The United States and Israel crossed a major red line in attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran’s top diplomat warned on Sunday, saying he was heading to Russia for talks with President Vladimir Putin.

MOSCOW, June 22. #US jets launched attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure this night, President Donald Trump announced, marking Washington’s direct entry into the escalating conflict nine days after it began with Israeli airstrikes.

TASS has compiled key information about the US strikes on Iran.
Attack

- Trump announced the operation via Truth Social.

- The strikes targeted three nuclear facilities: Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan.

- A "full payload of bombs" was dropped on the Fordow site.

- According to Reuters, the strikes were carried out by B-2 strategic bombers equipped with GBU-57 bunker-buster bombs.

- This marks the first US military strike on Iran since 1979.

- ABC News reported that Israel received advance warning of the operation.
No impact yet

- Experts interviewed by NBC News say the strike on Fordow is unlikely to trigger a nuclear explosion or large-scale radiation release.

- International observers believe the site contained no nuclear warheads or reactors.

- Iranian officials stated that the Fordow facility had been evacuated ahead of time and suffered no irreversible damage.
'Time for peace'

- Following the strikes, Trump declared that the "time for peace" has come

- He called it a "historic moment for the United States of America, Israel, and the world" and urged Iran to "agree to end this war."

- CNN reported that Trump does not currently plan additional strikes and is awaiting a response from Tehran regarding negotiations.

- Earlier, Trump had not ruled out a strike on Iran, particularly on the Fordow site. The White House had indicated a decision would come within two weeks.
Abandoning diplomacy

- Prior to the strikes, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio assured European allies that Washington remained committed to a diplomatic resolution, The Wall Street Journal reported.

- Rubio held talks with officials from the UK, Italy, Cyprus, France, and Sweden over a two-day period.

- Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with European representatives in Geneva, but the negotiations failed to yield progress.
Israel

- For the first time since the conflict began on June 13, no rocket alerts were issued in Israel for over 24 hours.

- In response to the US strikes, the Israeli military tightened civilian restrictions, banning public gatherings and halting non-essential business operations.
Day 10 of escalation

- Israel initiated its military operation on June 13, citing the destruction of Iran’s nuclear and missile programs as its objective.

- Iran responded with retaliatory strikes, including with ballistic missiles and drones.

- Russia condemned Israel’s actions and signaled its willingness to mediate.

- On June 19, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned the US against military involvement, cautioning that such interference could lead to "truly unpredictable negative consequences.".

MOSCOW, June 21. #Israel and Iran should both give up their nuclear programs, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said.

"Does Iran have nuclear weapons? We don't know, but we know that Israel has a secret nuclear program. Well, let them both renounce such programs under the supervision of the UN Security Council and the IAEA," the politician wrote on his VKontakte page.

Israel says strikes killed three Iranian commanders and delayed Tehran’s nuclear plans by two years.

#MOSCOW, June 20. Russia and Ukraine may hold another round of talks after June 22, while Israel threatens to intensify attacks against Iran amid renewed missile strikes from the Islamic Republic. Meanwhile, Washington places Greenland under its homeland defense command. These stories topped Friday's newspaper headlines in Russia.


Vedomosti: Whether US will abandon Ukraine talks

Russian and Ukrainian negotiators may hold another round of talks after June 22, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during his traditional meeting with global media leaders on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on June 19. At that event, he also expressed readiness to meet with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, even as he questioned the latter’s legitimacy.

Putin’s statement came as the Israeli-Iranian conflict entered its sixth day. US President Donald Trump, too, is paying close attention to the Middle East conflict, and he has repeatedly emphasized his intention to contribute to the Russia-Ukraine talks. But, unlike on this track, the US leader made clear which side in the Israel-Iran conflict he is going to support. Since the conflict erupted on June 13, Trump has issued stern warnings against Tehran and threatened to use force. On June 17, he wrote on his Truth Social media that he knows exactly where Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is hiding, but that he is "not going to take him out (kill!)."

Trump’s involvement in the Israel-Iran conflict has sparked questions regarding whether he could in parallel coordinate the US role in the Ukraine negotiation process. And he has repeatedly voiced dissatisfaction with its pace. On June 16, the United States canceled separate talks on removing "irritants" with Russia, and Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stressed then that Moscow expects that the pause will not be too long.

