Warsaw, Poland Reuters —

Centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski and nationalist Karol Nawrocki will compete in a second round of the presidential election in Poland on June 1, the electoral commission said based on votes from 100% of electoral districts.

Trzaskowski, from the ruling Civic Coalition (KO), got 31.36% of votes in the first round of presidential election on Sunday. The candidate backed by nationalist opposition party Law and Justice (PiS), Karol Nawrocki, got 29.54% of votes. Earlier late polls showed Trzaskowski leading in the electoral race.

Both candidates started preparing for the second round early on Monday, with Trzaskowski meeting voters in Warsaw and Nawrocki in Gdansk.

“We need to talk to everyone, arguments are the most important. I am glad that many young people went to vote, but the big challenge is to convince them to vote for me,” Trzaskowski told reporters.

Far-right candidates Slawomir Mentzen and Grzegorz Braun together accounted for more than 21% of the vote, a historically high percentage, winning widespread support from young voters. It is not clear, however, who their votes will go to in the second round.

Nawrocki, backed by the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, said he will fight for the votes the people on both sides of the political landscape.

“My social agenda and the fact that I will be the guardian of the social achievements of the Law and Justice government and the Solidarity (trade union) make it an offer also for left-wing, socially sensitive circles,” he said.

CNN —

Germany’s Friedrich Merz has formally become chancellor at the second attempt, hours after an unprecedented defeat signaled deep discontent within his coalition.

In a hastily organized session on Tuesday afternoon, 325 lawmakers voted to approve his appointment – more than the 316 he required.

Merz, who won an election in February and unveiled a ruling coalition last month, had fallen six votes short earlier in the day, a stunning setback that marked another twist in a tortuous period of uncertainty for the country.

He was finally approved as chancellor by Germany’s president and sworn in at the Bundestag on Tuesday afternoon. But his tenure will start on an unstable footing: The day’s votes not only revealed reluctance inside his coalition, but gave the insurgent far-right AfD party a new opportunity to ruffle the political establishment.

Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party won an election in February, but failed to pick up enough seats to govern outright – an outcome that is commonplace in Germany’s diverse political environment.

He last month announced he would form a coalition with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), a rare fusing of Germany’s two establishment groups that ensured the AfD – which came second in the February poll – would remain locked out of power. It extended the so-called “firewall,” a blockade against far-right groups that German politicians have kept in place since after World War II, but which has become increasingly tenuous.

The coalition has 328 seats in total, and the vote to approve a chancellor is usually a formality; never before in modern German history had a chancellor-in-waiting failed to win. But on Tuesday, on what was set to be a day of celebration, Merz’s future was briefly plunged into uncertainty.

His defeat, which had been entirely unexpected, came after weeks of attacks against his bloc from the AfD and from the increasingly intrusive Trump administration. And it exposed the early cracks within a marriage of convenience between the CDU and the SPD.

Because the vote was held by secret ballot, it was not immediately clear – and might never be known – who had defected from Merz’s camp.

Complicated in-tray

It is a rocky start for a leader who has promised to pursue an aggressive agenda.

Merz won a two-thirds parliamentary majority in March to change Germany’s constitutional “debt brake,” a mechanism to limit government borrowing. He intends to give renewed impetus to a 2022 German security policy change dubbed “Zeitenwende” – “turning point” in English – that was initiated by outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz and would see Berlin turbocharge its defense spending in an effort to modernize an ageing military.

That push was given greater urgency after US President Donald Trump’s administration threatened to end American support for Ukraine and withdraw security guarantees for Europe. Moments after he won Tuesday’s second vote, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sought to keep the effort at the top of his agenda.

“We sincerely hope that Germany will grow even stronger and that we’ll see more German leadership in European and transatlantic affairs,” Zelensky posted on X. “This is especially important with the future of Europe at stake — and it will depend on our unity.”

Merz unveiled his coalition last month, but Tuesday revealed cracks in his support. Annegret Hilse/Reuters

US State Department congratulated Merz, saying it would “continue to work with Germany and its next government to ensure the security of the United States and Europe.”

Merz will have to deal with disruption from the far-right AfD, which came second in February’s election and is now topping some opinion polls. The group quickly pounced on the parliamentary uncertainty on Tuesday morning, calling for fresh elections. “We are ready for government responsibility. And we call for common sense to prevail,” its leader Alice Weidel said. “Merz should resign immediately.”

