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MOSCOW/ KYIV — Russia claimed Tuesday to have destroyed or damaged five Ukrainian military jets in a strike on an air base, as Kyiv prepares for the arrival of long-awaited F-16 fighters.

Russia's defence ministry said it fired Iskander-M missiles at an air base near the central Ukrainian city of Myrgorod, around 150 kilometres from the Russian border.

"As a result of the Russian army strike, five operational SU-27 multirole fighters were destroyed, and two that were under repair were damaged," it said in a statement on Telegram.

The ministry also published footage of what it said was the strike and its aftermath, showing grey smoke billowing at the airfield, where some parked planes were visible and charred black earth.

AFP could not immediately verify the footage or the claims.

Russian and Ukrainian military bloggers previously reported the strike on Monday.

Ukraine's air force declined to comment when asked by AFP about Russia's claims.

In a social media post, air force commander Mykola Oleshchuk said: "Ukrainian aircraft continue to successfully carry out combat missions, conduct missile and bomb attacks on the positions of the occupiers and eliminate important military facilities."

He posted footage of what he said was a Ukrainian attack on an ammunition depot in Crimea, the peninsula Russia annexed in 2014, carried out on Monday.

But Ukrainian military bloggers and analysts said Kyiv had suffered equipment losses in Myrgorod, with some angry at commanders for parking the planes in the open without sufficient protection.

Kyiv hopes the arrival of Western F-16 fighters will enable it to better protect itself from Russian bombardment.

Ukraine has been calling for the US-made jets since the start of the conflict.

Several NATO countries have pledged to supply them and have been training Ukrainian pilots and crews for months.

The first deliveries, including from The Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark are expected to arrive in the country imminently.

But recent strikes on Ukrainian airfields have raised questions about Kyiv’s ability to protect the multi-million-dollar planes from Russian fire.

“As Ukraine waits for the F-16s, the question of ensuring their safety on the ground remains,” the Ukraine-based Defense Express think tank said on Tuesday.

Russia has promised to target and destroy F-16s, along with all other Western military hardware shipped to Kyiv.

Ukraine has not said where it will base the F-16s.

Meanwhile, Hungary’s Moscow-friendly prime minister Viktor Orban urged Kyiv on Tuesday to work towards a “quick ceasefire” in Ukraine that could pave the way for negotiations with Russia to end more than two years of war.

Orban issued the appeal standing next to President Volodymyr Zelensky during a surprise visit to Ukraine, the first by the vocal critic of Western support for Kyiv.

“I asked the president to consider whether... a quick ceasefire could speed up the peace talks,” Orban told reporters, adding that the ceasefire he envisions would be “time-limited”.

Ukraine has repeatedly rejected calls for a pause in fighting, which it says would just give Russia time to regroup for a fresh assault.

The United States meanwhile on Tuesday announced new security aid for Ukraine worth $2.3 billion.

Unlike many other European leaders, Orban had not visited Kyiv since Russia invaded in February 2022 and is widely seen as the 27-member bloc’s most pro-Russian leader.

In October 2023 he met Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit in Beijing, becoming the first EU leader to do so since the start of the war.

Orban regularly criticises Europe’s financial and military support for Kyiv, temporarily blocking a 50-billion-euro ($53-billion) aid package for weeks.

And he openly opposes holding EU membership talks with Kyiv as well as Brussels’ sanctions on Moscow — though Budapest has not used its veto to block the moves.

A ‘just peace’

The visit comes the day after Hungary took over the EU’s rotating presidency, a position which gives the central European state sway over the bloc’s agenda and priorities for the next six months.

Orban said he would report on his talks with Zelensky to EU prime ministers “so that the necessary European decisions can be taken.”

Zelensky said the timing of the visit was symbolic.

“This is a clear indication of our common European priorities, of how important it is to bring a just peace to Ukraine,” he said, urging European countries to maintain military support.

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron and his allies were on Monday beginning a week of intense campaigning ahead of the second round of legislative elections to prevent the far-right from taking an absolute majority and control of government in a historic first.

The far-right National Rally (RN) Party of Marine Le Pen won a resounding victory in the first round of the polls Sunday, with Macron's centrists trailing in third behind a left-wing coalition.

But the key suspense ahead of the second round on July 7 was whether the RN would win an absolute majority in the new National Assembly, enabling it to form a government and make Le Pen's protege Jordan Bardella, 28, prime minister.