The likelihood of the Trump administration abandoning the Ukraine negotiation process is close to zero, Dmitry Suslov, deputy director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the Higher School of Economics, told Vedomosti. Trump himself seeks to continue efforts toward peace in Ukraine, as Washington is not interested in continued war in Europe: in line with Trump’s policy course, any settlement must be final so that hostilities do not resume. The United States is pursuing this goal as it would like to reorient its resources and focus on countering China, for which Washington would need peace in Europe. The fact that Trump’s special envoy, Keith Kellogg, still handles the Ukraine issue shows that the United States has not withdrawn from the peace process. Without the United States, the negotiation process in Istanbul would stall.

The United States is still trying to find a peaceful solution to the Ukraine conflict, said Andrey Kortunov, an expert at the Valdai International Discussion Club. Trump has invested too much political capital in efforts to resolve this crisis to abandon them. Besides, the US president cannot easily shift focus to the Iran issue, even as the Ukraine conflict has been overshadowed by the latest escalation in the Middle East. As regards Ukraine talks, they could stall if the US pulls out of the peace process, the expert concluded.


Izvestia: Middle East bracing for escalation

Israel has threatened to intensify attacks against Iran amid renewed missile strikes from Tehran. The United States, too, may join the conflict: Donald Trump has reportedly readied a plan to strike Iran and has yet to issue a corresponding order. Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) does not have formal evidence of Tehran working to build nuclear weapons.



Tehran launched a fresh wave of Operation True Promise III as it fired kamikaze drones and strategic missiles toward Israel, the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) reported on Thursday morning. The latest stage involved around 20 missile launches, some of which hit residential areas in and around Tel Aviv, while a strike on Soroka Hospital in Beersheba in southern Israel left approximately 65 Israelis injured.

News agency Mahr said the Israeli army’s C4I cyber command headquarters and the military intelligence center in the Gav-Yam hi-tech park situated near the hospital were targeted. Israel said there were no military facilities near the clinic, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed retaliation saying: "We will exact the full price from the tyrants in Tehran."

Meanwhile, Israel struck Iranian nuclear facilities in Isfahan and Natanz on June 19. The IDF spokesman mistakenly said the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, too, had been attacked, but an army official later refuted this report to TASS. However, Rosatom CEO Alexey Likhachev said that part of Russian employees have been evacuated from the Bushehr NPP as he did not rule out full evacuation from the facility.

According to Vladimir Sazhin, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the situation in Iran is very tense. "Reform is needed, and this war triggered processes that have been ongoing in Iran. While there is no serious opposition in Iran which could overthrow the regime, 70% of the population has a negative attitude toward the current authorities, by some estimates," Sazhin said.

Not all experts agree. Farhad Ibragimov, an expert in Oriental studies, explained to Izvestia that Iran is consolidating around its leaders as the continued existence of the Islamic Republic is currently at stake.

As for Israel, the Jewish state has so consolidated around the fight against Iran to the extent that nobody is discussing any change of power there, Viktor Smirnov, in charge of the Department of Israel and Jewish Communities at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, explained, even as, previously, large-scale protests were held against Netanyahu, including over his failure to retrieve Israelis from captivity in Gaza.


Kommersant: Washington reassigns Greenland to homeland defense command

The United States continues to pursue a policy aimed at putting President Donald Trump’s idea of establishing control of Greenland into practice. News came recently that the Pentagon has transferred the Danish island from the US European Command (EUCOM) area of responsibility to the US Northern Command (NORTHCOM), which handles national defense. Denmark held an exercise, large enough for the country, to show that it is capable of controlling the area claimed by the United States on its own.

Trump has repeatedly stated previously that the United States needs Greenland, citing national security reasons. While NORTHCOM’s mission is to defend the American homeland, EUCOM is responsible for US troops and infrastructure in Europe.

Vitaly Yermakov, a research fellow with the Center of International Security at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of World Economy and International Relations, said aligning Greenland with NORTHCOM would, first of all, be viewed "in the context of Trump’s notorious expansionist plans." "Perhaps, this was driven by exactly those [plans] since the initiative came from the very top," he told Kommersant.

However, this step matters to the US military, too, in practical terms, Yermakov continued. "NORTHCOM mostly handles the country’s air defenses and anti-aircraft systems, and Greenland, which played a certain role there, is now part of the `defense perimeter’ in organizational terms," he explained. According to the expert, this work will be intensified as part of the initiative to build an integrated ‘Golden Dome’ capability. Besides, if the Americans decide to do so, they could justify themselves by saying that Greenland is part of the North American continent geographically, he added.


Izvestia: European Parliament to debate Russian gas phase-out later this month

In the last week of June, the European Parliament will vote on a roadmap to eliminate Russian gas from the EU markets, MEP Tomas Zdechovsky told Izvestia. Earlier, the European Commission released a plan to stop Russian energy imports by the end of 2027. The phase-out of Russian natural gas will hurt Hungarian and Slovakian industries and also undermine re-election chances of the two countries’ leaders, experts argue.


