#Russian forces have liberated Alekseyevka in the Sumy Region, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported.

"Units from the Battlegroup North liberated the locality of Alekseyevka in the Sumy Region as a result of determined military action," the ministry said.

Russia’s top brass put the total number of Ukrainian casualties in the special military operation zone over the past day at 1,440.

Namely, Ukraine sustained more than 200 casualties in the zone of responsibility of the Russian Battlegroup North, roughly 210 casualties in the zone controlled by Russia’s Battlegroup West, roughly 280 casualties from actions by Russia’s Battlegroup South, over 510 casualties in the zone of responsibility of the Battlegroup Center, roughly 155 casualties in the zone controlled by the Battlegroup East, and more than 85 casualties in the Battlegroup Dnepr’s zone of responsibility, the ministry specified.

Also, Russian forces downed seven JDAM glide bombs and 100 Ukrainian drones in the past 24 hours, according to the Defense Ministry.
Iskander missile strikes

The Russian military delivered an Iskander-M missile strike on a Ukrainian long-range drone launch site at the Chuguyev airfield in the Kharkov Region, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported.

"As a result of a pinpoint missile strike, six drone launchers, eight motor vehicles and some 30 kamikaze drones prepared for launch by Ukrainian nationalists were destroyed," the ministry said.

In another Iskander-M missile strike, Russia targeted Ukrainian mobile drone launch and control sites near the locality of Krolevets in the Sumy Region, the ministry added. "As a result of a missile strike, two motor cars carrying mobile drone launch and control stations and troops were struck. Also, objective control recorded a fire at unmanned [aerial] vehicles prepared for launch as their payload detonated," the ministry concluded.

At least 31 Palestinians are killed while heading to a Gaza aid hub, officials and witnesses say.

#RAFAH, #Gaza Strip — At least 31 people were killed and over 150 were wounded on Sunday while on their way to receive food in the Gaza Strip, according to health officials and multiple witnesses. The witnesses said Israeli forces fired on crowds around a kilometre (1,000 yards) from an aid site run by an Israeli-backed foundation.

The army in a brief statement said it was “currently unaware of injuries caused by (Israeli military) fire within the humanitarian aid distribution site. The matter is still under review.”

The foundation — promoted by Israel and the United States — said in a statement it delivered aid “without incident” early Sunday. It has denied previous accounts of chaos and gunfire around its sites, which are in Israeli military zones where independent access is limited.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said 31 people were killed and 170 others were wounded.

“Aid distribution has become a death trap,” the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, said in a statement.
A new aid system marred by chaos

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation ’s aid distribution has been marred by chaos in its first week of operations, and multiple witnesses have said Israeli troops fired on crowds near its delivery sites. Before Sunday, 17 people were killed while trying to reach the hubs, according to Zaher al-Waheidi, head of the Health Ministry’s records department.

The foundation says the private security contractors guarding its sites have not fired on the crowds. Israel’s military has acknowledged firing warning shots on previous occasions.

The foundation said in a statement it distributed 16 truckloads of aid early Sunday “without incident,” and dismissed what it described as “false reporting about deaths, mass injuries and chaos.”
‘The scene was horrible’

Thousands of people headed toward the distribution site in southern Gaza hours before dawn. As they approached, Israeli forces ordered them to disperse and come back later, witnesses said. When the crowds reached the Flag Roundabout, around one kilometre (half a mile) away, at around 3 a.m., Israeli forces opened fire, the witnesses said.

“There was fire from all directions, from naval warships, from tanks and drones,” said Amr Abu Teiba, who was in the crowd.

He said he saw at least 10 bodies with gunshot wounds and several other wounded people, including women. People used carts to ferry the dead and wounded to a field hospital. “The scene was horrible,” he said.

Most people were shot “in the upper part of their bodies, including the head, neck and chest,” said Dr. Marwan al-Hams, a health ministry official at Nasser Hospital, where many of the wounded were transferred after being brought to the field hospital run by the Red Cross.

He said 24 people were being treated in Nasser Hospital’s intensive care unit. A colleague, surgeon Khaled al-Ser, later said 150 wounded people had arrived, along with 28 bodies.

Ibrahim Abu Saoud, another witness, said the military fired from about 300 metres (yards) away.

Abu Saoud said he saw many people with gunshot wounds, including a young man who he said died at the scene. “We weren’t able to help him,” he said.

Mohammed Abu Teaima, 33, said he saw Israeli forces open fire and kill his cousin and a woman as they headed toward the distribution site. He said his cousin was shot in his chest and his brother-in-law was among the wounded.

