Trump envoy says risk levels ‘going way up’ after Ukraine struck Russian bombers
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Ukraine-Russia war latest: Moscow targets key city after Crimea bridge hit by underwater explosives
Key Ukrainian city of Sumy is under threat as Russian troops advance along the northeastern frontline towards it. Ukrainian special forces blew up part of a 12-mile-long bridge linking Russia and Crimea in an underwater explosion on Tuesday. Ukraine’s SBU vowed there was “no place for any illegal Russian facilities on the territory of our state’
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The key Ukrainian city of Sumy is under threat as Russian troops advance along the northeastern frontline towards it, Ukrainian officials warned, after Kyiv hit a key bridge linking Russia to occupied Crimea.
Vladimir Putin’s forces have taken around 9 miles of the frontline in the region, with Sumy’s surrounding farms and villages facing “constant shelling”.
“The Russian army is constantly shelling border villages, hitting residential buildings, farms, and civilian infrastructure facilities,” head of the military administration, Oleh Hryhorov, said.
It comes as Ukrainian special forces blew up part of a 12-mile-long bridge linking Russia and Crimea in an underwater explosion on Tuesday.
The Crimean Bridge, or Kerch Bridge, links Russia with the occupied peninsula which Russian troops annexed in 2014.
Footage showed an underwater explosion destroying a pillar of the bridge as Ukraine’s SBU vowed there was “no place for any illegal Russian facilities on the territory of our state”.
The SBU said it rigged the bridge’s pillars with 1,100kg of explosives. “The Crimean Bridge is an absolutely legitimate target, especially considering that the enemy used it as a logistical artery to supply its troops,” it said.
Ukraine-Russia war latest: UK to send 100,000 new drones to Kyiv
The £350 million package is part of a broader £4.5 billion military support initiative for Ukraine. John Healey will announce a 50-nation Ukraine Defence Contact Group meeting in Brussels today.
The significant delivery pledge represents a ten-fold increase on the number of drones given to Ukraine last year.
John Healey, the Defence Secretary, will announce a 50-nation Ukraine Defence Contact Group meeting in Brussels today.
The £350 million drone package is part of a broader £4.5 billion military support initiative for Ukraine.
In addition to drones, Britain said it had already shipped 140,000 artillery shells to Ukraine since January and will spend a further £247 million this year training Ukrainian troops.
As part of the Strategic Defence Review published on Monday, the Government announced that more than £4 billion would be spent on autonomous systems and drones for the UK Armed Forces.
India’s Modi to visit Kashmir to unveil strategic railway
Madrid’s ghost towns revived as housing crisis escalates. Demand is so strong in Sesena that there is a waiting list of 70 people for each property. Property prices have recovered their original value after plunging to less than half during the crisis. The size of the challenge is clear in Madrid, which grew by 140,000 people in 2024, but only registered permits to build 20,000 new homes. the housing crisis in Spain is so bad that it has become a global brand, not just a Spanish one, experts say. The housing crisis is set to take a turn for the worse over the next few years, according to a report by the Bank of England on Wednesday. The report said the crisis could be the worst since the Great Depression. The European Central Bank has warned of a ‘catastrophic’ housing crisis if it does not find a solution to the problem. The Bank of Spain has warned that the crisis will “have a long-term impact on the Spanish economy.”
SESENA, Spain: The first call came two minutes after estate agent Segis Gomez posted a listing in Sesena, a development near Madrid that gained notoriety as one of the so-called “ghost towns” created when Spain’s property bubble burst in 2008.
Half-built and half-empty for more than a decade, these days the squatters have gone from this development 40 kilometers south of the capital and middle-class families, driven out of the city center by an acute housing crisis, are moving in. Construction, meanwhile, has restarted.
Demand is so strong in Sesena that Gomez has a waiting list of 70 people for each property. Property prices have recovered their original value after plunging to less than half during the crisis, he said.
As anger grows over the cost of housing in Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has made providing affordable homes one of his main goals – even as he encourages population growth through immigration. The size of the challenge is clear in Madrid, which grew by 140,000 people in 2024, but only registered permits to build 20,000 new homes.
