Former Ukrainian politician Andriy Portnov, once a top aide to ousted pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich, was shot dead outside a school in Madrid. Authorities say multiple gunmen fled into nearby woods. Portnov was under US sanctions for corruption ties in Ukraine.
Russia’s top diplomat has blamed the war in Ukraine for affecting the supply of arms to Armenia, and has expressed concern that Moscow’s longstanding ally would now look to the West for military support instead.
Speaking in Yerevan on the second day of a two-day visit to Armenia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that some of Russia’s weapons contracts with the former Soviet republic had been delayed or reassigned due to the pressures created by the war in Ukraine.
Armenia has long relied on Russian weapons in its bitter dispute with neighbouring Azerbaijan, against whom it has fought a series of conflicts since the late 1980s.
“We are currently in a situation where, as has happened throughout history, we are forced to fight all of Europe,” Lavrov said, in a barbed reference to European support for Ukraine in response to the Russian invasion.
“Our Armenian friends understand that in such conditions, we cannot fulfil all our obligations on time.”
As Russia has failed to deliver on weapons contracts paid for by Armenia, Yerevan has increasingly turned to countries like France and India for military supplies.
Lavrov said that Russia would not oppose these growing ties, but said that they raised concerns about its traditional ally’s strategic intentions.
“When an ally turns to a country like France, which leads the hostile camp and whose president and ministers speak openly with hatred toward Russia, it does raise questions,” he said.
Armenia has strengthened its ties with the West amid recent ongoing tensions with Azerbaijan, fallout from the last major eruption of conflict and Russia’s role in that.
In September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a military operation to retake Nagorno-Karabakh, a separatist enclave in Azerbaijan with a mostly ethnic Armenian population that had broken away from Baku with Armenian support amid the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Armenia accused Russian peacekeepers of failing to protect the more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians who fled the region, fuelled by decades of distrust, wars, mutual hatred and violence, after Azerbaijan’s lightning takeover.
According to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and numerous other nations, a diplomatic delegation from the European Union, Arab, and Asian countries, were shot by Israelis while visiting the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
As the Israeli military’s fourth-month-long offensive there, which has resulted in deaths and displacement, enters its fourth month, the diplomats were on a diplomatic mission on Wednesday to assess the humanitarian situation there.
The delegation had deviated from a previously agreed route and entered an area it was not authorized to be in, according to the Israeli army’s soldiers who fired warning shots to get it out. No injuries were reported.
The Israeli Civil Administration’s commander in the West Bank told Israeli officers to meet with delegation representatives in a statement from the military, “and will soon hold personal conversations with the diplomats and update them on the findings of the initial investigation conducted on the matter.”
Because Al Jazeera has been barred from the West Bank and Israel, Hamdah Salhut, an Al Jazeera correspondent from Amman, Jordan, claimed the incident demonstrates how reality is at work and how anyone can be shot by Israelis in the occupied West Bank.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been forced to leave their homes as part of the ongoing military operations in Jenin, Tulkarem, and surrounding areas in the occupied West Bank, she continued, adding, “These places in the Palestinian territory have come under complete siege.”
When shots are heard ringing out very close to the group and forcing it to flee for safety, delegation members appear in videos on social media.
Two Israeli soldiers were also seen nearby with their rifles pointed at them, according to footage captured by Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency.
The diplomatic delegation is conducting a field tour around the Jenin refugee camp to find out how much the suffering the residents of the area have endured. The occupation forces opened heavy fire from inside the camp.
قوات الاحتلال تطلق النار بشكل كثيف من… pic. https://twitter.com/qafjqQP0Sg
A humanitarian aid worker who spoke on condition of anonymity told The Associated Press that about 20 diplomats were being informed about the situation in Jenin at the time. No one was hurt, according to witnesses, and it’s not known where the shots came from.
The Israeli occupation forces intentionally targeted an accredited diplomatic delegation with live fire, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates in “the strongest possible terms.”
Other governments in Europe and the Arab world called for responses in addition to their own condemnations.
The Foreign Ministry of Turkiye said the firing was “in the most emphatic terms” and that Turkey was “demanding an immediate investigation and accountability.”