“They opened heavy fire directly toward us,” he said.

An AP reporter arrived at the field hospital at around 6 a.m. and saw dozens of wounded, including women and children. The reporter also saw crowds of people returning from the distribution point. Some carried boxes of aid but most appeared to be empty-handed.

Officials at the field hospital said at least 21 people were killed and another 175 were wounded, without saying who opened fire on them. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.

Gaza’s Health Ministry provided the same toll and later updated it.
The UN says new aid system violates humanitarian principles

Israel and the U.S. say the new system is aimed at preventing Hamas from siphoning off assistance. Israel has not provided any evidence of systematic diversion, and the UN denies it has occurred.

UN agencies and major aid groups have refused to work with the new system, saying it violates humanitarian principles because it allows Israel to control who receives aid and forces people to relocate to distribution sites, risking yet more mass displacement in the coastal territory.

“It’s essentially engineered scarcity,” Jonathan Whittall, interim head in Gaza of the UN humanitarian office, said last week.

The UN system has struggled to bring in aid after Israel slightly eased its nearly three-month blockade of the territory last month. The groups say Israeli restrictions, the breakdown of law and order and widespread looting make it extremely difficult to deliver aid to Gaza’s roughly two million Palestinians.

Experts have warned that the territory is at risk of famine if more aid is not brought in.

The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251. They are still holding 58 hostages, around a third believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.

Israel’s military campaign has killed over 54,000 people, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were civilians or combatants. The offensive has destroyed vast areas, displaced around 90 per cent of the population and left people almost completely reliant on international aid.

The latest efforts at ceasefire talks appeared to stumble Saturday when Hamas said it had sought amendments to a U.S. ceasefire proposal that Israel had approved, and the U.S. envoy called that “unacceptable.”

Hungry #Palestinians in Gaza block and offload dozens of UN food trucks.

TEL AVIV, Israel — Palestinians in the Gaza Strip blocked and offloaded dozens of food trucks, the UN World Food Program said Saturday, as desperation mounts following Israel’s monthslong blockade while talks of a ceasefire inch forward.

The WFP said 77 trucks carrying aid, mostly flour, were stopped by hungry people who took the food before the trucks could reach their destination.

The nearly three-month Israeli blockade on Gaza has pushed the population of over 2 million to the brink of famine. While pressure slightly eased in recent days as Israel allowed some aid to enter, aid organizations say far from enough food is getting in.

Hamas on Friday said it was reviewing a U.S. proposal for a temporary ceasefire, which Israeli officials have approved. U.S. President Donald Trump said negotiators were nearing a deal.

A ceasefire would pause the fighting for 60 days, release some of the 58 hostages still held in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and much-needed food aid and other assistance, according to Hamas and Egyptian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

The WFP said the fear of starvation in Gaza is high despite the aid that’s entering now. “We need to flood communities with food for the next few days to calm anxieties and rebuild the trust with communities that more food is coming,” it said in a statement — adding that it has over 140,000 metric tons of food — enough to feed Gazans for two months — ready to be brought in.

A witness in the southern city of Khan Younis told The Associated Press the UN convoy was stopped at a makeshift roadblock and offloaded by desperate civilians in their thousands. Most people carried bags of flour. He said at one point a forklift was used to offload pallets. The witness spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisal.

The United Nations said earlier this month that Israeli authorities have forced them to use unsecured routes within areas controlled by Israel’s military in the eastern areas of Rafah and Khan Younis, where armed gangs are active and trucks were stopped.

Israel’s military didn’t immediately respond to questions.
Attacks, gangs and lack of protection hamper UN distribution

An internal document shared with aid groups about security incidents, seen by the AP, said there were four incidents of facilities being looted in three days at the end of May, not including Saturday’s.

The UN says it has been unable to get enough aid in because of fighting. On Friday, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said it only picked up five truckloads of cargo from the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom crossing, and the other 60 trucks had to return due to intense hostilities.

A new U.S- and Israeli-backed foundation started operations in Gaza this week, distributing food at several sites in a chaotic rollout.

Israel says the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation eventually will replace the aid operation that the UN and others have carried out during nearly 20 months of war. It says the new mechanism is necessary, accusing Hamas of siphoning off large amounts of aid. The UN denies that significant diversion takes place.

The GHF works with armed contractors, which it says are needed to distribute food safely. Aid groups have accused the foundation of militarizing aid.
Israeli strikes kill at least 60

Israel continued its military campaign across Gaza, saying it struck dozens of targets over the past day. Gaza’s Health Ministry said at least 60 people were killed by Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours.