Short supply is being exacerbated by a boom in holiday lets, record migration and onerous planning laws.
“The problem is that we can’t match supply and demand quickly enough. So prices go up, or people have to trade price for distance,” said Carles Vergara, a real estate professor at IESE Business School in Madrid.
Sesena has been adopted as a commuter town as Madrid overflows, even though it is located in the neighboring Castile-La Mancha region and still lacks good transport links to the capital and public services, which caused homebuyers to reject it in the past.
Its founder and original developer, Francisco Hernando, had a vision of 13,000 affordable apartments with gardens and swimming pools on the Spanish plain where author Cervantes set his best-known work Don Quixote, but the project became a byword for speculative greed and corruption. Only 5,000 homes ended up being built. Hernando, who began his project in 2004, failed to tell homebuyers he hadn’t secured access to water or that the town had no public transport or schools. Hernando died in 2020.
When the market collapsed, initial investors saw the value of their property plummet, while many homes ended up in the hands of banks.
Madrid’s expansion
Today, Sesena teems with life as parents drop children at its three schools, drink coffee in its bars and visit recently-opened gyms and pharmacies. Impact Homes, a developer, is constructing 156 one-to-four bedroom apartments it expects to complete this year. Next door, another building has already pre-sold 49 percent of its units, it said in an email. “Sesena is at 100 percent,” said Jaime de Hita, the town’s mayor.
Nestor Delgado moved to Sesena in 2021 with his family from Carabanchel in south Madrid because an apartment cost 20 percent less to rent. In May, he bought a house with his wife for €240,000 ($272,808).
“We chose (Sesena) because we can afford it,” Delgado, 34, said.
The trade-off is rising before 5 a.m. (0300 GMT) to be among the first in the queue for the 6.30 a.m. bus to Madrid to arrive at his construction job by 8 a.m. or face an hour’s wait for the next bus.
Back to life
Other ghost towns are also coming back to life. Valdeluz, a development 75 km east of Madrid originally envisioned to house 30,000 people, was abandoned a quarter of the way through when the property bubble burst.
Mayor Enrique Quintana told Reuters the town’s 6,000-strong population is swelling with people from Madrid and could expand by 50 percent in the next four years.
A development on the edge of the village of Bernuy de Porreros, 100km north of Madrid, which as recently as six years ago was mostly abandoned, is now bustling with activity as handymen put the finishing touches on homes.
Lucia, a 37-year-old state employee, bought her house in April. Her daily commute to Madrid involves a 15-minute drive to the train station in Segovia and 28 minutes on the high-speed train, which costs her 48 euros for 30 trips thanks to a frequent traveler discount.
The development began to revive when Spain’s so-called bad bank Sareb, which was set up to take bad loans from the financial crisis, in 2021 began selling the homes for as little as €97,000. Four years later, one property was resold for double that, said resident Nuria Alvarez.
Until recently a relatively compact city, Madrid is on the way to becoming a metropolis like Paris or London, with commuter zones stretching beyond its administrative boundaries, said Jose Maria Garcia, the regional government’s deputy housing minister.
The metropolitan area’s population of 7 million will grow by a million in the next 15 years, the government estimates. Madrid has a deficit of 80,000-100,000 homes that’s growing by 15,000 homes a year and plans to build 110,000 homes by 2028, Garcia said.
Sesena, meanwhile, is once again dreaming big.
Its mayor, de Hita, said the town is securing permits for a new project dubbed Parquijote, with a proposed investment of €2.3 billion to build a logistics park that will create local jobs, along with 2,200 homes.
It’s no quixotic fantasy, de Hita said.
“This time we have learned from what happened,” he said. “It is fundamental that we look for growth by learning from the past.”