Most projections published by French polling organisations showed the RN falling short of an absolute majority, but the final outcome remains far from certain.

A hung parliament could lead to months of political paralysis and chaos — just as Paris is preparing to host the Olympic Games this summer, and while France on the international stage takes a prime role in backing Ukraine against the Russian invasion.

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who is likely to be forced to resign after the second round, warned that the far right was now at the "gates of power".

The RN should not get a "single vote" in the second round, he said.

"We have seven days to spare France from catastrophe," said Raphael Glucksmann, a key figure in the left-wing alliance.

'Thrown under a bus'

The RN garnered 33 per cent of the vote, compared to 28 per cent for the left-wing New Popular Front alliance, and more than 20 per cent for Macron's centrist camp, according to preliminary results.

But with less than 100 seats being decided outright in the first round, the final composition of the 577-seat national assembly will only be clear after the second phase.

The second round will see a three-way or two-way run-off in the remainder of the seats to be decided, with Macron's camp hoping that tactical voting will prevent the RN winning the 289 seats needed for an absolute majority.

The French stock market, which had been under considerable pressure in June amid the political uncertainty, also rallied in early trading on hopes the RN would not win an absolute majority.

Macron in a written statement urged a “broad” coalition against the far-right in the second round, amid controversy among supporters over whether they should tactically vote for the left where needed in the second round.

Late Sunday police said some 8,000 left-wing supporters thronged the Place de la Republique in central Paris to denounce the prospect of the far- right taking power.

Risk analysis firm Eurasia Group said the RN now looked “likely” to fall short of an absolute majority.

France was facing “at least 12 months with a rancorously blocked National Assembly and — at best — a technocratic government of ‘national unity’ with limited capacity to govern”, it added.

The left-leaning newspaper Liberation in an editorial called on Macron to remove all his alliance’s candidates from districts when they had arrived in third place to give the left-wing alliance a chance.

“The head of state has thrown France under the bus. The bus has continued its course unimpeded, and is now parked in front of the gates of Matignon,” the prime minister’s office, it said.

‘Prime minister of all French’

The arrival of the anti-immigration and eurosceptic RN in government would be a turning point in French modern history: the first time a far-right force has taken power in the country since World War II, when it was occupied by Nazi Germany.

Bardella said he wanted to be the “prime minister of all French”.

This would create a tense period of “cohabitation” with Macron, who has vowed to serve out his term until 2027.

Bardella has said he will only form a government if the RN wins an absolute majority in the elections.

Rancour remained over Macron’s decision to call the election in the first place, a move he took with only a tight circle of advisers in the hours after his party was trounced by the RN in European elections this month.

The chaos risks damaging the international credibility of Macron, regarded by some as the European Union’s number-one leader and who immediately after the second round will attend the NATO summit in Washington.

The right-wing Le Figaro in its editorial lamented a “disaster” brought about by the “unfathomable lightness of a man, through narcissist rancour, took the risk of plunging his country into chaos”.

MOSCOW — Russia on Monday claimed to have captured two more villages in eastern Ukraine, but also acknowledged that Kyiv's drone attacks were causing power outages in border areas.

Moscow has been making some advances in Ukraine against weakened and outgunned Ukrainian forces, yet over two years of fighting has also been felt in some border towns in Russia.

Following advances over the weekend, Moscow's defence ministry said it took the Ukrainian village of Novopokrovske in the war-battered Donetsk region.

The tiny village lies in an area of the front — northwest of occupied Avdiivka — where Moscow has been claiming to capture a new settlement almost every week this summer.

Moscow also said its forces took the village of Stepova Novoselivka in the Kharkiv region, where Russia launched a renewed local offensive in May.

President Vladimir Putin said Russia has stepped up its push in the northeast to create a buffer against Ukrainian attacks along its border regions.

Kyiv has been hitting Russia’s southern and western regions, with Moscow reporting Monday it had downed 36 drones overnight in several regions.

The governor of the Belgorod region said Ukrainian attacks and shelling killed a four-year-old girl in the last 24 hours.

Officials in several regions reported power cuts following the drone attacks, with the water supply also affected in the main city of Belgorod — that has been targeted by Ukraine since last summer.

“There have been restrictions since early morning,” Belgorod Mayor Valentin Demidov said on social media.

He said the situation was “complex but under control”.