The ministry said three people were killed by Israeli gunfire early Saturday in Rafah. Three others were killed — parents and a child — when their car was struck in Gaza City. An Israeli strike hit another car in Gaza City, killing four. And an Israeli strike hit a tent sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis, killing six, said Weam Fares, a spokesperson for Nasser Hospital.

The war began when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking 250 hostages. Of those taken captive, 58 remain in Gaza. Israel believes 35 are dead and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said there are “doubts” about the fate of several others.

Israeli strikes have killed more than 54,000 Gaza residents, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its tally.

Magdy reported from Cairo

The US Supreme Court on Friday gave the Trump administration the green light to revoke - for now - the legal status of hundreds of thousands of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

#WASHINGTON, May 30. US President Donald Trump has rejected an attempt to label Russian leader Vladimir Putin as an obstacle on a path to peace in Ukraine, saying that Vladimir Zelensky is also very stubborn

When asked whether he sees Putin as "the good guy or the bad guy," he said, "I've known him very well, and I went through a lot of things with him."

A journalist noted that Trump’s team deals with "a very stubborn Vladimir Putin. "And Zelensky, very stubborn Zelensky too," Trump added. He once again said that he was disappointed by Russia’s massive strikes on Ukraine.

Putin orders government to memorialize fallen special military operation soldiers
The government of the Russian Federation, together with the administration of the president of the Russian Federation, will develop unified recommendations

#Israel strikes western Syria, civilian reported killed. Damascus, Syria — Israel on Friday struck western Syria, the Israeli military and Syrian state media said, with one civilian reportedly killed in the first such attack on the country in nearly a month.

It came after Damascus announced earlier this month indirect talks with Israel to calm tensions, and the United States called for a “non-aggression agreement” between the two countries, which are technically at war.

“A strike from Israeli occupation aircraft targeted sites close to the village of Zama in the Jableh countryside south of Latakia,” state television said.

State news agency #SANA reported one civilian was killed “as a result of an Israeli occupation airstrike targeting the vicinity of Zama”.

The Israeli military said it had “struck weapon storage facilities containing coastal missiles that posed a threat to international and Israeli maritime freedom of navigation, in the Latakia area of Syria”.

“In addition, components of surface-to-air missiles were struck,” it said, adding it would “continue to operate to maintain freedom of action in the region, in order to carry out its missions and will act to remove any threat to the State of Israel and its citizens”.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights meanwhile reported that jets likely to be Israeli struck military sites on the outskirts of Tartus and Latakia.

Syria and Israel have technically been at war since 1948. Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and has carried out hundreds of strikes and several incursions since the overthrow of longtime Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in December.

Israel says its strikes aim to stop advanced weapons reaching Syria’s new authorities, whom it considers jihadists.

A statue of Stalin is unveiled in the Moscow subway as Russia tries to revive the dictator’s legacy.

A monument to Josef Stalin has been unveiled at one of Moscow’s busiest subway stations, the latest attempt by Russian authorities to revive the legacy of the brutal Soviet dictator.

The sculpture shows Stalin surrounded by beaming workers and children with flowers. It was installed at the Taganskaya station to mark the 90th anniversary of the Moscow Metro, the sprawling subway known for its mosaics, chandeliers and other ornate decorations that was built under Stalin.

It replaces an earlier tribute that was removed in the decade following Stalin’s 1953 death in a drive to root out his “cult of personality” and reckon with decades of repression marked by show trials, nighttime arrests and millions killed or thrown into prison camps as “enemies of the people.”

Muscovites have given differing responses to the unveiling earlier this month. Many commuters took photos of the monument and some laid flowers beneath it.

Aleksei Zavatsin, 22, told The Associated Press that Stalin was a “great man” who had “made a poor country into a superpower.”

“He raised the country from its knees,” he said.

But another resident who identified herself only as Marina recalled her grandmother saying “the whole country was living in fear” under Stalin.

Activists from Society.Future, a Russian political movement that voices pro-democratic and nationalist views, protested by placing posters at the foot of the monument that quoted top politicians condemning the dictator.

One poster, featuring President Vladimir Putin, cited him as bemoaning Stalin’s “mass crimes against the people,” and saying his modernization of the USSR came at the price of “unacceptable” repression.

The unveiling came weeks after Putin signed a decree renaming the airport in Volgograd as Stalingrad — as the city was called when the Soviet Red Army defeated Nazi German forces there in one of the bloodiest battles of World War II.

Volgograd itself briefly reverted to its former name on May 8-9 for Victory Day celebrations and will be temporarily renamed five more times this year to mark related wartime anniversaries.