The ministry said in a statement that this attack, which endangered diplomats’ lives, is yet another example of Israel’s ongoing disregard for international law and human rights, adding that a diplomat from its own consulate in Jerusalem was one of the delegation.
Jean-Noel Barrot, the French ambassador, announced that he would call the Israeli ambassador. In a letter to the ambassador, Barbrot wrote on X, calling the incident “unacceptable” and demanding an explanation.
Two Ramallah-based Irish diplomats, who are members of the group, are named in the statement by Ireland’s foreign affairs minister, Simon Harris, who described it as “shocked and appalled.” I vehemently condemn this and say that it is completely unacceptable.
Jose Manuel Albares, the ambassador to Israel, was summoned by Spain’s foreign minister in Madrid. We demand accountability and clarity, he continued.
The strongest pro-Palestine voices in the EU have been led by Spain and Ireland, who have called for the end of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the suffering of the West Bank’s and enclave’s residents.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government demanded an explanation, claiming that its vice consul was one of the critics. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation will be contacted to explain the situation to Israel’s ambassador to Italy.
Kaja Kallas, the head of the EU’s foreign policy, said it was unacceptable to fire warning shots.
The occupation forces’ firing at a diplomatic delegation that included more than 25 Arab and European ambassadors were a clear violation of international and humanitarian laws and a crime against all diplomatic standards, according to Jordan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates.
Its statement posted on X read, “We call on the international community to assume its legal and moral responsibilities and compel Israel to stop its aggression against Gaza and its escalation in the West Bank.”
Since January, a significant Israeli military operation has focused primarily on Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams. Since then, Israeli forces have accelerated a process that is already taking place: forced mass displacement, home demolitions, and arrests of Palestinians.
Gaza’s population is on the verge of starvation and needs immediate assistance.
Only five aid trucks had actually entered Gaza as of Tuesday night, despite Israel’s official resignation and public declaration that it will now permit trucks to enter the country after a more than two-month blockade.
According to spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), humanitarian workers have been prevented from dispensing the aid inside those trucks, even with those inside Gaza.
Up to 14 000 babies are at risk of passing away from malnutrition in the Gaza Strip, according to numerous aid organizations, with more than 2 million people living there before Israel’s war on Gaza. Israel’s ongoing occupation of the Strip continues despite the high cost to the international community. Even if Israel claims 93 trucks entered Gaza on Tuesday and that the aid was distributed, it still accounts for 20% of the territory’s daily pre-war needs.
Numerous organizations have reported that Gaza’s situation is desperate after 11 weeks of a relentless siege.
One in five Palestinians, or 500,000 people, are living in poverty. According to the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the majority of the population has high levels of acute food insecurity.
A few trucks carrying delivery aid have since arrived in #Gaza, but according to @UNReliefChief, they are “a drop in the ocean of what’s needed.” https: //t. UN_Spokesperson briefing the press in a photo. twitter.com/fWzb7lg5U4
The IPC warned that an official famine could be declared as a direct result of Israeli action at any time between now and September, noting that “the risk of famine in the Gaza Strip is not just possible; it is increasingly likely.”
Officially, a famine occurs when at least 20% (one-fifth) of households are plagued by severe food shortages, more than 30% of children are in acute malnutrition, and at least two out of every 10,000 people or four out of every 10,000 children per day are starved or have been harmed by hunger-related causes.
More than just hunger, the term “famine” is used. It refers to one of the worst humanitarian crises ever, indicating that all available food, water, and other essential infrastructures are completely gone.
Since Israel’s complete blockade began on March 2, at least 57 children have died as a result of malnutrition, according to a report from the World Health Organization (WHO) last week.
MSF’s Pascale Coissard, the emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, described the humanitarian flow into Gaza as “ridiculously inadequate.” The organization claimed that Israel’s restriction on entering Gaza was “a smokescreen to pretend the siege is over.”
After months of an air-tight siege, the Israeli government’s decision to grant Gaza a ridiculously inadequate amount of aid indicates that they are trying to avoid the accusation of starving the people there while actually keeping them surviving, according to Coissard.