Power cuts in Russia

The attacks affecting civilian life in Russia is likely to be a sensitive issue domestically and comes as Russia targets Ukraine’s energy network, forcing Kyiv to introduce scheduled blackouts.

Air raid sirens were not working in areas affected by power cuts and cars with loud horns were driving through the streets to sound the alarm, Demidov said.

Traffic lights were also not operating, while police were checking main roads, the mayor said.

Governor Gladkov said 150 kindergartens were without power and water supplies to hospitals were also affected.

The neighbouring Kursk and Voronezh regions reported similar problems.

Kursk Governor Alexei Smirnov warned of a possible “deficit of electricity capacity” after the region came under attack.

In the Voronezh region, the local government said some areas were under power restrictions to prevent damage to energy facilities, due to the overloading of the network.

Evacuations

Ukraine, meanwhile, said two women — aged 65 and 70 — were killed in the streets of the eastern town of Ukrainsk by shelling.

Donetsk regional governor, Vadym Filashkin, renewed his call for people to flee frontline villages, but many elderly residents have resisted the calls.

“It is dangerous to stay here! Be responsible! Evacuate!,” Filashkin wrote on social media.

As Russian forces eye the city of Toretsk -- a part of the front in the Donetsk region that was relatively quiet until recently — Kyiv said it had evacuated 700 residents over the last three days from the mining town.

Ukraine’s interior ministry said some 5,000 people remain in the town, which was estimated to have a population of around 30,000 people before Moscow’s offensive.

The Kremlin declared it had annexed the Donetsk region along with three others in late 2022 even though its forces were still fighting to control the area.

VIENNA — Hungary's nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Sunday announced the formation of a new EU parliamentary alliance with Austria's far-right party and the Czech centrist group of ex-premier Andrej Babis.

Orban — whose country takes on the EU's rotating presidency on Monday — has long railed against the "Brussels elites", most recently accusing Brussels of fuelling the war in Ukraine.

Hungary has vowed to use its EU presidency to push for its "vision of Europe" under the motto "Make Europe Great Again" — echoing the rallying cry of Orban ally former US president Donald Trump.

"A new era begins here, and the first, perhaps decisive moment of this new era is the creation of a new European political faction that will change European politics," Orban told reporters in Vienna at a joint press conference with Austria's Freedom Party (FPOe) leader Herbert Kickl and Czech ANO Party leader Babis.

Vowing to bring a "new era", the three men signed what they termed a patriotic manifesto, promising "peace, security and development" instead of "war, migration and stagnation".

The new alliance, "Patriots for Europe", will need support from parties from at least four other countries to be recognised as a group in the EU parliament.

'New opportunities' 

It is not yet clear who would join them.

Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) announced at its party conference on Sunday that it was officially withdrawing from the Identity and Democracy (ID) group, to which the FPOe also belongs, along with France's National Rally and Italy's League.

The party's MEPs had already been excluded from the ID group in the run up to EU elections in early June after its lead candidate Maximilian Krah was embroiled in a series of scandals, including suspicious links to Russia and China.

Orban's Fidesz Party left the centre-right European People's Party (EPP) — the European Parliament's biggest group — in 2021 amid accusations of Hungary's democratic backsliding

"Even if the AfD cannot yet form a joint parliamentary group with Fidesz at this point, this opens up new opportunities for the AfD to work with other parties, as the party landscape of ECR and ID as a whole is in flux," a spokesman for AfD leader Alice Weidel told AFP.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists is set to be the EU parliament’s third-largest force, following far-right gains at the European elections.

Fidesz, with its partner KDNP, now has 11 MEPs, ANO seven and the FPOe six.

In a first, the FPOe topped the European election in Austria and also looks set to win national elections later this year.

Babis’ ANO announced last week it was leaving Renew Europe, which includes French President Emmanuel Macron’s party.

GENEVA — Ferocious storms and torrential rains that lashed France, Switzerland and Italy this weekend have left at least seven people dead, local authorities said on Sunday.

Three people died after torrential rains triggered a landslide in south-eastern Switzerland, police in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino said on Sunday.

Elsewhere in Switzerland, a man was found dead in a hotel in Saas-Grund in the southwest canton of Valais, police said, adding that he was probably taken by surprise by a sudden rapid rise in floodwater.

Images published in the online publication 20minuten showed parts of the town covered in a thick layer of mud and rocks.

Another man is also missing in Valais, police said.

