Ukraine’s National Grid operator Ukrenergo said the attack damaged energy facilities in five regions

Joe Biden’s delay in sanctioning the use of western weapons against targets in Russia has left the Kremlin’s forces laughing at Ukraine and able to “hunt” its people, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has told the Guardian.

The Ukrainian president said that the White House’s equivocation had cost lives and he urged the US president to overcome his perennial worries about possible nuclear “escalation” with Moscow.

Ukrainian leader says it would not be ‘strong decision’ if Joe Biden fails to attend talks next month to which Russia is not invited

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said Vladimir Putin will give a standing ovation to Joe Biden if the US president fails to attend a peace summit in Switzerland next month.

On a visit to Brussels where he signed a 10-year security pact with Belgium, the Ukrainian leader said it would not be “a strong decision” if Biden failed to attend the talks scheduled for 15-16 June near Lucerne.

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy signs security pact with Belgium’s De Croo during visit to Brussels

Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg has said it is time for EU member states to lift restrictions on Ukraine striking Russian territory on the grounds that it would escalate the war.

He said it was up to national governments in the EU to decide if their weapons and some already do, adding:

Some allies have not imposed restrictions on the weapons. I believe the time has come to consider those restrictions, not least in light of the development in the war, the evolution into a war which now is actually taking place along the borders and that makes it even harder for them to defend themselves and the right for self defence is part of the right for self defence.

Under new defence minister Andrei Belousov, FSB is tackling corruption aggressively with serious implications for Ukraine

In the weeks since Vladimir Putin sacked his longtime defence minister Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s FSB security service has pursued a series of high-level corruption cases against a deputy minister and department heads in what many insiders are now calling a purge in the defence ministry.

Andrei Belousov, the technocrat economist appointed to replace Shoigu, has a mandate to reduce corruption in the defence ministry and streamline military production for a long war against Ukraine that could largely be decided by industrial output.

Two young men are promoting a grab-bag ideology celebrating ‘honor’ and condemning ‘global elites’ – and winning powerful friends on the right

In the last few years, a self-styled political movement that sounds like a contradiction in terms has gained ground online: “Maga communism”.

Promoted by its two most prominent spokespeople, Haz Al-Din, 27, and Jackson Hinkle, 24, Maga communism comprises a grab bag of ideas that can seem lacking in coherence – ranging from a belief in the power of Donald Trump’s followers to wrest power from “global elites” to an emphasis on masculine “honor”, admiration for Vladimir Putin and support for Palestinian liberation.

The Ukrainian world heavyweight boxing champion beat back a giant opponent, but his country can’t defeat Russia on its own

As I contemplate a forest of small Ukrainian flags on the Maidan in central Kyiv, placed there by bereaved relatives as a memorial to the war dead, I’m accosted by a burly Ukrainian soldier in combat uniform. He’s with the elite 95th Air Assault Brigade and he has been fighting Russian aggression for more than a decade. “At the moment of victory,” he tells me, “please pour the first glass on to the ground for those who have fallen.”

Gesturing to the seemingly normal life around us in the Ukrainian capital, with young people drinking at nice cafes, almost as though this were Paris or Vienna, he says, “Every peaceful day here costs a lot of lives at the front.” But he chokes up on the last words and his eyes fill with tears. “Sorry, sorry!” he exclaims, embarrassed by this moment of weakness. Then he grips my hand one more time, grasps the straps of his khaki rucksack, and marches off through the civilian crowd like a ghost from the trenches of the first world war.

Spokesman says ‘there aren’t any contacts’ with former president regarding Evan Gershkovich’s release from Russia

Donald Trump boasted on Thursday he would quickly free the jailed US journalist Evan Gershkovich from Russia if he wins the presidential election, but Moscow denied discussing the case with the Republican candidate.

The former president, who has frequently voiced admiration for Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and has voiced skepticism over US support for Ukraine, said the Moscow strongman “will do that for me, but not for anyone else”.

