World

An arrest warrant issued against Russian President Vladimir Putin is the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) “first shot” in what could be a substantial indictment against him, Ukraine’s leading lawyer has said. The intergovernmental group – based at The Hague – has accused Mr Putin of being responsible for the abduction of children from Ukraine. An

Ukraine has been telling anyone who would listen for months that Russia had a formal state-sponsored plan to effectively steal Ukrainian children, take them to Russia and turn them against their own country. The Ukrainian government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) say the number of missing children in the last year alone is more than 16,000.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of abducting children from Ukraine. It also issued a warrant for the arrest of Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, Russia‘s commissioner for children, on similar allegations of war crimes. The Kremlin said Russia found the questions raised by the ICC

We’re racing across town in battle-torn eastern Ukraine, trying to keep up with a battered BMW driven by an 18-year-old with his 21-year-old mate urging him on; but they aren’t joyriding youngsters. They’re soldiers in the military and part of a special unit, and they’re taking us to their headquarters. We had met an hour

On the edge of Europe is a pocket of pro-Russian support which has been under close watch since the outbreak of war in Ukraine. Transnistria is a breakaway region in eastern Moldova which is politically, economically and militarily supported by Moscow. Neither Moldova nor the wider international community recognise its independence. In Transnistria’s capital, Tiraspol,

There have been rare chaotic scenes in the French parliament as President Emmanuel Macron used special powers to push through an unpopular pensions bill which aims to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. Boos and chants from opposition politicians were heard in the national assembly (the lower house) as left-wing MPs sung lines

The US says the drone which crashed into the Black Sea after encountering two Russian fighter jets will not provide intelligence of any value should Moscow attempt to recover its wreckage. Russian officials have said they will seek to find whatever is left of the MQ-9 Reaper, which was downed on Tuesday. Sergei Naryshkin, head

At least six police officers have been injured, including three seriously, in a house explosion in France, according to media reports. The gendarmes, French paramilitary police, had gone to the property to arrest a man who was then killed in the blast in the central region of Allier, it is believed. For several days, the

A Russian aircraft has been intercepted by British RAF and German fighter jets after it was identified near NATO airspace. Two Typhoon jets – one British and one German – reacted to the Russian aircraft after it failed to communicate with Estonian air traffic control close to the NATO nation’s airspace. The Ministry of Defence

A Russian aircraft has collided with a US drone in international airspace over the Black Sea, causing the latter to crash. Two Su-27 planes had attempted to intercept the MQ-9 Reaper drone by dumping fuel in front of it several times in an attempt to damage the aircraft before the collision. The Russian aircraft struck

China has hit out at the US, UK and Australia over their pact to create new nuclear-powered submarines, saying they have “gone further down a dangerous road”. It follows Rishi Sunak meeting US President Joe Biden and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in San Diego to announce the next stage of the Aukus partnership plan.

Russia’s war in Ukraine and China’s aggression over Taiwan threaten to create a world “defined by danger, disorder and division”, the UK prime minister has warned. Rishi Sunak predicted a “difficult and dangerous decade” as his government published a long-awaited update to a major defence, security and foreign policy review on Monday. The 63-page document

China must modernise its military to make it a “Great Wall of Steel”, President Xi Jinping has said. Speaking for the first time in his precedent-breaking third term as head of state, Mr Xi called for China to step up its ability to safeguard national security and manage public security. “Security is the foundation for

The former president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili has told Sky News he is approaching death in the hospital he has been moved to from jail. In a moment of rare media access, the former leader also delivered a warning to the people of Georgia after days of protests had swept through the country. An appeal

We’d been worrying about Serhiy Petrushenko, a 21-year-old boy we met guarding a bridge in central Kyiv completely on his own on the second day of the war. He became an overnight sensation after our report, the interview was watched well over 50 million times on social media alone. When we spoke to him his

With Oscars glory and a possible economic boom at stake, a sense of anticipation has gripped the island off the west coast of Ireland where one of the Academy Awards heavyweight contenders was largely filmed. The Banshees of Inisherin, which boasts no fewer than nine nominations, including best picture and best actor, may be set

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been brutal and attritional, and has shocked most of the “civilised” world. Russia’s evident disregard for casualties and collateral damage in the pursuit of victory is very different to the West’s approach to warfare, which has profound implications for the war in Ukraine, and the West’s wider defence planning assumptions.

The unborn baby of a woman who was seven months pregnant was among those killed during a mass shooting at a Jehovah’s Witness building in the German city of Hamburg. Police identified the gunman as Philipp F, a 35-year-old German with no prior offences who had been a member of the congregation – but had

Eight people have been shot dead and three others seriously injured in an attack on a Jehovah’s Witness building in the German city of Hamburg, according to police. They said the shooting was carried out by a lone gunman who may be among the dead, although this has yet to be officially confirmed. Shots were

I met Larysa standing on broken glass outside her Kyiv apartment block trying to convince two council workmen to come up to her flat and mend her shattered windows. Only hours earlier she had been shaken to the core by a huge explosion in the residential complex car park three floors beneath her. She invited