Three-day Russia-Ukraine ceasefire begins as Moscow holds Victory Day parade – Europe live
Here are some images coming out of Hungary ahead of the inauguration of Péter Magyar as the new prime minister:
Russia will always be victorious, says Putin at scaled-back Victory Day parade
Vladimir Putin has declared Russia will always be victorious as he oversaw a scaled-back Victory Day parade on Red Square held under heavy security amid mounting fears of Ukrainian attacks and growing public fatigue with the war. Speaking to the crowd, the Russian leader invoked the sacrifices of the second world war to rally support for his soldiers fighting in the war in Ukraine. “The great feat of the generation of victors inspires the warriors carrying out the tasks of the special military operation today,” he said, using the Kremlin’s preferred euphemism for his invasion of Ukraine. “They stand against an aggressive force armed and supported by the entire Nato bloc. And despite this, our heroes move forward. Victory has always been and will always be ours.” Despite the confident rhetoric, this year’s parade laid bare a moment of acute weakness for the Russian president. Moscow on Saturday was blanketed in heavy security, with internet services switched off across the city as Ukraine continued to rattle the Kremlin with long-range drone and missile strikes – forcing organisers to strip the event of its usual pageantry. It was not until the final hours that it became clear Ukraine would not disrupt the proceedings. On the eve of the parade, the US president, Donald Trump, announced Russia and Ukraine had agreed to a three-day ceasefire and prisoner exchange. The customary display of missiles and armoured vehicles, a fixture of the parade since Putin introduced military hardware in 2017, was absent entirely. In its place, guests were shown a video showcasing Russia’s drone capabilities and nuclear arsenal. The audience, which included a small delegation of foreign leaders from Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, also watched as a column of North Korean soldiers marched across the square. North Korea has emerged as one of Russia’s closest allies in recent years, with its troops fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine. The parade lasted about 45 minutes, roughly half the length of previous years. “It was a modest parade,” wrote the pro-Kremlin commentator Sergei Markov on Telegram, adding: “There are still enormous challenges ahead.” Russian authorities openly acknowledged that the security measures were designed specifically to protect Putin, an admission that underscored just how dramatically the calculus of a war Russia once expected to win in weeks has since shifted. Earlier in the week, Putin pressed Volodymyr Zelenskyy for a ceasefire to coincide with the parade. Ukraine initially dismissed the proposal as a cynical ploy to shield the celebrations from drone attacks. Zelenskyy’s response came on Friday night in the form of a decree laced with sardonic wit: Ukraine would, he announced, “permit” Russia to hold the event, by choosing not to attack it, out of deference to a request from the US president. The ceasefire is set to hold until 11 May. This year’s Victory Day parade was the first to be held since Russia’s war on Ukraine has outlasted the Soviet Union’s entire campaign against Nazi Germany. Putin has repeatedly sought to draw a direct line between the two wars, falsely casting his invasion as a continuation of the struggle against Nazism. Tellingly on Saturday, he was seated not beside veterans of the second world war as in previous years, but flanked by soldiers who had fought in Ukraine. With no victory in sight and no timeline for an end to the current war, the mood inside Russia is souring. Mass internet blackouts in the weeks before the parade, imposed by security services and justified as necessary precautions, have fuelled public anger and dragged on Putin’s approval ratings. After years of war-fuelled growth, driven largely by mass military spending, the Russian economy is now showing signs of strain. Growth has slowed sharply, with rising inflation squeezing ordinary Russians and businesses alike, while the budget deficit climbs to record highs. On the battlefield, the picture is similarly grinding. Russian troops are near a standstill, with neither side appearing close to a breakthrough. Advances have slowed in recent months, both armies showing signs of exhaustion and sustaining heavy casualties, while continuing to strike each other’s energy infrastructure. Yet there is little sign that any of this is pushing Putin toward compromise. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told Russian media on Thursday that Moscow sees no basis for a new round of trilateral talks with Ukraine and the US until Ukrainian forces withdraw from the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine – a condition Kyiv has flatly rejected. Ukraine continues to hold several key cities and fortified positions in Donetsk, defended at the cost of tens of thousands of lives.