Under the plan, gas imports on existing short-term contracts must be ended by June 17, 2026, with a possibility of continuing supplies under longer-term contracts until the end of 2027. These measures will cover both pipeline gas and LNG. As a result, by January 1, 2028, the EU will have to fully abandon Russian natural gas. All EU countries will need to develop replacement programs for that.

The EU is also planning to ban Russian uranium imports as well, with a deadline for that pushed back until the early 2030s. Brussels will have to spend €241 billion to build supply chains, the Financial Times has learned.

Technically, Slovakia and Hungary could stop buying Russian gas imports, but it will come with a very high cost. Their industrial production will shrink as a result because manufacturing most products in those countries would simply not be profitable, and they will lose their global competitive advantage, Igor Yushkov, an analyst at the Financial University and the National Energy Security Fund, told Izvestia.

Slovakia could demand that this plan be rejected or seek relevant compensation, even as the government of Robert Fico is pursuing an inconsistent foreign policy, by supporting EU sanctions or the UN’s anti-Russian resolutions, Slovakian MEP Milan Mazurek told Izvestia.

Hungary and Slovakia have long-term contracts with Gazprom, and Budapest plans to import 8 to 8.5 billion cubic meters of Russian gas in 2025, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said at SPIEF. The two countries will have to pay a fine for severing those contracts, and European consumers will have to shoulder the cost of the EU’s anti-Russian policies again. Earlier, Kirill Dmitriyev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), who is also an economic envoy for the Russian president, specified that the EU could lose over €1 trillion from the cessation of Russian gas imports.


Kommersant: Oil prices surge amid threat of US joining Iran conflict

Brent has soared to over $77 per barrel for the first time since January, with oil prices rising more than 11% since Israel and Iran started exchanging missile strikes. The new wave of price increases comes amid reports that the United States is considering a strike on Iran. The reaction of the Russian market to the price spike has so far been muted because of a time lag between oil sales and export revenues.

On Thursday, Bloomberg reported, citing its sources, that high-ranking US officials are getting ready to deliver a strike against Iran in the coming days. According to The Wall Street Journal, the US could target Iran’s Fordow enrichment plant. However, Trump earlier avoided giving a clear signal on the issue, saying that he has not yet made a final decision about striking Iran but will "one second before."

With the final decision still pending, the already touted plans were enough for market players to reprice the commodity. "A chain reaction to a variety of potential negative events is the key risk. These include a retaliatory strike from Tehran, or the threat to infrastructure in the Gulf countries, or the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz which handles roughly 20% of global oil and LNG exports," Ruslan Klyshko at AF-Capital specified.

According to Kirill Tachennikov, director of the research department at Sinara Investment Bank, told Kommersant that oil prices could as well rise above $80 per barrel should the situation in the Middle East escalate further. "Without the current geopolitical tensions, Brent could trade at around $67 to $68 per barrel. And oil’s geopolitical risks premium could either grow or decline, depending on how the situation develops," Lyudmila Rokotyanskaya, stock market expert at BCS World of Investment, warned.

Over 400 asylum seekers have landed at the small island of Gavdos near Crete, a new entry point increasingly used by migrant smugglers in past months, the Greek coastguard said on Friday.

Judge orders Columbia University protester Mahmoud Khalil freed from detention.

The former Columbia University graduate student left a federal facility in Louisiana on Friday. He is expected to head to New York to reunite with his U.S. citizen wife and infant son, born while Khalil was detained.

“Justice prevailed, but it’s very long overdue,” he said outside the facility in a remote part of Louisiana. “This shouldn’t have taken three months.”

The Trump administration is seeking to deport Khalil over his role in pro-Palestinian protests. He was detained on March 8 at his apartment building in Manhattan.

Khalil was released after U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said it would be “highly, highly unusual” for the government to continue detaining a legal U.S. resident who was unlikely to flee and hadn’t been accused of any violence.

“Petitioner is not a flight risk, and the evidence presented is that he is not a danger to the community,” he said. “Period, full stop.”

During an hourlong hearing conducted by phone, the New Jersey-based judge said the government had “clearly not met” the standards for detention.

The government filed notice Friday evening that it’s appealing Khalil’s release.

Khalil was the first person arrested under Trump’s crackdown on students who joined campus protests against Israel’s devastating war in Gaza. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said Khalil must be expelled from the country because his continued presence could harm American foreign policy.