Trump administration rescinds Biden-era guidance on emergency abortions
Madrid’s ghost towns revived as housing crisis escalates. Demand is so strong in Sesena that there is a waiting list of 70 people for each property. Property prices have recovered their original value after plunging to less than half during the crisis. The size of the challenge is clear in Madrid, which grew by 140,000 people in 2024, but only registered permits to build 20,000 new homes. the housing crisis in Spain is so bad that it has become a global brand, not just a Spanish one, experts say. The housing crisis is set to take a turn for the worse over the next few years, according to a report by the Bank of England on Wednesday. The report said the crisis could be the worst since the Great Depression. The European Central Bank has warned of a ‘catastrophic’ housing crisis if it does not find a solution to the problem. The Bank of Spain has warned that the crisis will “have a long-term impact on the Spanish economy.”
SESENA, Spain: The first call came two minutes after estate agent Segis Gomez posted a listing in Sesena, a development near Madrid that gained notoriety as one of the so-called “ghost towns” created when Spain’s property bubble burst in 2008.
Half-built and half-empty for more than a decade, these days the squatters have gone from this development 40 kilometers south of the capital and middle-class families, driven out of the city center by an acute housing crisis, are moving in. Construction, meanwhile, has restarted.
Demand is so strong in Sesena that Gomez has a waiting list of 70 people for each property. Property prices have recovered their original value after plunging to less than half during the crisis, he said.
As anger grows over the cost of housing in Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has made providing affordable homes one of his main goals – even as he encourages population growth through immigration. The size of the challenge is clear in Madrid, which grew by 140,000 people in 2024, but only registered permits to build 20,000 new homes.
Short supply is being exacerbated by a boom in holiday lets, record migration and onerous planning laws.
“The problem is that we can’t match supply and demand quickly enough. So prices go up, or people have to trade price for distance,” said Carles Vergara, a real estate professor at IESE Business School in Madrid.
Sesena has been adopted as a commuter town as Madrid overflows, even though it is located in the neighboring Castile-La Mancha region and still lacks good transport links to the capital and public services, which caused homebuyers to reject it in the past.
Its founder and original developer, Francisco Hernando, had a vision of 13,000 affordable apartments with gardens and swimming pools on the Spanish plain where author Cervantes set his best-known work Don Quixote, but the project became a byword for speculative greed and corruption. Only 5,000 homes ended up being built. Hernando, who began his project in 2004, failed to tell homebuyers he hadn’t secured access to water or that the town had no public transport or schools. Hernando died in 2020.
When the market collapsed, initial investors saw the value of their property plummet, while many homes ended up in the hands of banks.
Madrid’s expansion
Today, Sesena teems with life as parents drop children at its three schools, drink coffee in its bars and visit recently-opened gyms and pharmacies. Impact Homes, a developer, is constructing 156 one-to-four bedroom apartments it expects to complete this year. Next door, another building has already pre-sold 49 percent of its units, it said in an email. “Sesena is at 100 percent,” said Jaime de Hita, the town’s mayor.
Nestor Delgado moved to Sesena in 2021 with his family from Carabanchel in south Madrid because an apartment cost 20 percent less to rent. In May, he bought a house with his wife for €240,000 ($272,808).
“We chose (Sesena) because we can afford it,” Delgado, 34, said.
The trade-off is rising before 5 a.m. (0300 GMT) to be among the first in the queue for the 6.30 a.m. bus to Madrid to arrive at his construction job by 8 a.m. or face an hour’s wait for the next bus.
Back to life
Other ghost towns are also coming back to life. Valdeluz, a development 75 km east of Madrid originally envisioned to house 30,000 people, was abandoned a quarter of the way through when the property bubble burst.
Mayor Enrique Quintana told Reuters the town’s 6,000-strong population is swelling with people from Madrid and could expand by 50 percent in the next four years.
A development on the edge of the village of Bernuy de Porreros, 100km north of Madrid, which as recently as six years ago was mostly abandoned, is now bustling with activity as handymen put the finishing touches on homes.
Lucia, a 37-year-old state employee, bought her house in April. Her daily commute to Madrid involves a 15-minute drive to the train station in Segovia and 28 minutes on the high-speed train, which costs her 48 euros for 30 trips thanks to a frequent traveler discount.