It is a complicated in-tray for the new leader, who was was born in 1955 into a conservative, Catholic family in in central Germany, and who joined the CDU’s youth wing while still in school. He entered politics full-time in 1989, when he was elected to the European Parliament at the age of 33.

After serving one term as an MEP, Merz, a married father-of-three, was elected to the Bundestag – Germany’s parliament – and established himself as a leader in financial policy. In 2003, he famously argued that German tax rules should be simple enough to calculate on the back of a beer coaster.

A feud with former leader Angela Merkel led him to leave politics, and Merz worked for years as a lawyer in the private sector, before returning to take control of the party in 2022.

Seoul, South Korea CNN —

After half a year of political turmoil, uncertainty and division, South Korea will vote for a new president to succeed Yoon Suk Yeol, the disgraced former leader who plunged the democratic nation into chaos by declaring martial law in December.

This election feels particularly significant; the country, a US ally and Asian economic and cultural powerhouse, has floundered for months with a revolving door of interim leaders while navigating Yoon’s impeachment trial and a multipronged investigation into the fateful night of his short-lived power grab.

All the while, South Korea’s economy has suffered, with US President Donald Trump’s trade war and a potential global recession looming in the background. Two men are each promising to help the country recover if elected – a lawyer turned politician dogged by legal cases who survived an assassination attempt, and a former anti-establishment activist turned conservative minister.

Polls open on Tuesday morning and a winner could be declared by Wednesday.

Here’s what you need to know.

Lee Jae-myung, presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, speaks while campaigning in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, May 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man) Lee Jin-man/AP

The frontrunner is Lee Jae-myung, 60, of the liberal opposition Democratic Party.

A former underage factory worker from a poor family, Lee became a human rights lawyer before entering politics. He is a former mayor and governor, and most recently served as a lawmaker after narrowly losing to Yoon in the 2022 presidential election.

He survived an assassination attempt in January 2024 when a man stabbed him in the neck during a public event.

He again made headlines on December 3, 2024 – the night Yoon declared martial law and sent troops to parliament. Lee was among the lawmakers who rushed to the legislature and pushed past soldiers to hold an emergency vote to lift martial law. He live streamed himself jumping over a fence to enter the building, in a viral video viewed tens of millions of times.

On the campaign trail, Lee promised political and economic reforms, including more controls on a president’s ability to declare martial law, and revising the constitution to allow two four-year presidential terms instead of the current single five-year term.

South Korea’s former President Yoon Suk Yeol delivers a speech to declare martial law in Seoul on December 3, 2024. The Presidential Office/Reuters

Soldiers try to enter the legislature in Seoul after the martial law decree on December 4, 2024. Jung Yeon-je/AFP/Getty Images

He has emphasized easing tensions on the Korean Peninsula while holding on to the longtime goal of denuclearizing North Korea; he also supports boosting small businesses and growing the AI industry.

But Lee has also been dogged by legal cases, including several ongoing trials for alleged bribery and charges related to a property development scandal.

Separately, he was convicted of violating election law in another ongoing case that has been sent to an appeals court.

Lee denies all the charges against him. Speaking to CNN in December, he claimed he had been indicted on various charges “without any evidence or basis,” and that the allegations are politically motivated.

Lee’s main rival is Kim Moon-soo of the conservative People Power Party (PPP).

The People Power Party’s presidential candidate Kim Moon-soo at an election campaign event in Goyang, South Korea, on May 21, 2025. Lee Jin-man/AP

When Yoon left the party in May, he urged supporters to back Kim – a 73-year-old former labor minister, who had been a prominent labor activist at university, even being expelled and imprisoned for his protests. He eventually joined a conservative party, and stepped into the nomination after several rounds of party infighting.

The PPP initially selected Kim as its candidate; then dropped him, eyeing former Prime Minister Han Duck-soo instead. The party finally chose Kim after he filed legal challenges.

But the PPP remains deeply divided and its candidate trailed Lee in pre-election polling. In a statement after his nomination, Kim vowed to seek unity and build a “big tent” coalition to take on Lee, according to Reuters.