Israel is under intense international pressure to lift Gaza’s siege. The United Kingdom, France, and Canada have threatened sanctions if aid is not provided to those trapped in the enclave, while twenty-three countries, including many of Israel’s traditional allies, have condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Even the United States, who is typically Israel’s closest ally, has acknowledged that aid is not going to Gaza in “sufficient amounts” to avert famine.
Not particularly.
In arbitrary Israeli attacks, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, totaling more than 53,500, in addition to the previous week’s total.
Since the Israeli government’s decision to unilaterally re-engage its offensive against the Gaza Strip on March 18 and to break a ceasefire, there have been more than 3,500 fatalities.
The Israeli military confirmed on Sunday that it had launched ground operations in the northern and southern regions of the Gaza Strip in response to what it termed an intensified campaign to win concessions from Hamas after 19 months of bloody hostilities, the destruction of nearly all of Gaza’s buildings, and the killing of tens of thousands of civilians, the majority of them women and children.
Despite the cost of humanitarian aid, Israel has reacted by allowing what critics call a performative and insufficient supply of food and medicine into Gaza.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s ultranationalist national security minister, criticized the decision to grant Gaza’s small aid package, calling it “a serious and grave mistake.”
Beezalel Smotrich, Ben-Gvir’s fellow hard-right traveler, defended the decision, saying in a televised statement that Israel would permit the “minimum necessary” so that “the world does not stop us and accuse us of war crimes.
India has launched an entire offensive against the last remaining members of the far-left Maoist-inspired fighting movement known as the Naxalite rebellion.
Nambala Keshav Rao, alias Basavaraju, was one of 27 rebels killed by security forces in Chhattisgarh, according to Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah, on Wednesday.
Rao was referred to as the “topmost leader and the backbone” of the Naxal movement and the general secretary of the banned Communist Party of India-Maoist group.
He claimed that this was the first time India’s [Bharat’s] battle against Naxalism had been neutralized by our forces in three decades.
For this significant advance, I applaud our brave security forces and organizations.
In wider follow-up operations, 54 people were detained, according to Shah, and 84 Naxalites were detained in Chhattisgarh, Telangana, and Maharashtra.
According to senior state police official Vivekanand Sinha, a gun battle broke out after intelligence reports showed “top Maoist leaders” were present in the area.
According to local police official P Sundarraj, a police commando also perished in the conflict.
The District Reserve Guard special police force, according to Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai, was the main organization responsible for carrying out the operations.
I applaud their bravery,” she said. We’ve made a surrender appeal to Maoists. There is no need to repeat it, Sai said, according to a statement released by The Times of India.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised the government’s “committed to eliminating the menace of Maoism and ensuring a life of peace and progress” and said he was proud of his team’s accomplishments.
The Communist Party of India’s General Secretary, Doraisamy Raja, criticized the cold-blooded killing of a senior Maoist leader and several Adivasis in Chhattisgarh. Another instance of extrajudicial activity being carried out under the guise of “counterinsurgency operations” is presented here.
CPI requests an impartial judicial investigation into this incident and Operation Kagar as a whole. In a post on X, he continued, “The people of Chhattisgarh and India as a whole deserve to know the truth.”
Naxalbari, a village in the Himalayas where it started nearly six decades ago, is the name of the Maoist rebel movement.
Since a few villagers revolted against their feudal lords there in 1967, there have been more than 12, 000 deaths of rebels, soldiers, and civilians.
The rebellion had between 15 and 20 000 fighters and a teetering population at its height in the middle of the 2000s.
At least 400 rebels have been killed by Indian soldiers since last year, according to government data.
In what the government called the “biggest operation against naxalism” in a region along the border of Chhattisgarh and Telangana, Indian security forces claimed last week that they had killed 31 Maoist rebels.
In Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, Indian troops recently killed 11 people identified as rebels.
In March, security forces killed 30 more fighters than they did in February.
If the government withdrew security forces and put an end to the ongoing offensive, the Maoists said they were ready for dialogue.
The Maoists’ top body stated in a statement that “our party is always ready for peace talks” in the interests of the people.
The footage is blurry. The framing is unsteady. And at one moment, another cellphone pokes into view to capture the scene.