US awaiting response from Iran over proposals for ceasefire deal, says Rubio
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has said that Washington is expecting a response from Iran to its proposals for an interim deal to end the conflict in the Middle East, as Iran accused the US of breaching the increasingly fragile ceasefire announced last month. In recent days there have been the biggest flare-ups in fighting in and around the contested strait of Hormuz since the informal truce began. The rise in violence followed Donald Trump’s announcement – then rapid pause – of a new naval mission aimed at opening the strategic waterway. On Friday US forces fired on and disabled two Iranian-flagged tankers that attempted to violate the American blockade of Iran’s ports, the US military said. Despite the clashes diplomatic efforts continue, with the mediators Pakistan passing a brief memorandum to Iran that the US has said could act as a basis for a more solid ceasefire and allow new talks. Speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday evening, Trump said he expected a response from Iran soon. “I’m getting a letter supposedly tonight,” he said. Asked whether Iran was intentionally slow-rolling the negotiation process, he replied: “We’ll find out soon enough.” During a visit to Rome, Rubio said: “We’re expecting a response from them today at some point … I hope it’s a serious offer, I really do … The hope is it’s something that can put us into a serious process of negotiation.” There have been wild swings from hope to despair in recent days, as the US and Iran test each other’s resilience and will, seeking leverage in any talks through belligerent rhetoric, defiance and sporadic violence. Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, accused the US of breaking the ceasefire, posting on X on Friday: “Every time a diplomatic solution is on the table, the U.S. opts for a reckless military adventure.” Araghchi also boasted that Iran’s ballistic missile stocks and launcher capacity had not only been repaired and restocked during the pause in hostilities, but expanded. Control of the strait and the threat to restart attacks on nearby countries’ oil and other infrastructure in the Gulf are the two main cards Iran can play in negotiations. The US has blockaded Iran, stopping all Iran-linked shipping trying to leave the Gulf, to put pressure on Tehran. The elimination of Iran’s missile armoury and production facilities were repeatedly stated as a key objective by US officials early in the war. Their restriction is also likely to be a demand during any negotiations. An Iranian official said on Friday that US attacks overnight in and near the strait of Hormuz struck an Iranian cargo vessel, wounding 10 sailors, with five others missing. It was not immediately clear whether the vessel was directly targeted. US Central Command said Iranian forces had launched missiles, drones and small boats at three US warships overnight but that none were hit, while US forces destroyed the incoming threat and retaliated against land bases in Iran. Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates said it had responded to another Iranian missile barrage on Friday. The UAE’s defence ministry said three people were wounded after air defences engaged two ballistic missiles and three drones launched by Iran. It was not clear if all were successfully intercepted. The authorities told people to stay away from any fallen debris. Iran has launched hundreds of missiles and drones at the UAE during the war, frequently hitting civilian infrastructure, including oil facilities and luxury hotels. Trump said on Thursday that the ceasefire was holding, but hopes earlier this week that an “interim” deal between Tehran and Washington might be agreed before the US president travelled to China next week now look premature. Earlier on Friday, the US treasury announced sanctions against individuals and companies it accused of helping the Iranian war effort, including in China and Hong Kong. The fresh sanctions come just days before Trump is set to arrive in Beijing. The US president minimised the clashes, dismissing strikes on Thursday as “just a love tap” – but has repeated threats to launch a major new offensive against Iran unless there was agreement soon. The US proposal is believed to offer a formal ceasefire for at least 60 days that would lead to talks to resolve contentious issues such as Iran’s nuclear programme. “They have to understand: if it doesn’t get signed, they’re going to have a lot of pain,” Trump told reporters in Washington. Despite many observers’ scepticism, the possibility of even a partial agreement that could lead to the reopening of the strait of Hormuz sent global stocks to near-record highs on Thursday as oil prices dropped steeply. On Friday, the price of a barrel of Brent crude headed upwards once more. In normal times the strait carries a fifth of the world’s supplies of oil and fossil gas. Its closure in the first days of the war has already forced a steep rise in fuel prices around the world and threatens a global recession. Pakistani officials have expressed optimism in recent days about a potential deal. Islamabad hosted a round of abortive face-to-face talks last month. On Monday, the US military said it had destroyed six Iranian small boats, as well as cruise missiles and drones, after Trump sent warships to guide stranded tankers through the waterway. Two ships of the many hundred that are stranded are believed to have crossed through the strait under the protection of the US navy, but the effort – called Project Freedom – was shelved after about 48 hours, possibly as a result of complaints from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Trump claimed he had paused it to allow negotiations a better chance of success. In Washington on Friday, Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, met JD Vance to discuss the Pakistani-led mediation efforts to bring the conflict to an end. During the meeting, al-Thani “stressed the need for all parties to engage with the ongoing mediation efforts, to pave the way for addressing the root causes of the crisis through peaceful means and dialogue, leading to a comprehensive agreement that achieves lasting peace in the region”, the Qatari foreign ministry said on X. Analysts say Iranian leaders are divided over whether to engage in new talks with the US or hold out, despite the massive and continuing economic losses caused by the war and the US blockade. Senior Iranian officials have publicly rejected concessions in recent days. Some appear to favour dragging out the negotiations closer to the November midterm elections in the US, when the Trump administration will be under intense pressure to settle the war and Iran may get a better deal. However, regional diplomats believe Iran could overplay its hand, with there being an opportunity to finish the war and claim a victory at the present – something that could be harder if all-out fighting resumes. If there was no agreement, Washington could also unilaterally end the war and walk away, leaving Iran under suffocating economic sanctions, they said. Any agreement between the US and Iran could also help lower tensions in Lebanon, where a separate truce was threatened by an Israeli strike on southern Beirut that killed a commander from Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Islamist militant movement, on Wednesday. The US announced on Friday that it would mediate two days of “intensive talks” between Israel and Lebanon next week. A new Israeli strike on Friday killed four people, including two women, in the southern Lebanon town of Toura, the health ministry said. Air raid sirens sounded in several cities in northern Israel after shelling from Lebanon, according to the Israeli military.