Prof Lutz Oette says Israel’s call on ‘nations of the civilised world’ to boycott the international criminal court betrays a colonial mindset

Israel’s response to the news that the ICC prosecutor has sought arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity could have been expected (Israel calls on ‘civilised nations’ to boycott ICC arrest warrants against its leaders, 21 May). From asserting that the warrants would hinder Israel’s right to self-defence and create an offensive equivalence with Hamas’s crimes to the preposterous smearing of the prosecutor as antisemitic, Israel’s claims can be easily refuted.

The US, in its reaction, reverted to imperial type. Having welcomed the ICC’s decision in March 2023 to issue an arrest warrant for international crimes against Vladimir Putin in respect of the war in Ukraine, it now called the ICC’s request “outrageous”. It claimed that faith should be had in Israel’s judicial system to deal with international crimes, although all a neutral observer can see is a history of impunity. In short, the US has reacted with customary hostility when the ICC’s actions do not suit its interests.

The US and others have criticised the chief prosecutor for seeking arrest warrants for Israeli leaders. The ICC needs support

The international criminal court was born more than two decades ago, largely from the genocides of Rwanda and Yugoslavia, and the contradictory impulses that they inspired: the grim recognition of the worst of human nature and the optimistic determination to address it. More than 120 countries ratified its founding treaty. But the world’s superpower – and other major players including Russia, China and India – refused.

The result, almost inevitably, was that it became regarded – in the reported words of one elected official to the chief prosecutor, Karim Khan – as “built for Africa and thugs like Putin”. In fact, Vladimir Putin’s indictment a year ago, applauded by the US and others, was regarded as a gear change for a body that had overwhelmingly charged African leaders and officials.

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Moscow has stricter say over efforts to influence since Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death as western militaries exit the Sahel

On 3 May, as top US officials confirmed the presence of Russian security forces in the same airbase as American troops in Niger, a popular Telegram channel reportedly run by Moscow-based officials posted a message with an audio clip of the Soviet-era rock band Nautilus Pompilius’s 1985 cult song Goodbye America.

Two weeks later, last Thursday, US officials and Nigerien leaders agreed to a phased withdrawal of American forces from Niger that would take place as soon as feasible in the coming months.

Deputy governor of Kharkiv border town, Roman Semenukha, told national television on Monday that ‘the assaults do not stop’

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, held a meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana, the Russian state news Tass agency reported on Monday.

It said the ministers were meeting to discuss the implementation of Russian-Chinese agreements reached during Vladimir Putin’s state visit to China last week, and events in Iran, whose president and foreign minister were killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday.

We and the EU must show the Russian leader we mean business and seize $300bn of his country’s central bank funds

Vladimir Putin is digging deep to win the war with Ukraine. And it could be only months before the tide turns in his favour. If he pummels Ukraine into submission, a military victory will quickly become a wider economic disaster, which is why we under­estimate at our peril how much we need to focus on the war.

The Russian leader, who was inaugurated for a fifth term as president a fortnight ago, ditched his old friend and defence minister Sergei Shoigu on Monday in favour of an economist to make sure Moscow’s war machine runs more efficiently. That economist, Andrei Belousov, has been likened to Albert Speer, the architect who served as the minister of armaments and war production in Nazi Germany.

Leonid Volkov, who was brutally attacked in March, says he shares his late friend’s belief in ‘beautiful Russia of the future’

Leonid Volkov, a close ally of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has vowed to “never give up” fighting against Vladimir Putin despite recently being attacked outside his home.

Navalny died in an Arctic prison in February, which Volkov blamed directly on the Russian president.

Ukraine’s president says air defences must quadruple to halt Russian advance as morale falls among troops

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said he expects Russia to step up its offensive in the north-east and warned Kyiv has only a quarter of the air defences it needs to hold the front line.

Russian forces, which had made only moderate advances in recent months, launched a surprise assault in Kharkiv region on 10 May that has resulted in their biggest territorial gains in a year-and-a-half.