Kim has also promised to reform the country’s politics, judiciary and election management systems to rebuild public trust. His campaign emphasized making South Korea business-friendly through tax cuts and eased restrictions, and by promoting new technologies and nuclear energy.

Several third-party and independent candidates are also running for the presidency. They include Lee Jun-seok, a former PPP leader who founded his own conservative New Reform Party last year.

What are the issues on the table?

At the forefront of voters’ minds is the country’s flailing economy and rising cost of living. Youth unemployment has surged and consumption has declined, with the economy unexpectedly contracting in the first quarter of this year.

Part of that is due to Trump’s trade war – which has hit South Korea’s export-reliant economy hard. South Korea’s exports to the US fell sharply in the first few weeks of April after US tariffs kicked in, and the nation’s largest airline has warned the downturn could cost it up to $100 million a year.

Though officials from both nations have met for tariff talks, the political turmoil at home is likely slowing progress and hampering a possible trade deal until a new South Korean president is elected.

Vehicles produced by South Korean automaker Kia Motors are waiting to be shipped at the Port of Pyeongtaek on April 3, 2025. Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

That’s why both main candidates have focused on the economy, promising to stabilize the cost of goods and improve opportunities in housing, education and jobs.

But there’s a host of other problems the next president will have to tackle, too – such as the country’s rapidly aging society and plummeting birth rates, which represent an urgent demographic crisis also seen in other countries in the region like Japan and China. Among the common complaints of young couples and singles are the high cost of childcare, gender inequality and discrimination against working parents.

Then there are regional tensions. There’s the ever-present threat from North Korea, which has rapidly modernized its armed forces, developing new weapons and testing intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach almost anywhere in the United States. Experts have warned in recent years that the country may also be preparing to resume nuclear tests, which it paused in 2018.

Across the Yellow Sea lies China, which South Korea has a strong trade relationship with – but historically fraught diplomatic relations.

South Korea also maintains a close security alliance with the US, and hosts nearly 30,000 American troops in the country. In recent years, South Korea, Japan and the US have drawn closer together, working to counter Chinese influence in the strategically important Asia-Pacific region.

What happened to Yoon?

Former President Yoon Suk Yeol (center) arrives at the Seoul Central District Court for a criminal hearing in Seoul, South Korea, on May 19, 2025. Chris Jung/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

Yoon was removed from office in April following months of legal wrangling, after parliament voted to impeach him late last year.

It was a remarkable fall from grace for the former prosecutor turned politician, who rose to prominence for his role in the impeachment of another president – only to eventually meet the same fate.

Soon after, Yoon moved out from the presidential residency and into an apartment in the capital Seoul. But his legal battles are ongoing; he faces charges including insurrection, an offense punishable by life imprisonment or death (though South Korea has not executed anyone in decades). Yoon denies all charges against him.

By Svitlana Vlasova, Victoria Butenko, Tim Lister, Mitchell McCluskey and Helen Regan, CNN

(CNN) — Ukrainian forces have destroyed dozens of Russian warplanes parked at air bases thousands of miles from the front lines, according to a source in the country’s security services, in one of Kyiv’s most audacious and sophisticated counter assaults since the beginning of the war.

The operation, dubbed “Spiderweb,” saw drones hit targets across a large swathe of Russia, including in Belaya – which is closer to Japan than Ukraine – and at Olenya base near Murmansk in the Arctic Circle, according to the source.

More than 40 Russian aircraft were “burning en masse” at four air bases, the source said.

The SBU, Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency, said the strikes caused an estimated $7 billion in damages and hit 34% of Russia’s strategic cruise missile carriers at its main air bases.

The drone attacks came on the eve of expected peace talks in Istanbul between Russia and Ukraine, which were already strained by uncertainty and pressure from US President Donald Trump.

The Trump administration was not given a heads-up about the operation, an administration official told CNN.

The strikes appear intended to send a message to Russia that Ukraine could still apply pressure more than three years since Russia’s unprovoked invasion. Kyiv has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of not wanting to end the war as Moscow ramps up its attacks and offensive operations, including launching its largest drone assault on Ukraine since the war began overnight Saturday.

The operation, more than a year and a half in the making, involved drones being smuggled into Russian territory and hidden in wooden mobile houses atop trucks, according to the security source. The roofs were then remotely opened, and the drones deployed to launch their strikes.