‘They have screwed each other pretty badly’: tensions emerge in Netanyahu-Trump alliance
Benjamin Netanyahu interrupted an uncharacteristically long silence over the Iran conflict this week with a video commentary insisting he had “full coordination” with Donald Trump, with whom he spoke “almost daily”. The insistence that all was rosy in the US-Israeli relationship followed weeks of reports in the domestic press that Israel was no longer being consulted over the Iran conflict, and even less over Pakistani-brokered peace talks. Such is the scepticism over Netanyahu’s trustworthiness among the general public and independent press that the immediate reaction among observers to his video statement was speculation that the reality could be even worse than they had imagined. “He is doing so much talking about how great the relationship is that it makes me rather concerned about how much tension there is,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, an American-Israeli political consultant and pollster. “I wouldn’t be surprised, as the war is clearly going very poorly from all perspectives related to the original goals.” The US president and the Israeli prime minister have long presented mirror images of each other. They have both pioneered populist methods to dominate domestic politics, cutting away at the constitutional underpinning of the very systems that brought them to power, with little regard for past norms or constraints. Since 28 February, when they brought the Gulf to a standstill with a devastating US-Israeli assault on Iran, they have bound their fate together so tightly that it will be very hard for either of them to unstick themselves from its legacy. Netanyahu spent decades trying to persuade a succession of US presidents to join Israel in a war against the Islamic Republic. He went to unprecedented lengths for a foreign leader wading into US domestic politics, in particular when it came to undermining the multilateral nuclear deal with Iran of 2015, which had been Barack Obama’s flagship foreign policy achievement. Netanyahu helped coax Trump to walk out of that deal in 2018, which in turn led to a ramping up of Iran’s nuclear programme and accumulation of a stockpile of highly enriched uranium sufficient for a dozen nuclear warheads. And in February this year, according to extensive reporting in the US press, Netanyahu was instrumental in convincing Trump that war was the only solution to the threat, and one that would be easily won. By then, the Israeli leader was pushing at a door that was already ajar. The month before, US forces had pulled off an extraordinary coup, swooping into Caracas in a surprise raid and whisking away the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro. “Netanyahu, being the conman that he is, used Venezuela as an example,” Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat, said. “He said to him: ‘Look what you did in Venezuela. It was painless. It was effortless. It was beautiful. You changed the regime.’ “Then he begins bombarding Trump with intelligence data showing that Iran had expanded its missile production and its missile-launching capabilities, and still has 450kg of highly enriched uranium,” Pinkas said. With the help of the Mossad director, David Barnea, Netanyahu portrayed the Tehran regime as an overripe fruit ready to drop from the branch. “He told Trump: ‘The Iranian economy is in shambles. The people are on the precipice of revolt. The Revolutionary Guards are losing control. Life in Iran is intolerable. This is our time,’” Pinkas said. “‘What we could do together is bring down the regime … think that together, jointly, we can win the war in three, four days.’” According to multiple reports, US intelligence and military officials stressed the risk that Iran could attack US allies in the Gulf and close the strait of Hormuz. But Netanyahu – and US administration hawks including the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth – prevailed, arguing that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards were overrated and would not have the strength to hit back. They were proved wrong on every count. The Iranian people did not rise up, the regime did not fall, the Kurds did not attack from the north-west and the Revolutionary Guards were able to inflict withering damage on US bases and Gulf monarchies, close the Hormuz strait and trigger a global economic crisis. “Some 30 days into the war, by the end of March there were signs that Trump was very disappointed with Netanyahu,” Pinkas said. The president stopped mentioning Israel and Netanyahu in his relentlessly upbeat public statements about the war. When US negotiators started talking to their Iranian counterparts and Pakistani mediators in the run up to a ceasefire announcement on 8 April, Israel was left out of the loop. Israeli officials complained to the press that they had to use their intelligence assets to try to find out what was going on. There are varying accounts of what is on the table in the peace talks, but there has been no mention of Iran’s missile arsenal or its use of regional proxies, both of which are Israeli priorities. When Trump did mention Netanyahu, it was mostly to tell him off. After Israel bombed Iran’s South Pars gasfield, for example, Trump said he had told Netanyahu “not to do that”. “On occasion, he’ll do something, and if I don’t like it … we’re not doing that any more,” the president said. When the ceasefire was agreed, Trump initially sided with Netanyahu’s interpretation that Lebanon was excluded and then, with the truce in jeopardy, swiftly reversed himself and made Israel follow suit. “Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the U.S.A. Enough is enough!!!” he said in a social media post on 17 April, in an unprecedented public rebuke to Netanyahu. Since this nadir, Israeli government officials have been briefing reporters that the