In France, three people in their 70s and 80s died in the northeastern Aube region on Saturday when a falling tree crushed the car they were travelling in, the local authority told AFP.

A fourth passenger was in critical care, it added.

Switzerland’s civil security services said “several hundred” people were evacuated in the southern canton of Valais and roads closed after the Rhone and its tributaries overflowed in different locations.

The situation in Valais was “under control” Sunday, Frederic Favre, the official responsible for civil security, told a press conference, but he warned that it would remain “fragile” for the next several days.

Emergency services were assessing the best way to evacuate 300 people who had arrived for a football tournament in the mountain town of Peccia, while almost 70 more were being evacuated from a holiday camp in the village of Mogno.

The poor weather was making rescue work particularly difficult, police had said earlier, with several valleys in the southern cantons of Ticino and Valais near the border with Italy, inaccessible and cut off from the electricity network.

In Ticino, some 400 people — including 40 children from a holiday camp — had to be evacuated from risk areas and taken to civil protection centres.

The federal alert system also said part of the canton was without drinking water.

Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis, who is from Ticino, said the repeated disasters “have touched us deeply”.

It’s the worst flooding experienced in the canton since 2000 when 13 people were killed in a mudslide which destroyed the village of Gondo.

Scientists say climate change driven by human activity is increasing the severity, frequency and length of extreme weather events such as floods and storms.

Italy flooding 

In northern Italy, Piedmont and the Aosta Valley also suffered flooding and mudslides, though no deaths were reported.

Firefighters in Piedmont announced Sunday morning that they had carried out 80 operations to rescue people in difficulty.

A mudslide temporarily blocked a regional road to the ski resort of Cervinia in the Aosta Valley, a semi-autonomous region located along the border with France and Switzerland.

A river which burst its banks caused significant damage to the centre of the town where several streets were flooded.

A mudslide blocked access to Cogne, a village of 1,300 people in the Aosta Valley, where 90 millimetres of rainfall was recorded in a six-hour period on Saturday.

At the European football championships in Germany, a match between Germany and Denmark Saturday evening was interrupted for almost half an hour because of heavy rain and lighting.

RALEIGH, United States — A fired-up Joe Biden came out swinging on Friday as he tried to make up for a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump, insisting he was the right man to win November’s US presidential election.

Biden’s appearance at a campaign rally in the battleground state of North Carolina came amid rumblings in his alarmed Democratic Party about replacing the 81-year-old as their nominee — and shortly before the nation’s most influential newspaper urged him to step aside.

“I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to,” Biden admitted to supporters in unusually confessional remarks.

“But I know how to tell the truth. I know how to do this job,” he said to huge cheers, vowing “when you get knocked down, you get back up.”

Biden’s team was in damage-control mode after Thursday’s debate when he often hesitated, tripped over words and lost his train of thought — exacerbating fears about his ability to serve another term.

He had hoped to allay qualms about his advanced age, and to expose Trump as a habitual liar.

But the president failed to counter his bombastic rival, who offered up a largely unchallenged reel of false or misleading statements about everything from the economy to immigration.

On Friday, Biden delivered the lines Democrats wished they had heard in the televised debate.

“Did you see Trump last night? My guess is he set — and I mean this sincerely — a new record for the most lies told in a single debate,” Biden said.

“Donald Trump is a genuine threat to this nation. He’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a threat to our democracy. He’s literally a threat for everything America stands for.”

Trump also returned to the campaign trail Friday, speaking at a rally in Virginia and launching his familiar attacks on Biden in a rambling speech.

“It’s not his age, it’s his competence,” Trump said.

“The question every voter should be asking themselves today is not whether Joe Biden can survive a 90-minute debate performance, but whether America can survive four more years of crooked Joe Biden.”

A new Democrat?

Trump addressed the chances of Biden being replaced by another candidate, saying, “I don’t really believe that because he does better in polls than any of the [other] Democrats.”

So far, no senior Democratic figure has publicly called on Biden to withdraw, with most toeing a party line about sticking with the existing ticket.

“I will never turn my back on President Biden,” California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has figured prominently on lists of possible replacement candidates, said immediately after the debate.

Forcing a change in the ticket would be politically fraught, and Biden would have to decide himself to withdraw to make way for another nominee before the party convention next month.

Biden overwhelmingly won the primary votes, and the party’s 3,900 delegates heading to the convention in Chicago are beholden to him.

If he exits, the delegates would have to find a replacement.