Social media video geolocated by CNN to seven kilometers southeast of the Belaya Air Base in Russia’s eastern Irkutsk region, appears to show a drone flying out of a wooden shed loaded onto a truck as smoke rises in the background. Images also show drones stacked inside what appear to be wooden crates with retractable roofs ahead of the operation.

“The planning, organization, and all the details were perfectly prepared. It can be confidently said that this was an absolutely unique operation,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a post on X.

Zelensky said 117 drones were used to carry out the attacks, which were played up as a military and propaganda win for Ukraine that caught Russia off-guard.

“The ‘office’ of our operation on Russian territory was located directly next to FSB headquarters in one of their regions,” Zelensky said on X.

More than 40 aircraft were known to have been hit, according to the Security source, including TU-95 and Tu-22M3 strategic bombers and one of Russia’s few remaining A-50 surveillance planes.

“We are doing everything to drive the enemy from our native land! We will strike them at sea, in the air, and on land. And if needed — we’ll reach them even from underground,” the SBU said in a statement.

A senior US defense official told CNN that Ukraine’s attack showed a level of sophistication that they had not seen before.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth received regular updates as he traveled to Joint Base Andrews on Sunday but has not yet spoken to his Ukrainian counterparts, the official said.

The airfields targeted included Belaya in Irkutsk, some 4,500 kilometers (2,800 miles) from Ukraine’s border with Russia, and the Dyagilevo base in Ryazan in western Russia, about 520 kilometers (320 miles) from Ukraine, which is a training center for Russia’s strategic bomber force.

The Olenya base near Murmansk in the Arctic Circle, more than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) from Ukraine, was also struck, according to the source, as well as the Ivanovo air base, more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) from Ukraine. Ivanovo is a base for Russian military transport aircraft.

The Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed Ukraine had targeted Russian airfields across five regions on Sunday, calling the drone strikes “terrorist attacks.”

The ministry said strikes were repelled in the Ivanovo, Ryazan and Amur regions but that “several pieces of aircraft” caught fire after attacks in the Murmansk and Irkutsk regions. It added that the fires had since been extinguished.

There were no casualties as a result of the attacks, the ministry continued, adding that “some participants in the terrorist attacks have been detained.”

The governor of Irkutsk region, Igor Kobziev, said that drones had been launched from a truck near the Belaya base.

Kobziev said on Telegram that the exact number of drones deployed had not been determined. Emergency and security services were at the site, he added.

SBU drones were targeting aircraft that bomb Ukrainian cities every night, the security source said.

One video supplied by the source purportedly shows the Belaya airfield in flames and the voice of the head of the SBU, Lt. Gen. Vasyl Malyuk, commenting on the situation. “How beautiful Belaya airfield looks now. Enemy’s strategic aircraft,” he says.

CNN was able to confirm the location of that video, as well as two others posted on social media showing smoke rising from the Belaya air base. It was not immediately able to independently verify other videos provided by the SBU.

The security source said that the operation was “extremely complicated from a logistical point of view,” with the drones carried inside wooden mobile homes that had been carried into Russia on trucks.

“The drones were hidden under the roofs of the houses, which were already placed on trucks. At the right moment, the roofs were remotely opened, and the drones flew to hit Russian bombers.”

One video purportedly of one attack appears to show drones rising from a truck, as vehicles pass on a nearby highway. Another image shows the roof of the truck on the ground.

The source added that people involved were already back in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s operation followed a Russian attack overnight Saturday that involved 472 drones – Moscow’s largest drone attack since the war began. It came the same day as a Russian missile strike on a training site used by Ukrainian forces, killing at least 12 people and wounding more than 60 others. It also came soon after two bridges collapsed in Russia’s western regions bordering Ukraine in unclear circumstances.

This chain of events comes as Russia and Ukraine are set to return to peace negotiations on Monday. The talks, which will take place in Istanbul, have been strained by uncertainty. US President Donald Trump has expressed frustration around Russian President Vladimir Putin’s resistance to advancing the peace talks.

Putin proposed holding “direct talks” in Turkey earlier this month – but never showed up, despite Zelensky agreeing to meet. In the end, the two nations sent low-level delegations to negotiate instead.