ceasefire cannot last and that a return to hostilities was inevitable. Last weekend, there was a flurry of reporting in Israeli newspapers that intensive US-Israeli military coordination had resumed at their earlier tempo, in anticipation of further joint strikes. Those strikes have yet to materialise, however, and the Trump administration has sought to downplay the significance of recent exchanges of fire around the strait of Hormuz. Daniel Shapiro, a former US ambassador to Israel, said Trump is already looking beyond Iran to his next major challenge: a 14 May trip to China and a critical meeting with President Xi Jinping. “President Trump is going to want to have this war more or less behind him by the time he goes to Beijing,” Shapiro said. “Otherwise, he will be in the position of a supplicant seeking Xi Jinping’s help to get them to convince Iran to accept his terms or to make concessions they haven’t made. And that’s a very weak position to be in when he would rather focus on getting some of the Chinese-US economic relations on a more stable ground.” From prior experience in the Gaza and Lebanon conflicts, Netanyahu can draw some confidence that even if he is forced to accept a temporary peace deal that runs counter to his own interests, Trump’s attention will inevitably be diverted elsewhere, and Israel’s hands will be freed again. “If Trump reaches a deal, the Israelis will have to accept it for the time being, and then perhaps they will revisit it to ‘mow the grass’, as they say, on the missile programme or on the nuclear programme at some later time,” Shapiro said. Netanyahu also knows there are limits to the extent Trump can free himself from their geopolitical embrace. As Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, points out, Netanyahu can always make waves in US politics. “I think Trump’s jealous of Netanyahu because Netanyahu is one of the few people who can generate more press than he does,” Bolton said, pointing out that despite Trump’s imposition of a ceasefire, “he’s still giving Netanyahu a pretty free hand in Lebanon.” Pinkas, who served as adviser to prime ministers Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres, argues that strategic failure in the Iran war will also prove to be too powerful a glue for Trump to dissolve quickly. “The problem Trump has is that if he lashes out at Netanyahu, if he expresses his disillusionment or desperation, he basically admits he was led into this war,” Pinkas said, adding that the conflict looks certain to hurt both men at the ballot box. Netanyahu must hold an election by October, which by current polling would finally end his premiership. The elections in the US are congressional, but they could still render Trump a lame duck, at least in domestic politics. “This affects Netanyahu politically and this affects Trump politically,” Pinkas said. “In other words, they have screwed each other pretty badly.”
‘We are talking about energy security for Europe’: Norway doubles down on oil and gas production
In case of any doubt about Norway’s commitment to maintain – and expand – its production of gas and oil offshore, the energy minister, Terje Aasland, has a pithy response: “We will develop, not dismantle, activity on our continental shelf.” This week, to the alarm of environmental campaigners, he announced that three gasfields off the country’s southern coast would reopen by the end of 2028 – nearly three decades after they closed – to meet a shortfall caused by the impact of the war in Ukraine and disruption to supplies from the Middle East. The decision will help keep gas and oil production at about the 2025 level – which has been stable for almost 20 years – and stay broadly the same for the rest of this decade. Norway has 97 offshore oilfields, three of which came on stream last year, and its Norwegian Offshore Directorate expects “100 and beyond” within the next two years, still producing at least the present level of 2m barrels of oil daily. The Barents Sea, in the high north, is the new gas and oil frontier – with the prospect of mining for seabed minerals between northern Norway and Greenland, a more distant prospect after initial surveys by the Norwegian Offshore Directorate – an agency of Aasland’s department – showed potential. “Norwegian offshore production plays an important role in ensuring energy security in Europe,” Aasland tells the Guardian. “The world, and Europe, will have a need for oil and gas for decades to come and it is crucial that Norway continues to develop its continental shelf to remain a reliable and long-term supplier … and (with) a high level of exploration activity.” The sector generates vast wealth for Norway, but the decision this week to reopen the Albuskjell, Vest Ekofisk and Tommeliten Gamma gasfields in the North Sea, which were closed in 1998, has received heavy criticism in some quarters. It goes against the advice of the country’s environment agency, and the Socialist Left party accused the government of “greenwashing”. Lars Haltbrekken, the deputy leader and environment spokesperson for the party, says: “It shows that the government is once again blatantly ignoring environmental advice from its own experts. All the talk about responsible oil extraction is nothing but nonsense. It’s greenwashing through and through, with vulnerable and important natural areas being put at risk with full awareness.” The Norwegian energy company Equinor (formerly Statoil), in which the state owns 67%, says it is making a “big effort” to maintain its own 2020 production levels of 1.2m barrels daily up to 2035. The Norwegian’s state holding should yield about £2bn in dividends this year. “It’s very important for the market value of the company to keep production higher now than in 2001 – yes, we had a lower production then than now,” says Equinor’s Ola Morten Aanestad. To arrest any decline, he says Equinor is committed to investing $6bn (£4.4bn) annually up to 2035 – “more drilling … a lot of new development, more pipelines … maybe smaller fields developing, but still important.” Aasland – Norway’s longest-serving oil minister, a 61-year-old former electrician and trade union leader – says Norway has “a responsibility”. “In Europe, before the war in Ukraine, there was much talk of how to get rid of oil and gas on our continental shelf … now they ask me every day ‘can you deliver more oil and gas’? We are talking about energy security for Europe and we have to increase investment. We have a responsibility. Our focus is very clear.” Aasland also stresses the importance of job security for the 210,000 people employed by the energy industry in Norway. “It is really important that they wake up in the morning knowing they have a safe job for the future.” Aanestad says Norway’s consistent tax rate on oil and gas firms has made it attractive to investors. “We’ve had a 78% taxation level since the 1970s – a high tax, I know – but investors know what to expect; it’s predictable,” he says. That tax is a mainstay of Norway’s £1.5tn sovereign wealth fund, which helps it run a sizeable surplus. Norway’s unashamed approach is at odds with the UK, it’s North Sea neighbour, where the government has ruled out new oil and gas exploration licences. Terje Sørenes, the chief economist at the Norwegian Offshore Directorate, says the aim is to prolong production as long as possible, and increase output, that currently provides gas for a third of Europe’s consumption. For now, Europe’s energy superpower is prioritising ever more drilling and offshore production well into the 2030s and beyond.
France has a record number of presidential hopefuls. Will any of them be able to hold back the far right?
At a Paris meeting hall this week, hundreds of leftwing voters braved a rainstorm to gather chanting: “Unity! Unity!” They were celebrating the 90th anniversary of France’s Popular Front, a leftwing alliance that was formed in the 1930s amid fears that the far right could take power. But their concerns were more immediate. A year before the 2027 French presidential election, Marine Le Pen’s far-right the National Rally (RN) – already the biggest single opposition party in parliament – is high in the polls. The party is closer to power than it has ever been before, and the business community that once shunned it is now openly meeting with senior party figures. “Voters on the left want unity – so let’s cut the bullshit and build it,” said Danielle Simonnet, a Paris MP for the leftwing party L’Après, who said divisions would allow the far right to cement its gains. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, cannot constitutionally run again for a third consecutive term next spring, leaving the presidential race more open than it has been for a decade. But an unprecedented and bewilderingly high number of figures from across the political spectrum – about 30 – have expressed an interest in running, almost all of them focused on attempting to hold back the far right. The political debate is more about tactics, polling and which personalities may have the charisma to face off against Le Pen or her protege Jordan Bardella, than deep policy issues. The leftwing parties who gathered in Paris this week – including the Socialist party leadership, the Greens and several smaller groups – vowed to press on with a leftwing primary race for a united candidate in October, seeking to reproduce the New Popular Front, the leftwing alliance that grouped together to hold back the RN in the 2024 snap parliamentary election. But the initiative is struggling, as the left remains fragmented, with key figures preferring to run alone. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, 74, the veteran radical left leader of La France Insoumise (LFI), announced this week that he would run for president for the fourth time, having come third in 2022. He brushed aside polling that showed a high level of antipathy towards him outside his own party. Many others on the left are contemplating their own presidential bids, including the centre-left member of the European parliament Raphaël Glucksmann. Even the former Socialist president François Hollande is seeing a potential opportunity for a comeback – despite the fact that in 2016 he renounced running for a second term because he was the least popular French president since the second world war, with a satisfaction rating that had dropped to just 4%. Hollande said in a recent magazine interview that he felt he had crucial international experience. On the far right, Le Pen is awaiting an appeal trial verdict scheduled for 7 July to see if her conviction for the embezzlement of European parliament funds and the ban stopping her from running for public office will be upheld. If so, Bardella, 30, would run in her place. Both are polling high. On the right and centre, there are a multitude of personalities vying for space. Edouard Philippe, Macron’s first prime minister, will stand on a centre-right ticket. Another former prime minister, Gabriel Attal, wants to represent Macron’s centrist party, Renaissance, but faces rivalry from several others, including the justice minister, Gérald Darmanin. On the right, Bruno Retailleau, a former hardline interior minister who served in government under Macron, wants to be the rightwing candidate for Les Républicains, but faces rivalry inside his party from figures such as the MP Laurent Wauquiez, and from several outside the party, including the mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard. The former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin, who gained international fame articulating France’s opposition to the 2003 war in Iraq, and has been recently vocal on war in Gaza and the Middle East, is also seeking to run. For him and many candidates, the challenge will be gathering obligatory backing