Putin has invoked the Battle of Stalingrad, which lasted five months and saw up to two million soldiers and civilians killed, as justification for Moscow’s actions in Ukraine.

Russian political analyst Pyotr Miloserdov said the Kremlin has used a broader drive to embrace Stalin’s legacy to justify both the conflict in Ukraine and crackdown on dissent at home.

“Stalin was a tyrant, a despot, and that’s what we need,” he told AP. Authorities want to revive Stalin’s image to popularize the idea of strongman rule, he added, and paint violence and repression as justified under extraordinary circumstances.

“This can lead to justifying any senseless, forceful actions. Under Stalin, this was allowed, there was a war. ... So, here is our special military operation, and now this is allowed too. This is simply an attempt to justify the use of force on people,” Miloserdov said.

Moscow, The Associated Press

#UN warns of #Gaza famine risk, as Israel vows to build ‘Jewish state’ in West Bank.

The U.N. warned on Friday that the entire population of Gaza is at risk of famine, as Israel vowed to build a “Jewish Israeli state” in the occupied West Bank.

Israel has faced mounting international pressure over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where the U.N. says only a trickle of aid has been allowed in after a more than two-month blockade.

Negotiations to end nearly 20 months of war in Gaza have so far failed to achieve a breakthrough, with Israel resuming operations in March following a short-lived truce.

Israel has meanwhile doubled down on its settlement expansion in the West Bank, while defying calls from French President Emmanuel Macron and other world leaders for a two-state solution.

Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA, on Friday called Gaza “the hungriest place on earth”.

“It’s the only defined area -- a country or defined territory within a country -- where you have the entire population at risk of famine. One hundred percent of the population at risk of famine,” he said.

Recent AFPTV footage has shown chaotic scenes as large crowds of Palestinians desperate for food rushed to a limited number of aid distribution centres to pick up supplies.

Israel recently intensified its Gaza offensive in what it says is a renewed push to destroy Hamas, drawing sharp international criticism, including from allies such as Britain and Germany.
‘Crusade’ against Israel

This week Israel announced the creation of 22 new settlements in the West Bank.

London called the move a “deliberate obstacle” to Palestinian statehood, and U.N. chief Antonio Guterres’ spokesman said it pushed efforts towards a two-state solution “in the wrong direction”.

On Friday, Defence Minister Israel Katz vowed to build a “Jewish Israeli state” in the Palestinian territory which Israel has occupied since 1967.

“This is a decisive response to the terrorist organisations that are trying to harm and weaken our hold on this land,” Katz said in a video published by his office.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank -- considered illegal under international law -- are seen as a major obstacle to a lasting peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Katz framed the move as a direct rebuke to Macron and others pushing for recognition of a Palestinian state.

Macron has recently stepped up his statements in support of the Palestinians, asserting on Friday that recognition of a Palestinian state, with some conditions, was “not only a moral duty, but a political necessity”.

Macron confirmed he would personally attend a conference France is co-hosting with Saudi Arabia at the U.N. in June aimed at reviving the two-state solution.

Israel on Friday accused the French president of undertaking a “crusade against the Jewish state”.

The foreign ministry said that “instead of applying pressure on the jihadist terrorists, Macron wants to reward them with a Palestinian state”.
‘Go in with full force’

Negotiations aimed at halting the fighting in Gaza have continued, meanwhile, with the White House announcing Thursday that Israel had “signed off” on a new ceasefire proposal submitted to Hamas.

The Palestinian militant group, however, said the deal failed to satisfy its demands, stopping short of rejecting it outright.

Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said on Telegram that “after Hamas rejected the deal proposal again -- there are no more excuses”.

“It is time to go in with full force, without blinking, to destroy, and kill Hamas to the last one,” he said.

Israel has not confirmed that it approved the new proposal.

Gaza’s civil defence agency told AFP that at least 45 people had been killed in Israeli attacks on Friday, including seven in a strike targeting a family home in Jabalia in the north.

Palestinians sobbed over the bodies of their loved ones at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital following the strike, AFPTV footage showed.

“These were civilians and were sleeping at their homes,” said neighbour Mahmud al-Ghaf, describing “children in pieces”.

“Stop the war!” said Mahmud Nasr, who lost relatives. “We do not want anything from you, just stop the war.”

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Jabalia strike, but said separately that the air force had hit “dozens of targets” across Gaza over the past day.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Friday that at least 4,058 people had been killed since Israel resumed major operations on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 54,321, mostly civilians.

Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, also mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s attack, 57 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Officials say at least 10 people are dead and 6 are missing after stone quarry collapse in Indonesia