https://arab.news/wchhr
Ukraine has retaken two villages in its eastern region of Sumy, Kyiv’s military said, adding to recent small territorial gains along the border with Russia ahead of peace talks at a summit of the US and Russian leaders set for Friday.
US President Donald Trump said on Monday that Kyiv and Moscow will both have to cede land to end the war in Ukraine and this week’s talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin will show whether the Kremlin leader is willing to make a deal.
Ukraine’s forces have liberated the settlements of Stepne and Novokostiantynivka along the frontline in Sumy, the General Staff said in a Tuesday evening report.
“It’s tough. But we are holding back the enemy,” Ukraine’s top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, wrote on Facebook, following a meeting on Tuesday with President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukraine’s top brass.
“In the Sumy direction, we are conducting active operations and have some success advancing forward, liberating Ukrainian land.”
Monday’s gains follow Sunday’s news that Kyiv’s military had retaken the village of Bezsalivka.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports of gains in the Sumy region.
The small gains come as Russian forces have been pushing westward for months along sections of the 1,000-km (620-mile) frontline, capturing new villages nearly on a daily basis, mainly in the Donetsk region.
Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, mounted a new offensive this year in Sumy, following Putin’s order to carve out a “buffer zone” there and threatening the regional capital.
Ukraine’s authoritative Deep State online map project shows that Russian forces control about 200 sq km (77 sq miles) of Sumy, and a total of about 114,000 square kilometers (44,000 sq miles) in Ukraine.
PARIS: A heat wave gripped parts of Europe on Monday, sending temperatures up to 43 degrees Celsius in southern France and increasing risks of wildfires in wine country, while Bulgaria suffered blazes along its southern borders and Hungary saw record-breaking weekend temperatures.
Scientists say Europe is becoming the world’s fastest-warming continent.
According to the UK-based Carbon Brief, 2025 is predicted to be the second- or third-warmest year on record. Europe’s land temperatures have risen about 2.3 C above
pre-industrial levels, nearly twice the global rate, intensifying heatwaves, the EU’s Copernicus climate service reports. EU data show burned area across the continent is already far above the long-term average this summer, with major outbreaks in Spain, Portugal and deadly blazes in Greece since late June.
The UK’s Met Office expects a heatwave, the fourth this summer, to peak around 33C in London on Tuesday. The UK Health Security Agency issued a yellow health alert for older adults and those with medical conditions.
In France’s Aude department, a patchwork of vineyards and Mediterranean scrubland, hundreds of firefighters remained in the rolling wine country guarding the edges of a massive, deadly blaze that scorched 16,000 hectares last week. Officials say the fire is under control but warn it will not be fully extinguished for weeks, with hot spots still smoldering and at risk of reigniting.
On Monday, the French national weather authority, Météo-France, placed 12 departments on red alert, the country’s highest heat warning, anticipating exceptional heat stretching from the Atlantic coast to the Mediterranean plains. Forty-one other departments were under lower-level orange alerts, as was the neighboring microstate of Andorra, between France and Spain.
“Don’t be fooled — this isn’t ‘normal, it’s summer.’ It’s not normal, it’s a nightmare,” agricultural climatologist Serge Zaka, told BFMTV from Montauban in France’s Tarn-et-Garonne department, where the blistering heat pressed relentlessly throughout the day.
Social media images showed shuttered streets in Valence, residents shielding windows with foil to reflect the light, and tourists huddling under umbrellas along the Garonne in Toulouse. Across the south, cafe terraces stood empty as people sought cooler corners indoors.
The red alert in France has been issued only eight times since it was created in 2004 after a deadly summer the year
before. It is reserved for extreme, prolonged heat with major health risks and the potential to disrupt daily life. The designation gives local officials powers to cancel outdoor events, close public venues and alter school or summer camp schedules.
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Monday he was deploying 800 National Guard troops to Washington and temporarily taking over the city’s police department, an extraordinary assertion of presidential power in the nation’s capital.
Trump’s move, which bypassed the city’s elected leaders, was emblematic of his second-term approach, which has seen him wield executive authority in ways with little precedent in modern US history and in defiance of political norms.
The president cast his actions as necessary to “rescue” Washington from a purported wave of lawlessness. Statistics show that violent crime shot up in 2023 but has been rapidly declining since.
“Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals,” Trump told a news conference at the White House.
It is the second time this summer that the Republican president has deployed troops to a Democratically governed city. A federal trial began on Monday in San Francisco on whether Trump violated US law by deploying National Guard troops to Los Angeles in June without the approval of California Governor Gavin Newsom.
And Trump signaled that other major US cities with Democratic leadership could be next, including Chicago, a city that has long been beset by violent crime, although it was down significantly in the first half of the year.
“If we need to, we’re going to do the same thing in Chicago, which is a disaster,” Trump said at the White House, adding, “Hopefully L.A. is watching.”
During Trump’s election campaign his law and order platform often had racial undertones. He singled out majority Democratic cities like Baltimore, Chicago and Washington — all cities with large Black populations — when he spoke about rampant crime in urban areas.
Hundreds of officers and agents from more than a dozen federal agencies have fanned out across Washington in recent days. Attorney General Pam Bondi will oversee the police force, Trump said.
The US Army said the National Guard troops would carry out a number of tasks, including “administrative, logistics and physical presence in support of law enforcement.” Between 100 and 200 of the troops would be supporting law enforcement at any given time.
The Democratic mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser, has pushed back on Trump’s claims of unchecked violence, noting that violent crime hit its lowest level in more than three decades last year.
Violent crime, including murders, soared in 2023, turning Washington into one of the nation’s deadliest cities. However, violent crime dropped 35 percent in 2024, according to federal data, and it has fallen an additional 26 percent in the first seven months of 2025, according to city police.
Bowser struck a diplomatic tone at a news conference, saying she and other members of her administration would work with the federal government, even as she again rejected Trump’s claim of widespread crime.
While Bowser said the law appeared to give the president broad power to take temporary control of the police force, the city’s attorney general, Brian Schwalb, earlier called Trump’s actions “unlawful” and said his office was “considering all of our options.”
Over the past week, Trump has intensified his messaging, suggesting he might attempt to strip the city of its local autonomy and implement a full federal takeover.
The District of Columbia operates under the Home Rule Act, which gives Congress ultimate authority but allows residents to elect a mayor and city council.
Trump on Monday invoked a section of the act that allows the president to take over the police force for 30 days when “emergency” conditions exist. Trump said he was declaring a “public safety emergency” in the city.
Trump’s own Federal Emergency Management Agency is cutting security funding for the National Capital Region, an area that includes D.C. and parts of Maryland and Virginia. The region will receive $20 million less this year from the federal urban security fund, amounting to a 44 percent year-on-year cut.
Trump also vowed to remove homeless encampments, without providing details on how or where homeless people would be moved.
The federal government owns much of Washington’s parkland, so the Trump administration has legal authority to clear homeless encampments in those areas, as President Joe Biden did while in office. But the federal government cannot force people to move out of the city because they lack shelter, advocates for the homeless said.
The president has broad authority over the 2,700 members of the D.C. National Guard, unlike in states where governors typically hold the power to activate troops.
Guard troops have been dispatched to Washington many times, including in response to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters, and during 2020 protests over police brutality.