signatures from 500 elected officials. Amid the high number of men seeking to be candidates, some senior women at the left’s meeting this week warned that “testosterone” or “ego” should not be deciding factors. Antoine Bristielle, the director of opinion at the Fondation Jean-Jaurès thinktank, said it was crucial for candidates to understand the desire among French voters for an in-depth policy debate on social and economic issues. At the last presidential election in 2022, which took place against a backdrop of war in Ukraine, Macron beat Le Pen without an in-depth discussion of his policies. Then a 2024 snap election left parliament without an absolute majority and rudderless. Bristielle said: “The risk is that this presidential election focuses solely on rejecting the RN, a kind of strategic vote with the message: ‘This person is the most central, the most consensual, maybe they can beat the RN’ – even if that person is proposing nothing concrete and we don’t know where they’re going. That would be dramatic because it means that no in-depth policy issues would be settled.” Top of French voters’ concerns is healthcare – including difficulties accessing doctors in remote or deprived areas, and cuts to the hospital system – as well as the cost of living and the French social security system. But Bristielle said voters’ main socioeconomic worries were not at the centre of the political debate in France, “reinforcing the idea among French people that politicians are cut off from their concerns”. Crucially, polling last month by Ipsos showed 74% of French voters wanted either a radical transformation or deep changes in France – a substantial increase in the past three years. Bristielle said: “There has been a real feeling of immobilism in France, namely since the start of Emmanuel Macron’s second mandate. People want this presidential election to be a real democratic moment which settles the key issues for the future on the basis of tangible facts and clear directions put forward, but we’re still very far from that.” Christelle Craplet, the director of opinion at Ipsos BVA pollsters, said the election was impossible to predict at this early stage. She said the only key candidates in place right now were Mélenchon on the radical left and either Le Pen or Bardella for the RN. Craplet said: “Between these, we have a space which is not clear politically, with a large amount of candidates. This shows the fragmentation of the French political landscape and the difficulty of personalities to emerge in a consensual way, through ideas or charisma, or a selection process.” The prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, has called for policies to be put forward. “When a real presidential campaign kicks off … with a real debate on ideas, that will create a more dignified atmosphere,” he said.
Evacuation of hantavirus-stricken cruise ship could face delays due to bad weather
The evacuation of the hantavirus-stricken MV Hondius cruise ship must be completed within 24 hours of the vessel reaching Tenerife on Sunday or face days or even weeks of delay because of bad weather, authorities in the Canary Islands warned on Friday. The Dutch-flagged vessel, which was sailing from Argentina to Cape Verde, is due to arrive in the Spanish archipelago this weekend, triggering what Spain’s health minister has termed an “unprecedented operation” to receive, assess and repatriate the 149 passengers and crew members onboard. But the operation now faces the additional complication of changing weather. “The only window of opportunity we have to carry out this operation is around 12 o’clock on Sunday morning and until conditions change from Monday,” Alfonso Cabello, a regional government spokesperson, told reporters on Friday. “Otherwise, the ship must leave and no operation could be carried out again in theory … until the end of May,” he said, citing wind and swell. The MV Hondius is estimated to arrive at the port of Granadilla, Tenerife, in the early hours of Sunday. After negotiations between the Spanish government and the archipelago’s regional authorities, it will not dock but will instead remain at anchor in the south-eastern port of Granadilla. Passengers will be evaluated on the ship and will not have any contact with the local population when they are taken from the ship to be repatriated or, in the case of the 14 Spanish nationals onboard, transported to a military hospital in Madrid for compulsory quarantine. “This is an unprecedented operation in response to an international health alert involving 23 countries,” the Spanish health minister, Mónica García, told Spain’s state radio broadcaster, RNE, on Friday morning. “We’re coordinating this from Spain and the World Health Organization has entrusted Spain with this operation – which, as I’ve said, is unprecedented. We’re going to do what we have to do, which is work and deliver the necessary health and logistical management.” García confirmed that non-Spanish citizens who did not need urgent medical attention would be evacuated to their home countries even if they showed symptoms of hantavirus. “The international protocols will be followed – as will all the strict measures when it comes to health prevention,” she said. “The protocol is based on no one needing urgent medical attention. And we think that won’t be the case because everyone was asymptomatic when they left Cape Verde and they’ve been on the boat for many days now, which makes us think that the risk that they’ve been infected is diminishing each day.” Three people – a Dutch couple and a German national – have died in the outbreak on the ship. Four others confirmed to be infected – two Britons, a Dutch and a Swiss national – are being treated in hospitals in the Netherlands, South Africa and Switzerland. On Friday, the British and Spanish authorities said they were investigating two possible new cases. One involves a