Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at another round of Russia-Ukraine peace talks, an attack on U.S. supporters of Israeli hostages, and a volcanic eruption in Italy.
Kyiv Secures Military Victory
Russia and Ukraine held a second round of direct talks in Istanbul on Monday, just one day after Kyiv launched one of its most ambitious large-scale drone attacks against Moscow since the full-scale war began in February 2022. Although the meeting lasted barely an hour and resulted in no major breakthroughs, holding negotiations after such a major military campaign was, in itself, a victory, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.
Ukraine’s surprise drone attack on Sunday damaged or destroyed more than 40 long-range bomber planes—including some nuclear-capable aircraft—located deep inside Russian territory, spanning across the Arctic, Siberia, and the Far East, according to Ukraine’s Security Service. Code-named “Spider’s Web,” the operation took more than a year and a half to organize and took out 34 percent of Russia’s strategic cruise missile carriers. With Kyiv smuggling 117 aerial drones across enemy lines and positioning them near four Russian airbases, Moscow’s defenses had virtually no time to prepare for the assault.
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the operation’s military setbacks, which Kyiv expects to cost the Kremlin around $7 billion, should help force Moscow to the negotiating table. “Without pressure, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will just keep playing games with everyone who wants this war to end,” Zelensky said.
Monday’s talks did secure a few small successes. Each side agreed to release more prisoners of war, with those severely injured and younger people to be prioritized. Russia and Ukraine also agreed to each return the bodies of 6,000 dead soldiers, and Kyiv has requested the release of some 339 children who it says were kidnapped by Russian forces during the fighting; the lead Russian negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, maintains that these children were “saved,” not stolen.
However, a cease-fire deal remains elusive. The Russian delegation presented a memorandum on Monday outlining its terms for ending the conflict. According to Russian state media, the document demands that Ukraine withdraw its forces from four partly Russian-occupied regions, halt its military mobilization, freeze Western weapons deliveries, end martial law to allow for new elections, abandon its bid to join NATO, recognize Russian as the country’s official language alongside Ukrainian, and ban any third-party countries from stationing their militaries on its soil.
Ukraine’s delegation said it needs a week to review the document before it can respond. Yet Kyiv and its Western allies have repeatedly ruled out similar concessions in the past.
“If Russia turns the Istanbul meeting into an empty talk, there must be a new level of pressure, new sanctions, and not just from Europe,” Zelensky said.
U.S. President Donald Trump has so far declined to put new sanctions on Russia, saying last week that he does not want to jeopardize peace talks, but he suggested that such penalties may come if he decides that Putin is not serious about ending the war.
Ukraine has proposed holding further direct dialogues sometime between June 20 and June 30. But Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov maintains that the only way that the war can be resolved is if Zelensky and Putin meet face-to-face. No such meeting has yet been agreed to.
Today’s Most Read
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The World This Week
Tuesday, June 3: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni hosts French President Emmanuel Macron and Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, separately.
South Korea holds an early presidential election.
Wednesday, June 4: Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs are set to double to 50 percent.
Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko concludes a three-day trip to China.
The United Kingdom and Germany convene a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group.
Thursday, June 5: Trump hosts German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
Burundi holds parliamentary elections.
Friday, June 6: Argentine President Javier Milei begins a two-day trip to Italy.
Meloni hosts European Council President António Costa.
Saturday, June 7: Macron begins a two-day trip to Monaco.
What We’re Following
Antisemitic attack. Eight people in Boulder, Colorado, were injured on Sunday when a man hurled what the FBI described as “a makeshift flamethrower” at a group that was demonstrating to raise awareness about Israeli hostages in Gaza. The suspect, a 45-year-old Egyptian national whom the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said is in the United States on an expired tourist visa, allegedly yelled “Free Palestine” when he targeted participants of the Run for Their Lives campaign, which seeks to free the remaining 58 hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza, of whom 20 are believed to still be alive.
“This attack was aimed against peaceful people who wished to express their solidarity with the hostages held by Hamas, simply because they were Jews,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday. The FBI is investigating the incident as a terrorist act, and on Monday, the suspect was charged with a federal hate crime.
Reports of antisemitism around the world have skyrocketed since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza. The United States alone recorded more than 9,000 antisemitic incidents in 2024. Notably, Sunday’s attack occurred less than a week after another man allegedly yelled “free, free Palestine” and “I did it for Gaza” after fatally shooting two Israeli Embassy staff members as they left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington.
Lava flows. A volcanic eruption at Sicily’s Mount Etna on Monday left tourists fleeing for cover. Authorities said the eruption was confined to Etna’s summit, which has since been closed off to visitors as a precaution, and added that it presents no danger to the local population. One tour company told CNN that it had 40 people on the volcano’s slopes when Etna blew; authorities say all visitors were safely evacuated.
This was Mount Etna’s 14th eruptive phase in recent months, making it the most active volcano in Europe. According to Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, part of the volcano’s southeast crater collapsed, triggering hot lava and pyroclastic flows several kilometers high. Pyroclastic flows are composed of a dangerous combination of ash, rock, and gas.
Following the eruption, Catania-Fontanarossa Airport raised its threat level for airline traffic, though no immediate interruptions were reported, and locals reported tremors across several nearby towns.
Right-wing win. Poland’s conservative opposition secured a narrow victory in Sunday’s presidential election runoff. Nationalist candidate Karol Nawrocki won 50.9 percent of the vote, defeating ruling coalition candidate Rafal Trzaskowski and delivering a heavy blow to Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s political ambitions. On Monday, Tusk said that he plans to ask parliament to hold a vote of confidence in the near future.
Tusk was hoping to solidify power against outgoing President Andrzej Duda, who has blocked Tusk from repealing controversial judicial reforms that the prime minister claims erode the courts’ independence. With Nawrocki as president, this legislation is expected to remain in place. As a close ally of Trump, Nawrocki has also pledged to ensure economic and social policies that favor Poles over people of other nationalities, including refugees from Ukraine, as well as protect Poland’s sovereignty by curbing what he calls excessive interference from Brussels.
Nawrocki will take office on Aug. 6. His win demonstrates a rise in right-wing appeal across Central and Eastern Europe at a time when NATO and Russia are battling for ideological dominance in the region.
Odds and Ends
Indian customs officials discovered a few extra passengers trying to enter Mumbai without a passport on Sunday. According to local authorities, an Indian national flying from Thailand was detained for attempting to smuggle dozens of venomous snakes and five Asian leaf turtles into the city. Although seizures of gold, cash, and drugs are not uncommon for staff at Mumbai’s international airport, finding scaled or amphibious friends certainly is.
The post Russia-Ukraine Direct Talks Fail to Reach Cease-Fire Deal appeared first on Foreign Policy.