The Trump administration has argued that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be deported as it considers their views antisemitic. Protesters and civil rights groups say the administration is conflating antisemitism with criticism of Israel in order to silence dissent.

Farbiarz has ruled that the government can’t deport Khalil on the basis of its claims that his presence could undermine foreign policy. But the judge gave the administration leeway to continue pursuing a potential deportation based on allegations that he lied on his green card application, an accusation Khalil disputes.

The international affairs graduate student isn’t accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia. He served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student activists and wasn’t among the demonstrators arrested, but his prominence in news coverage and willingness to speak publicly made him a target of critics.

The judge agreed Friday with Khalil’s lawyers that the protester was being prevented from exercising his free speech and due process rights despite no obvious reason for his continued detention. The judge noted that Khalil is now clearly a public figure.

Khalil said Friday that no one should be detained for protesting Israel’s war in Gaza. He said his time in the Jena, Louisiana, detention facility had shown him “a different reality about this country that supposedly champions human rights and liberty and justice.”

“Whether you are a U.S. citizen, an immigrant or just a person on this land doesn’t mean that you are less of a human,” he said, adding that “justice will prevail, no matter what this administration may try to portray” about immigrants.

Khalil had to surrender his passport and can’t travel internationally, but he will get his green card back and be given official documents permitting limited travel within the country, including New York and Michigan to visit family, New Jersey and Louisiana for court appearances and Washington to lobby Congress.

In a statement after the judge’s ruling, Khalil’s wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, said she can finally “breathe a sigh of relief” after her husband’s three months in detention.

“We know this ruling does not begin to address the injustices the Trump administration has brought upon our family, and so many others,” she said. “But today we are celebrating Mahmoud coming back to New York to be reunited with our little family.”

The judge’s decision comes after several other scholars targeted for their activism have been released from custody, including another former Palestinian student at Columbia, Mohsen Mahdawi; a Tufts University student, Rumeysa Ozturk; and a Georgetown University scholar, Badar Khan Suri.

By Philip Marcelo.

Billions of login credentials have been leaked online, Cybernews researchers say.

According to a report published this week, Cybernews researchers have recently discovered 30 exposed datasets that each contain a vast amount of login information — amounting to a total of 16 billion compromised credentials. That includes user passwords for a range of popular platforms including Google, Facebook and Apple.

Sixteen billion is roughly double the amount of people on Earth today, signaling that impacted consumers may have had credentials for more than one account leaked. Cybernews notes that there are most certainly duplicates in the data and so “it’s impossible to tell how many people or accounts were actually exposed.”

It’s also important to note that the leaked login information doesn’t span from a single source, such as one breach targeting a company. Instead, it appears that the data was stolen through multiple events over time, and then compiled and briefly exposed publicly, which is when Cybernews reports that its researchers discovered it.

Various infostealers are most likely the culprit, Cybernews noted. Infostealers are a form of malicious software that breaches a victim’s device or systems to take sensitive information.

Many questions remain about these leaked credentials, including whose hands the login credentials are in now. But, as data breaches become more and more common in today’s world, experts continue to stress the importance of maintaining key “cyber hygiene.”

If you’re worried about your account data potentially being exposed in a recent breach, the first thing you can do is change your password — and avoid using the same or similar login credentials on multiple sites. If you find it too hard to memorize all your different passwords, consider a password manager or passkey. And also add multifactor authentication, which can serve as a second layer of verification through your phone, email or USB authenticator key.

US President Donald #Trump believes that there still are chances for diplomacy with Tehran and he will make a decision on strikes on Iran within the next two weeks, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters in a briefing.

"Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks," she quoted Trump as saying.

Earlier, the US president did not rule out the possibility of US strikes on Iran. The Axios news website reported on June 17, citing sources, that Trump was seriously considering joining the war and launching a US strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Overnight into June 13, Israel launched a military operation against Iran. Tehran carried out a retaliatory attack in less than 24 hours. Israel and Iran exchanged strikes again in the following days. Both parties reported casualties and admitted damage to a number of facilities. The two countries continue to exchange strikes.

#IDF registers launch of Iranian missiles towards Israel . Civilians were instructed to enter a protected space and remain there until further notice. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has reported an Iranian missile attack targeting the territory of Israel.

"A short while ago, sirens sounded in several areas across Israel following the identification of missiles launched from Iran toward the State of Israel," the IDF said.

Civilians were instructed to enter a protected space and remain there until further notice.

Defensive systems are operating to intercept the threat, the IDF added.