A framework from the Ukrainian delegation lists key principles for the talks that include a full and unconditional ceasefire, an exchange of prisoners, and the release of hostages and return of abducted children.

CNN’s Frankie Vetch, Eve Brennan and Catherine Nicholls contributed to this report.

The-CNN-Wire

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CNN —

A historian and populist firebrand who boasted about his brawls with soccer hooligans has narrowly won Poland’s presidential election in a political upset that could torpedo the centrist government’s efforts to unspool the legacy of authoritarianism in the country.

Karol Nawrocki, the candidate aligned with Poland’s right-wing populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, won 50.89% of the vote, defeating the liberal mayor of Warsaw Rafał Trzaskowski, long the favorite to win, in a head-to-head run-off, Reuters reported, citing electoral commission figures.

The result extends PiS’ 10-year occupancy of the presidential palace and could spell disaster for Prime Minister Donald Tusk, whose pledge to erase PiS’ fingerprints from Poland’s embattled institutions saw him clash repeatedly with the outgoing President Andrzej Duda.

Nawrocki is a champion of US President Donald Trump and visited the White House in the weeks before the election. He was the underdog throughout the campaign, but came a close second to Trzaskowski in the first round of voting two weeks ago, having survived a series of damaging stories about his past. He picked up a late endorsement from the third-placed, far-right candidate.

The 42-year-old historian will now yield the hugely powerful presidential veto, which Duda used frequently to thwart Tusk’s agenda. The European Union has looked to Tusk for a blueprint on undoing the effects of populism on a democracy – but a victory for Nawrocki was not part of the plan.

Though Polish presidential candidates often stand as individuals, rather than representatives of a party, there is little hiding their affiliations, and each major party historically endorses and campaigns for a candidate.

Tusk ousted PiS from government in a heated parliamentary election in 2023, but Nawrocki’s victory denies him an open road to fully undo the transformation of the Polish state overseen by PiS during an eight-year stint in government.

A checkered past

Nawrocki is a first-time politician who has led two influential cultural bodies in Poland – the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk, and then the Institute of National Remembrance, a state-funded research facility whose purpose became increasingly politicized as PiS took a nationalistic approach to the telling of Polish history.

He ran a campaign that was seemingly stuck in defensive mode. Scandals about his alleged use of a Gdansk apartment as a second home and his supposed ties to the northern port city’s underworld dogged his run. In March it even emerged that he had appeared on a television show, in disguise and with his face blurred, to praise his own book.

And when confronted with claims that he took part in organized fights between rival soccer fans – known in Poland as an ustawka, or “set up” – Nawrocki sought to use the revelations to his advantage, describing the clashes as “noble,” according to CNN affiliate TVN24.

On the campaign trail, he emphasized his Catholic faith, pledged to reduce migration, and was relentlessly critical of Brussels and of Tusk. He received a late flurry of support from attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which held its first-ever gathering in Poland earlier this week, cementing a years-long convergence between the populist right movements in Poland and the US.

His victory looked unlikely until the first round of voting two weeks ago, which showed him narrowly behind Trzaskowski and revealed greater levels of support than expected for a smattering of far-right and extreme-right figures, some of whom subsequently said they would vote for Nawrocki.

The result is the worst-case scenario for Tusk’s government, which was elected after eight toxic years in Polish politics but which has labored in recent months to deliver on its ambitious agenda.

Tusk had hoped that a Trzaskowski presidency would remove the last major roadblock to his efforts to renew the independence of Poland’s judiciary, media and cultural bodies.

Trzaskowski, Nawrocki’s challenger, is a close ally of Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Aleksander Kalka/AP

Instead, the result sets the stage for a new round of confrontations between Poland’s president and prime minister. Nawrocki will be expected to follow the blueprint set by Duda, who blocked several attempts by Tusk to undo the PiS’ judicial reforms and stalled progress on bills relating to hate crime and contraception access, either by vetoing them or sending them into legal gridlock.

And it essentially snuffs out any prospect that Poland’s near-total abortion ban and its prohibition of same-sex civil partnerships will be undone. Tusk had promised to relax both bans, but they are supported by some of the more socially conservative lawmakers propping up his government, and the threat of a presidential veto likely renders any efforts at persuasion futile.

This is a developing story and will be updated.