But the video has nevertheless gone viral in Peru for one big reason: It captures a goofy, off-the-cuff moment with the new head of the Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIV.
On Sunday, the newly elected pope formally began his leadership of the church with an inaugural mass at Saint Peter’s Square in the Vatican.
His papacy has made history. Born in Chicago, Leo XIV is the first pope ever to hail from the United States. But for Peruvians in the northern city of Chiclayo, he is a hometown hero, and the viral video from 2014 is proof of his South American roots.
Under fluorescent lights and scattered decorations made of curling ribbon, Leo XIV — then known as Robert Prevost — warbles Christmas songs into a handheld microphone.
“Feliz Navidad! Feliz Navidad,” he sings, backed by a guitar-playing band of Chiclayo youths, swaying to the beat. “I wanna wish you a merry Christmas!”
In the lead-up to his papacy, Chiclayo, Peru’s fifth largest city, has played a central role in Leo XIV’s rise through the Catholic Church.
Since 1985, Leo has served in various Catholic missions throughout the north of the country. But over the last decade of his career, Chiclayo has been his home base. He served as bishop there from 2015 to 2023, and during that time, he also became a Peruvian citizen.
“He has earned the love of the people,” said Father Jose Alejandro Castillo Vera, a local church leader who first met Leo XIV in 2014.
But while the region has warmly embraced its “papa chiclayano” — its pope from Chiclayo — the situation in Latin America also reflects the struggles of Leo’s new post.
Catholicism is thought to be on the decline in Latin America. A survey from the public opinion firm Latinobarometro found that, from 1995 to 2024, the number of self-identified Catholics slipped from about 80 percent to 54.
And in Peru, public opinion suffered in the wake of a sexual abuse scandal that emerged in 2015.
Still, in Chiclayo, there is optimism that Leo XIV’s leadership can reinvigorate the Catholic faithful, given his track record of public service.
“I think he can promote space for dialogue,” said Yolanda Diaz, a 70-year-old teacher in Chiclayo and national adviser for the National Union of Catholic Students.
She believes Leo XIV will help “move forward, little by little, the changes we want to see in the church”.
Leo XIV set the tone for his papacy early on. In his first remarks after his election, he switched from Italian to Spanish to address his adopted hometown directly.
“If you allow me a word, a greeting to all and in particular to my beloved diocese of Chiclayo, in Peru, where a faithful people accompanied their bishop, shared their faith and gave so much, so much, to continue being a faithful Church of Jesus Christ,” he said.
Vatican observers quickly pointed out he opted not to address the US, his birth country, nor to speak in his native English.
In the days that followed, thousands of people poured into Chiclayo’s main square to celebrate the new pope, dancing and receiving communion in the shadow of its buttercup-yellow cathedral.
In the frenzy, local businesses spied economic potential. Ricardo Acosta, the president of the National Association of Travel Agencies and Tourism (APAVIT), proposed creating a pope-themed tourism route.
And restaurants in Chiclayo posted signs outside their door: “Aqui comio el Papa.” In other words: “The pope ate here.”
Poverty in the northern region of Peru affects nearly a quarter of the population. And local advocates have argued that the city and surrounding regions struggle with inadequate public infrastructure.
That problem was thrown into stark relief during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when the United Nations reported that more than a thousand families in Chiclayo lacked access to drinking water.
Healthcare resources were also stretched thin. Peru had the highest death rate per capita, with an estimated 665.8 deaths for every 100,000 people.
Father Castillo, the secretary-general of the Catholic aid organisation Caritas Chiclayo, remembers that Leo XIV played a critical role in raising money to buy medical-grade oxygen to treat the sick.
“He came up with the idea of making a campaign to support the community, to acquire an oxygen plant,” Father Castillo explained.
Through their collective efforts, more than $380,000 were raised to buy the oxygen generation systems.
“He appealed to the entire population, to the authorities and to the businessmen as well,” Father Castillo said. “In the end, God was so great that not only there was money for one plant, but for two oxygen plants.”
Both, however, have since been shut down due to a lack of funds for maintenance. Still, Father Castillo told Al Jazeera he hopes Pope Leo XIV will continue his advocacy for the poor while at the Vatican.