British national on the South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, where the cruise ship made a stop on 15 April. The other involves a woman who was on the same flight as a Dutch patient who died in Johannesburg after travelling on the MV Hondius and contracting the virus. She is being treated in a hospital in the eastern Spanish region of Alicante. Also on Friday, authorities in Singapore announced that two men who had been on board the Hondius tested negative for hantavirus but would remain in quarantine for 30 days as a precaution. They would be tested again before release, said Singapore’s Communicable Diseases Agency (CDA). The men, aged 65 and 67, had been on the same flight as a confirmed hantavirus case from St Helena to Johannesburg on 25 April, the CDA said a day earlier. The confirmed case died in South Africa. On Saturday, Australian consular officials advised they were travelling to Tenerife to assist and possibly repatriate four Australian citizens and one permanent resident onboard the vessel. The CDA’s laboratory conducted testing with “multiple samples collected from the individuals” and confirmed that hantavirus, including the Andes virus, was “not detected”. The WHO said on Friday that the risk the hantavirus strain in question posed to the public was minimal, as it spread only through “very close contact” and was “not spreading anything close” to how Covid had spread. “This is a dangerous virus, but only to the person who’s really infected, and the risk to the general population remains absolutely low,” the WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told a press briefing in Geneva. He said that even the people who had stayed in the same cabin as an infected person on the MV Hondius “don’t seem to be both infected in some cases”. Based on previous outbreaks in Argentina, it is thought the Andes strain of the virus can be spread between people through very close contact. Exactly how easily it is transmitted is unclear, with experts studying the virus and its transmission carefully given the relatively limited scientific data currently available. Despite these uncertainties, the WHO has stressed the hantavirus outbreak is not the start of a pandemic, and that the public health threat is low. The Guardian understands experts think transmission primarily occurs when patients have symptoms. However, out of an abundance of caution, public health teams involved in contact tracing are also considering the two days before symptoms develop. The UK and the US are among the countries that have agreed to send planes to Tenerife to repatriate their citizens. Health authorities across four continents are scrambling to track down and monitor passengers who left the ship before the outbreak was detected. They are also trying to trace others who may have come into contact with them since then. On 24 April, nearly two weeks after the first passenger had died onboard, more than two dozen people from at least 12 different countries left the ship without contact tracing, the ship’s operator and Dutch officials said on Thursday. According to the WHO, health authorities did not confirm hantavirus in a passenger on the MV Hondius until 2 May. The looming arrival of the ship has prompted considerable unease in the Canaries. Fernando Clavijo, the regional president, had objected to the ship coming into port at Granadilla and convinced the central government that it should instead remain at anchor. In an interview with the Spanish newspaper ABC on Friday, he said Spain had been under “no legal obligation” to take in the ship and that it should have put into port in Cape Verde, which refused it permission to dock. Speaking later the same day, Clavijo said a plan had been devised to minimise the time and contacts that the passengers being evacuated would have while on Tenerife, adding: “We know with certainty that no one will get off the ship if their plane is not already waiting on the runway.” The authorities’ insistence that everything possible was being done to protect people on Tenerife and across the wider archipelago appeared to have reassured locals. Visitors, too, appeared unfazed as they lay on sunloungers, soaking up the sunshine and the 23C heat. “It’s no problem,” said one local woman, who was selling tourist trinkets by the beach near Los Cristianos, in the south of the island. “The Canarian government has confirmed that the ship will not dock in the port but on the high seas.” The woman, who did not want to give her name, said her only concern was of the possible effects on Tenerife’s lucrative tourism industry. “People get scared quickly,” she added. Ima, who runs a shop selling traditional handmade goods, was similarly relaxed: “The news says it’s no problem.” But the view was not shared by everyone. Joao Decastro, who runs La Siesta Excursions, said he felt Spain was always the country that came to the rescue in international emergencies. He was worried about the possible cost to local people. “To be honest, I’m not very happy about what they’re doing because I think [the cruise ship passengers] have many places to go, right?” he said. “This is a very touristy area and right now that would make the tourists more afraid.” He added: “If there are three dead on a boat, imagine a population that reaches a million people here.” Additional reporting by Nicola Davis
Ukraine war briefing: Zelenskyy ‘hereby decrees’ Moscow can hold Victory Day parade