The development began to revive when Spain’s so-called bad bank Sareb, which was set up to take bad loans from the financial crisis, in 2021 began selling the homes for as little as €97,000. Four years later, one property was resold for double that, said resident Nuria Alvarez.
Until recently a relatively compact city, Madrid is on the way to becoming a metropolis like Paris or London, with commuter zones stretching beyond its administrative boundaries, said Jose Maria Garcia, the regional government’s deputy housing minister.
The metropolitan area’s population of 7 million will grow by a million in the next 15 years, the government estimates. Madrid has a deficit of 80,000-100,000 homes that’s growing by 15,000 homes a year and plans to build 110,000 homes by 2028, Garcia said.
Sesena, meanwhile, is once again dreaming big.
Its mayor, de Hita, said the town is securing permits for a new project dubbed Parquijote, with a proposed investment of €2.3 billion to build a logistics park that will create local jobs, along with 2,200 homes.
It’s no quixotic fantasy, de Hita said.
“This time we have learned from what happened,” he said. “It is fundamental that we look for growth by learning from the past.”
‘Risk level goes up’ — Ukraine’s strike on Russian bombers could escalate war, US envoy Kellogg says
Ukraine’s drone assault on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet, known as Operation Spiderweb, could escalate the war. U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg said in an interview with Fox News on June 3. Operation reportedly targeted four airfields deep inside Russian territory, striking 41 aircraft. Kellogg also pointed to reports of explosions at the Severomorsk naval base, home to some of Russia’s most advanced submarines. Despite the scale and strategic implications of the Ukrainian operation, Russian President Vladimir Putin has not publicly addressed the strike. The full extent of the damage remains unverified, and no independent confirmation has emerged.
Ukraine’s drone assault on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet, known as Operation Spiderweb, could escalate the war and provoke unpredictable responses from Moscow, U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg said in an interview with Fox News on June 3.
The operation, launched by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), reportedly targeted four airfields deep inside Russian territory, striking 41 aircraft and inflicting what Kyiv claims is $7 billion in damage.
The targeted air bases reportedly housed Tu-95 and Tu-22M3 bombers, essential carriers of long-range cruise missiles used in Moscow’s air strikes on Ukrainian cities.
“I’m telling you the risk levels are going way up,” Kellogg said. “When you attack an opponent’s part of their national survival system, which is their nuclear triad, that means your risk level goes up because you don’t know what the other side’s going to do.”
According to the SBU, 117 drones were launched from mobile platforms across Russia, enabling simultaneous strikes on targets located thousands of kilometers from Ukraine’s borders.
Kellogg also pointed to reports of explosions at the Severomorsk naval base, home to some of Russia’s most advanced submarines. Kyiv has not confirmed targeting Russia’s Northern Fleet.
“The one that really concerned me was the fact that there have been reports that they attacked the naval, the Northern Fleet headquarters in Severomorsk,” Kellogg said. “And if that’s the case — when you attack two legs of a triad — it’s very clear the risk levels will go up.”
Russian officials have denied that the base was hit, and no independent confirmation has emerged.
According to Kellogg, the attacks showed that Kyiv “is not lying down on that.”
“Ukraine is basically, ‘We can play this game, too.’ And they can raise the risk level to levels that are basically, to me, they’ve got to be unacceptable,” he added.
Despite the scale and strategic implications of the Ukrainian operation, Russian President Vladimir Putin has not publicly addressed the strike. U.S. President Donald Trump, who has positioned himself as a would-be peacemaker, has also remained silent.
Pressed by reporters on June 3, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Trump was not informed in advance about the operation.
“I would like to let the president speak on that himself,” Leavitt said. She later added, “The president does not want to see this war prolonged. He wants this war to stop.”
Ukrainian officials say the operation took 18 months to plan. While Kyiv says the strike dealt a serious blow to Russia’s strategic air capabilities, the full extent of the damage remains unverified.
Operation Spiderweb marks one of the most sophisticated and far-reaching Ukrainian operations since the start of the full-scale war in 2022 — and a stark signal of Ukraine’s growing capacity to strike deep inside Russian territory.