Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday hailed a US decision to partially lift restrictions on using US-donated weapons to strike inside Russia as a “step forward”.

Ukraine yesterday reported nine people had been killed in four regions of the war-battered country, as Russia presses gains on the front line where Kyiv’s troops are struggling.

UK police yesterday said that 40 people had been arrested and three officers injured after protesters refused to disperse following a demonstration in London over Israel’s latest offensive in Gaza.

Britain’s Conservative Party will introduce mandatory national service for 18-year-olds if it wins the national election on July 4, comprising military or community participation, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said yesterday.

G7 finance ministers cited “progress” in finding ways to use profits from frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine as they wrapped up a meeting Saturday, envisioning a concrete proposal to present to a leaders’ summit next month.

Russia yesterday said for the first time that the Islamic State group coordinated the March concert hall assault in Moscow, the country’s deadliest terror attack in two decades.

British police said they had arrested 16 people on suspicion of aggravated trespass at the University of Oxford on Thursday, after pro-Palestinian protesters held a sit-in at the university vice-chancellor’s office.

The World Wide Fund for Nature’s (WWF) Norwegian chapter said yesterday it would take legal action against Norway for opening up its seabed to mining before performing sufficient impact studies.

UK political leaders kicked off six weeks of campaigning yesterday, firing the first angry shots in their electoral battle before the country votes for a new government on July 4.

Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday signed a decree allowing the confiscation of assets inside Russia belonging to the United States, its citizens and companies, to compensate those hit by Western sanctions against Moscow.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a national election yesterday, naming July 4 as the date for a vote his governing Conservatives are widely expected to lose to the opposition Labour Party after 14 years in power.

Gunmen on motorbikes stormed a mining community in central Nigeria, killing up to 40 people and torching homes, residents said, in the latest violence to hit a region troubled by resource disputes and intercommunal strife.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, commenting on the helicopter crash that killed Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, said yesterday that US sanctions had worsened aviation safety.

Elderly Russian physicist Anatoly Maslov was sentenced on Tuesday to 14 years in a penal colony for treason, the latest of a string of cases against experts working on the science that underpins Russia's development of hypersonic missiles

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was given permission yesterday to appeal against extradition to the United States after arguing at London’s High Court that he might not be able to rely on his right to free speech in a US court.

Russia said yesterday its forces had captured the Ukrainian village of Bilogorivka, one of the few remaining settlements in the eastern Lugansk region under Kyiv’s control.

Russian strikes killed at least 10 people, including a pregnant woman, and injured 25 others in two separate attacks in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region yesterday, local officials said.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico’s life is no longer in danger following an assassination attempt, Deputy Prime Minister Robert Kalinak said yesterday.

For Ukrainian gun commander Oleksandr Kozachenko, the long-awaited US ammunition can’t come fast enough as he and his comrades struggle to hold off relentless Russian attacks.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico remains in serious condition and still faces risks of complications but has stabilised, officials said yesterday, following Wednesday’s assassination attempt.