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has issued a decree “allowing” Russia’s Victory Day military parade to proceed and ensuring no weapons are aimed at Red Square. It came after Ukraine and Russia confirmed a ceasefire would take effect from 9 to 11 May. In what may have been a partly tongue-in-cheek announcement, Zelenskyy’s proclamation said: “I hereby decree: to permit the holding of a parade in the city of Moscow (Russian Federation) on May 9, 2026.” The decree continued that “the territorial sector of Red Square shall be excluded” from the planned deployment of Ukrainian weaponry. Ukraine’s president had needled the Kremlin over the past week for wanting a “permit” from Kyiv to hold its Victory Day parade in Moscow, as the Russians clamoured for a ceasefire and warned of reprisals against Kyiv if the somewhat demilitarised anniversary display – expected to lack tanks, missiles and other military equipment – came under attack. Zelenskyy said on Monday that the Russian authorities “fear drones may buzz over Red Square”. A large forest fire was burning through the Chornobyl exclusion zone on Friday after a drone crash near the defunct nuclear plant the previous day, Ukrainian authorities said. Radiation levels at the site were within “normal limits”, authorities reported, adding that firefighters were working to contain the blaze. The fire broke out on Thursday “as a result of a drone crash”, it said. It did not say the origin of the drone. Kyiv has repeatedly accused Moscow of recklessly attacking its nuclear sites, including the Chornobyl complex. In 2025 a Russian drone punctured a hole and started a fire causing extensive damage to one of the radiation shells covering the destroyed reactor unit. The exclusion zone suffered wildfires in 2020, which lasted several weeks and caused a spike in background radiation. Ukraine’s SBU security service said on Friday that it struck a Lukoil-owned refinery in Russia’s city of Perm for the second day in a row, marking the third such strike in the past nine days. It set fire to a key facility for primary oil processing at the refinery, one of the largest in Russia and located about 1,500 km (932 miles) from Ukraine. The SBU said it also again struck an oil pumping station in the area, damaging one of the reservoirs. Zelenskyy hailed a Ukrainian strike on a Russian oil depot in the Yaroslavl region, about 200km (125 miles) north-east of Moscow. At least 13 airports in southern Russia were closed on Friday morning due to the threat of a Ukrainian attack, aviation authorities in Russia said. Zelenskyy on Friday said he visited the frontline in south-eastern Ukraine, where Kyiv’s troops had managed to regain control over small chunks of land in recent months. “Despite the announced ceasefire, the enemy has not reduced the intensity of its assaults,” Zelenskyy said. The Russian defence ministry said on Friday its forces had taken control of the village of Kryva Luka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, state news agency RIA reported. Reuters, which carried the story, could not independently confirm the battlefield report. Ukraine is running short of air defence missiles after Russia’s massive winter attack campaign, the air force said on Friday, as it braces for further strikes. “Today, the launchers assigned to certain units and batteries are half-empty – and that’s putting it mildly. They have a limited number of missiles,” air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat was quoted as saying by the Ukrinform news agency. Ukraine makes its own systems to down long-range Russian drones but for missile interception it remains heavily dependent on foreign kit. The US Patriot is also being used extensively in the US-Israeli war in Iran, putting Ukraine under increased supply pressure. Ihnat said Ukraine has had to ask allies for as few as five to 10 missiles at a time for systems such as Nasams and Iris-T. Russia has increasingly focused its aerial attacks on small Ukrainian power substations, with increased drone capacity allowing it to disrupt Ukraine’s grid over the past winter more than ever, says the London-based research group Centre for Information Resilience. Ukraine struggles to protect such facilities, concentrating limited air defences instead on major assets including power plants. Ukraine’s energy sector has suffered about $25bn worth of damage as a result of Russia’s bombardment, according to World Bank estimates, with the total cost of the sector’s rebuilding and recovery estimated at more than $90bn. Russia complained that Israeli authorities had caved in to pressure from Ukraine by turning away a grain shipment from its Haifa port last week. Ukraine says the grain in question was stolen from regions of Ukraine that Russia has illegally occupied. The Russian foreign ministry said: “Moscow regretted this step, clearly taken under pressure from Kyiv.” Ukraine has said the cargo being turned away showed that Kyiv’s legal and diplomatic actions had worked. Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired 67 drones over Thursday night into Friday – the lowest number in almost a month. Volodymyr Zelenskyy also reported hundreds of Russian attacks on the frontline with short-range drones and attempted assaults. Russia’s defence ministry said it had downed 264 Ukrainian drones overnight and that its troops were “responding symmetrically”. Zelenskyy said on Friday that he expects US envoys of Donald Trump to visit Ukraine in the coming weeks to restart talks on ending Russia’s invasion. It comes after Ukraine’s lead negotiator, Rustem Umerov, attended meetings this week in the US that Zelenskyy said touched on further prisoner exchanges and security guarantees for Ukraine in the event of a peace deal. The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday it had registered more than 3,000 attacks on Ukraine’s healthcare system since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. About 80% hit outpatient clinics, hospitals and other care settings, while ambulances and other health-related vehicles accounted for the remaining 20%. “Every one of these attacks is a violation of international humanitarian law,” said the director of WHO Europe, Hans Kluge. “This cannot be normalised.” According to the UN, 12.7 million people in Ukraine are in need of humanitarian aid.