MOSKOU (ANP) - Volgens Moskou heeft Oekraïne een voorstel voor een kortstondig staakt-het-vuren rond Kostjantynivka afgewezen. Dat meldt het Russische ministerie van Defensie. Het voorgestelde zes uur durende bestand zou maandag een gevangenenoverdracht mogelijk moeten maken. Onduidelijk is of dit nu alsnog zal gebeuren. Oekraïne heeft nog niet op de Russische bewering gereageerd.
Rusland meldde eerder de strategisch belangrijke Oekraïense stad te hebben ingenomen, iets wat Kyiv vervolgens weer ontkende. Kostjantynivka is van belang omdat het dient als verdedigingslinie voor de regio Kramatorsk en als voorportaal voor een opmars om de volledige Donetsk in te nemen, een van de belangrijkste oorlogsdoelen van Rusland.
De Oekraïense president Volodymyr Zelensky hekelde dit weekend de Russen en hun veroveringsclaim. Op X schreef hij zaterdag dat "als Kostjantynivka inderdaad onder Russische controle staat, Poetin er dan wellicht geen probleem mee heeft om daar af te spreken".
Uitnodiging
Het Kremlin reageerde op zijn beurt door te zeggen dat als de uitnodiging van Zelensky gelezen moest worden als blijk van bereidheid om af te reizen naar Russisch grondgebied, de Oekraïense leider van harte welkom was in Moskou.
Rusland zou Oekraïne tot tegen zondagmiddag hebben gegeven om te reageren op het voorgestelde staakt-het-vuren.
SILVERSTONE (ANP) - Max Verstappen is bij de Grote Prijs van Groot-Brittannië met nog vijf ronden te gaan uitgevallen. De viervoudig wereldkampioen in de Formule 1 reed op de derde plaats toen hij met zijn Red Bull in de grindbak terechtkwam. Verstappen was op het circuit van Silverstone als zevende gestart.
JOHANNESBURG (ANP) - Motorcrosser Jeffrey Herlings is tweede geworden bij de Grote Prijs van Zuid-Afrika. De 31-jarige Brabander moest de 19-jarige Belg Lucas Coenen voor zich dulden en zag de leider in het wereldkampioenschap van de MXGP verder uitlopen.
De vijfvoudig wereldkampioen eindigde in de eerste manche als tweede achter de Belgische klassementsleider. In de tweede manche moest de Nederlander opnieuw genoegen nemen met de tweede plaats achter Coenen.
Coenen leidt in het WK met 566 punten. Herlings volgt met 498 punten op de tweede plek.
‘Nothing to see here,’ says the man who once overruled council planners in favour of Richard ‘Dirty’ Desmond
How unlucky can one man get? You have to feel for Nigel Farage. Why does it keep happening to him? There he is, just minding his own business, trying to make a decent living – those five houses won’t pay for themselves, which is why other people may have done – and yet there’s always someone trying to drag a good man down. Isn’t the “Man of the People (TM)” entitled to have a few multimillionaires as friends to bankroll his lifestyle? Who hasn’t pined for crypto and gold bullion?
First there was the £5m from the British-Thai crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, revealed exclusively by the Guardian. Months later, the stench won’t go away. Even Nige has been at a loss to explain what exactly he was given the money for. Unsure whether it was a payment to cover security or just a little “thank you” for a lifetime’s work in the service of making the country an easier place for grifters to make money. Even now, Nige has gone to ground as he tries to get his story straight.
Continue reading...Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!
“Good evening. The game you are about to see is the most stupid, appalling, disgusting and disgraceful exhibition of football in the history of the game.” Were David Coleman still around, then perhaps the highlights package of France 1-0 Paraguay at the Geopolitics World Cup would have received similar words to Chile 2-0 Italy back in 1962.
This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
Continue reading...One immediately called an ambulance, another went looking for my younger son. And I still remember the small face of the girl who held her arm around me
Read more in the kindness of strangers series
I was at the park with my two young boys, aged five and seven, riding scooters along a wide path that looped around the grass. My eldest has cerebral palsy, so my husband had modified a scooter with a large base so that we could ride it together. My son stood at the front and I stood behind him. It meant he could join in just like other kids, and he loved it.
When you have boys, you need to run them like dogs – the goal is to burn as much energy as possible every time you’re out of the house. So even though it had started to drizzle, we set off on another loop of the park on our scooters. But when we hit a puddle coming round the bend, the scooter slipped out from under me. We fell sideways, landing on the ground. I realised my son wasn’t conscious. In that moment all I felt was sheer terror.
Continue reading...Humans have long sought to geoengineer the Earth’s environment. Tim Flannery outlines a few of the wildest ideas from the 20th century
An increasing number of scientists think we have let the climate crisis fester for so long that our only hope to stave off ever-intensifying catastrophes is to use technological interventions. Cloud brightening, injecting sulphur into the atmosphere and the use of tiny mirrors in space – all of which might reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth’s surface – are among the concepts being promoted by entrepreneurs and governments alike. Geoengineering, they argue, is now inevitable.
Ever since the God of the Old Testament granted our species dominion over the Earth, ideas of remaking the world to better suit us have been a dominant thread in human thinking. We have for centuries toyed with grand ambitions to alter and re-form the climate and environment, many of which – in retrospect – seem doomed or absurd.
Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads
Continue reading...Even though most of their instruments have been destroyed, teachers are restarting classes, using music to give relief to traumatised people
The three tents line a stretch of overcrowded, windswept sand, their windows open on to a view of the breaking waves of the Mediterranean. From inside comes the sound of singing, a strummed guitar, a violin and then a flute.
But if the music evokes calm and harmony, the surroundings do not: rows of crowded makeshift shelters swelter in Gaza’s summer heat, young children picking their way through rubble, battered cars and pony carts clogging a potholed road. Above, Israeli military drones hum and buzz.
Continue reading...The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world
Continue reading...