“Bad debate nights happen,” Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama, wrote on X.

But the election is “still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself”.

The show of Democratic loyalty and Biden’s defiance in North Carolina were not enough for The New York Times, however.

The daily newspaper slammed Biden’s campaign as a “reckless gamble” in the face of the threat posed by Trump, with its editorial board — which is separate from the newsroom — calling for the president to stand aside.

The “greatest public service Mr. Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election,” it said.

A logical — but not automatic — candidate to take Biden’s place would be his vice president, Kamala Harris, who loyally defended his debate performance.

As the Democrats scrambled, Trump allies sought to project calm assurance.

US House Speaker Mike Johnson, a senior Republican figure, said it was clear Biden was not “up to the job”.

“Donald Trump is the only man on that stage that’s qualified and capable of serving as the next president,” he said. “The election cannot get here soon enough.”

A second debate is scheduled for September 10.

SEOUL — North Korea successfully tested its multiple-warhead missile capability, state media said on Thursday, as dozens more trash-laden balloons sent by Pyongyang landed in the South.

Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in years, with Pyongyang ramping up weapons testing while bombarding the South with balloons full of trash it says are in retaliation to similar missives sent northwards by activists in the South.

The balloons briefly forced Incheon Airport, Seoul's major hub, to close on Wednesday and, in response to the successive launches, South Korea has fully suspended a tension-reducing military treaty and restarted propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts and live-fire drills near the border.

North Korea claimed it had "successfully conducted the separation and guidance control test of individual mobile warheads", the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Thursday.

The "separated mobile warheads were guided correctly to the three coordinate targets" during the test carried out on Wednesday, it said.

"The test is aimed at securing the MIRV capability," KCNA added, referring to multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle technology — the ability to fire multiple warheads on a single ballistic missile.

South Korea's military had said the North's test on Wednesday appeared to be of a hypersonic missile, but that the launch ended in a mid-air explosion.

More smoke than usual appeared to emanate from the missile, raising the possibility of combustion issues, a South Korean military official said, adding it may have been powered by solid propellants.

According to KCNA, the test "was carried out by use of the first-stage engine of an intermediate-range solid-fuel ballistic missile within a 170-200 kilometre radius".

"The effectiveness of a decoy separated from the missile was also verified by anti-air radar," it said.

Acquiring multiple-warhead missile technology is an ultimate goal for nations seeking ICBM-level missiles to carry nuclear warheads, said Hong Min, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification.

It appears the North is “testing such technology step by step over the long haul”, he told AFP.

“They appear to be making technological advancements in the early development stages of multiple-warhead missiles.”

The United States and Seoul have repeatedly accused North Korea of providing ammunition and missiles to Russia for its war in Ukraine.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was in Pyongyang last week for a high-profile state visit that underscored his growing ties with leader Kim Jong-un.

The pair signed a “breakthrough” agreement that included a pledge to come to each other’s aid if attacked.

South Korea, which said last week it would “reconsider” a longstanding policy that bars it from supplying arms directly to Ukraine, announced on Thursday it will impose unilateral sanctions against four Russian ships and eight North Korean individuals over arms shipments and oil transfers between the two countries.

Balloon blitz

North Korea has floated hundreds of trash-carrying balloons southward for three consecutive days in a tit-for-tat propaganda campaign.

Seoul’s military said around 70 balloons had landed by Thursday morning, mainly in northern Gyeonggi province and the Seoul area, with the contents found not to be hazardous.

“The payload is about 10 kilogrammes, so there is a risk if the balloons descend rapidly,” it said, adding the military was ready to respond.

South Korea’s Marine Corps resumed live-fire exercises on islands near the western inter-Korean border on Wednesday, the first such exercises since the 2018 tension-reducing military deal with the North was fully suspended this month.

South Korea and the United States also staged joint air drills Wednesday involving around 30 aircraft, including Washington’s advanced stealth fighter jet the F-22 Raptor.

President Yoon Suk Yeol visited a US aircraft carrier on Tuesday that arrived in South Korea for joint trilateral military drills this week aimed at countering North Korean threats.

The drills, which run from Thursday to Saturday, involve Washington’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier the USS Theodore Roosevelt, Tokyo’s guided-missile destroyer JS Atago, and Seoul’s KF-16 fighter jets, among other assets.

Pyongyang has routinely criticised such exercises as rehearsals for an invasion.