainian president told Agence France-Presse ahead of the war’s fourth anniversary on 24 February: “You can’t say that we’re losing the war. Honestly, we’re definitely not losing it, definitely. The question is whether we will win.” Speaking at the presidential palace in Kyiv, he added: “That is the question – but it’s a very costly question.” Zelenskyy said Kyiv’s forces were gaining ground in counterattacks along the southern frontline. “I won’t go into too many details,” Zelenskyy told AFP of the advances, “but today I can congratulate our army first and foremost – all the defence forces – because as of today, 300 [square] kilometres have been liberated.” He did not say over what timeframe and the claim could not be verified. Military bloggers have suggested some of those gains could have been aided by sweeping outages of Elon Musk’s Starlink internet terminals across the Ukraine front. Zelenskyy said Kyiv was taking advantage of the situation but conceded that Ukrainian forces had also experienced interruptions due to the outages. “There are problems, there are challenges,” he said. Five of Europe’s top military powers have announced a joint programme to quickly develop low cost drones, as the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in the fighting in Ukraine drives a shift in modern warfare. Defence ministers and deputy ministers from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Poland said in a statement on Friday that the low-cost effectors and autonomous platforms (Leap) initiative would help “improve our collective security” within Nato while strengthening European cooperation. German defence minister Boris Pistorius said the aim of the project was to “rapidly and cheaply develop innovative systems, in particular for defence against drones, and then just as rapidly produce them in large numbers”. UK minister of state Luke Pollard said each member of the group has made a “multimillion” dollar commitment to advance the technology needed to start producing components of the new system “within 12 months”. The US and Britain uncovered Vladimir Putin’s plans to invade Ukraine but most of Europe – including Volodymyr Zelenskyy – dismissed them. Shaun Walker’s exclusive account draws on more than 100 interviews with senior intelligence officials and other insiders in multiple countries. As the war anniversary approaches and the world enters a new period of geopolitical uncertainty, Europe’s politicians and spy services continue to draw lessons from the failures of 2022. Ukrainian drones damaged a site in southern Russia’s Udmurtia region, the governor said early on Saturday. Injuries had resulted, Alexander Brechalov also said on Telegram. An unofficial Ukrainian Telegram site, Realna Viyna, said Ukrainian forces had attacked a plant manufacturing Russian missiles in the city of Votkinsk in Udmurtia, about 1,400km (780 miles) from Ukraine and posted what it said were pictures of the strike. Ukrainian competitors will boycott the Milano Cortina Paralympics opening ceremony on 6 March in Verona, their committee said on Friday, due to the authorisation of some Russian and Belarusian athletes with their national flags. The International Paralympic Committee’s allocation of 10 combined slots to Russian and Belarusian athletes has created a political storm over the coming Games. More than 5,000 women and girls have been killed in Ukraine and another 14,000 injured since Russia’s invasion began in February 2022, Sofia Calltorp, the head of UN Women in Geneva, told reporters on Friday.

Why is South Korea angry that Yoon Suk Yeol wasn’t sentenced to death?

On Thursday, former president Yoon Suk Yeol was found guilty of leading an insurrection and sentenced to life imprisonment with labour over his failed martial law declaration in December 2024. When he received his sentence, hundreds of his opponents cheered outside the court. But the mood quickly shifted to disappointment and anger. So what is happening in South Korea and why are so many people unhappy? What has the reaction been to Yoon’s sentencing? Although life imprisonment and the death penalty are in effect the same in a country that has not executed anyone since 1997, many South Koreans see Yoon’s sentence as dangerously lenient. A Gwangju civic coalition called the life term “a failure to deliver even minimal justice”. Other South Korean human rights groups, civic groups, labour unions and political parties also issued statements expressing dismay. Democratic party leader Jung Chung-rae, who had prepared a speech celebrating a death sentence, said the verdict was “a clear retreat” from the citizens’ movement that stopped the December 2024 martial law attempt. International human rights groups opposed the death penalty for Yoon, while acknowledging the gravity of the charges. Why are people upset about the punishment? Anger is rooted in South Korea’s history of elite impunity, and the severity of the punishment, rather than a desire for an execution. In 1996, military dictator Chun Doo-hwan received the death penalty for leading a 1979 coup and the subsequent massacre in Gwangju. His sentence was reduced to life on appeal. He was then pardoned and released in 1997. He lived freely until his death in 2021. In closing arguments, prosecutors said the death penalty in South Korea’s criminal justice system “does not mean execution but rather functions as the community’s will to respond to crime.” The criminal code offers only three punishments for the ringleaders of an insurrection: death, life with labour, or life without labour. Thursday’s verdict gave Yoon life with labour, which allows parole after 20 years. A death sentence, offering no chance of parole, would have sent a stronger signal that such acts cannot be mitigated. What was the court’s reasoning? Judge Jee Kui-youn cited several mitigating factors: Yoon’s planning didn’t appear meticulous, he attempted to limit force, most of his plans failed, he had no prior criminal record, had long served in public office, and was relatively old at 65. Critics dismissed the reasoning as perverse. Lawmakers argued long public service should aggravate, not mitigate, abuse of state power. They noted the coup was halted by citizen resistance and parliamentary intervention, not Yoon’s restraint. Progressive newspaper Hankyoreh wrote in an editorial that “the judiciary is showing behaviour that falls far short of citizens’ standards.” One human rights group pointed to recent German prosecutions of elderly former Auschwitz guards as evidence that state crimes by those in power cannot be excused by age or clean records. Could Yoon be pardoned? South Korea has convicted four conservative former presidents before Yoon. Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo were pardoned in 1997. In the democratic era, Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak were pardoned after serving a few years each. Many fear a life sentence makes a future pardon more politically feasible, whereas death would raise the political cost. Political parties are pushing an insurrection pardon prohibition bill through parliament. Democratic party leader Jung said it would pass soon, warning that the judiciary’s leniency toward Chun Doo-hwan had “returned like a boomerang” and resulted in “another tragedy”. How has Yoon reacted to his sentencing? In a statement released on Friday, Yoon maintained his martial law declaration was “for the nation and the people” and “deeply apologised” for the frustrations and hardships experienced by citizens due to his “inadequacies”. He showed no remorse for the act itself, calling it a “decision to save the nation”. He questioned whether appealing was worthwhile, accusing the judiciary of a lack of independence, but his legal team clarified the statement did not mean he was abandoning his potential appeal. He urged supporters: “Our fight is not over. We must unite and rise.”