“We are all hopeful that he continues to be that voice, not only for us Peruvians, but for everyone,” he said. “Many people need to get out of misery, out of poverty.”
For Diaz, the teacher, one of her fondest memories of the new pope was working together on another pressing issue facing Peru: migration.
Since 2018, Peru has become one of the leading destinations for migrants and asylum seekers from Venezuela, where political repression and economic instability have driven more than 7.9 million people abroad.
The United Nations estimates that Peru has absorbed nearly two million of those migrants. That makes it the second largest recipient of Venezuelans in Latin America.
Diaz told Al Jazeera she witnessed the impact of that wave of arrivals in Chiclayo. She and Leo XIV worked together on a new commission he established as bishop to address migration and human trafficking.
“We had a big surge,” Diaz remembered. “We saw up to 20,000 people arriving in Chiclayo, more than 3,000 families, including children and youngsters. You could see them sleeping in the main square, on the streets, in church entrances, outside travel companies.”
The influx has stirred up anti-immigrant sentiment among some Peruvians, resulting in reports of discrimination.
But Diaz observed that Leo XIV attempted to destigmatise what it means to be a foreigner in Peru when he visited migrant communities.
“I’m a migrant,” Diaz remembers him saying. “I know what it means to arrive as a migrant in an unknown land, with a different culture.”
She saw that as evidence he can bridge divides in his new role as pope. “He understands there’s diversity in the church.”
But while Pope Leo XIV is largely seen as a unifying figure in Chiclayo, his papacy has reignited some lingering controversies within the Catholic Church.
Among the most damning are the allegations of sexual abuse in Catholic dioceses across the globe, from the US to Chile to Ireland.
The Catholic Church in Peru is no exception. Much of the scrutiny has centred on one group in particular, the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV).
It was founded in Peru in 1971 and grew to include members across Latin America.
But in 2011, the Catholic Church started to receive formal complaints about its founder Luis Fernando Figari and other leaders in the SCV movement.
In 2015, after years of investigation, journalists Pedro Salinas and Paola Ugaz published a book about the complaints that shocked Peruvian society and brought the issue to international attention.
Called Half Monks, Half Soldiers, the book detailed more than 30 cases of abuse, including allegations of psychological abuse, forced sodomisation and other harms committed in the SCV.
Ugaz told Al Jazeera that the future Pope Leo was supportive of her efforts to investigate.
“Among the bishops who supported us until the end is Robert Prevost, an empathetic person who is aware that this issue is crucial to his papacy,” she said in a written statement.
Figari has consistently denied any wrongdoing. But Leo’s predecessor at the Vatican, Pope Francis, eventually sent two envoys to Peru, including an archbishop, to investigate the group.
In 2024, Peru’s church authorities released a statement confirming that the investigation had found cases of “physical abuse, including sadism and violence” as well as other actions designed “to break the will of subordinates”.
Figari and other top members were ultimately expelled from the organisation. And later, Pope Francis took the rare step of dissolving the group altogether. The decree of suppression took effect just one week before Francis died in April, effectively abolishing the group.
But Pope Leo himself has faced scrutiny over whether he failed to act upon the complaints the diocese in Chiclayo received while he was bishop.
In March, for instance, a group called Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) issued a letter alleging that three women in 2022 reported their sexual abuse to the diocese, only to face institutional silence.
“There is serious reason to believe that Cardinal Prevost did not follow the procedures established by the Holy See for carrying out investigations following reports of abuse,” SNAP wrote.
Leo XIV, however, has told the Peruvian newspaper La Republica in the past that he rejects “cover-ups and secrecy”. And last week, Father Jordi Bertomeu Farnos, a Vatican investigator, denied the reports.
“Robert Prevost did not cover up anything,” Bertomeu Farnos told Peruvian media in Rome. “He did everything according to the protocols we have in the Vatican.”
Ugaz, the journalist, says she remains optimistic Leo XIV can implement reform.
She pointed out that, in his first days as pope, Leo XIV held a meeting with Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who leads a Vatican commission to protect children from abuse. She also recalled the words of encouragement he recently gave to her and her journalism partner.