Spain will provide Ukraine with €1bn in military aid this year after the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, met in Madrid to sign an “enormously important”, decade-long defence and security deal.

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The bilateral deal was agreed two days after Russia’s onslaught in the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv killed 18 people, and as EU leaders grow increasingly exasperated with Hungary’s efforts to block aid to Ukraine.

“[This deal] will allow Ukraine to boost its capabilities, including its essential air defence systems to protect its civilians, cities and infrastructure, which are still suffering indiscriminate attacks as seen this weekend in Kharkiv,” Sánchez told a press conference after the signing.

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Some American-made, precision-guided weapons supplied to Ukraine have proved ineffective on the battlefield, their accuracy badly diminished by Russian jamming efforts, according to Ukrainian commanders and a Ukrainian military research project.

The projectiles performed well when first introduced to the battlefield, but lost effectiveness as Russian forces adapted their defenses, two confidential Ukrainian reports found. The problem prompted the Ukrainian military to stop using the weapons, two artillery commanders said.

The reports, first revealed by The Washington Post, focus on the American-made Excalibur, a 155-millimeter guided artillery shell, and the Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb or GLSDB. One of the reports was shown to The New York Times by people familiar with the research. The second report was described but not shown to a reporter. The individuals asked not to be identified because the reports contain classified military information.

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China has begun its second day of military drills targeting Taiwan, in what it says is punishment for “separatist acts” after the inauguration of its new president on Monday.

The exercises, which involve Chinese military units from the air force, rocket force, navy, army, and coast guard, were announced suddenly on Thursday morning, with maps showing five approximate target areas in the sea surrounding Taiwan’s main island. Other areas also targeted Taiwan’s offshore islands, which are close to the Chinese mainland.

China’s defence ministry said the drills on Friday were testing its military’s ability to “seize power” and occupy key areas, in line with Beijing’s ultimate goal of annexing Taiwan. Taiwan’s government and people reject the prospect of Chinese rule, but China’s ruler Xi Jinping has not renounced the use of force to take the island. Western intelligence has claimed Xi has told the People’s Liberation Army to be capable of an invasion by 2027.

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The retail and pharmacy chain reported a cyberattack on April 28

Retailer London Drugs says cybercriminals who stole files from its corporate head office last month have released some of the data after it refused to pay a ransom.

The company says the files may contain employee information, calling it a "deeply distressing" situation.

The statement from the company says it was "unwilling and unable" to pay a ransom to hackers it describes as "a sophisticated group of global cybercriminals."

It says London Drugs is notifying employees whose personal information may be affected and offering them credit monitoring and identity theft protection services.

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Israel’s military said on Thursday that it was fighting in neighborhoods near the heart of the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, apparently expanding its campaign against Hamas in a week when Israel has faced mounting diplomatic and legal pressure over its war effort.

The fighting came as the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the top court of the United Nations, said it would respond on Friday to a South African petition for the court to order an immediate halt to the ground assault in Rafah. The court has no means of enforcing its orders, but a call for Israel to rein in its offensive would be the latest setback to the country on the international stage.

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In the week since the U.S. military and allies attached a temporary pier to the Gaza shoreline, Pentagon planners have come face to face with the logistical nightmare that critics had warned would accompany the endeavor.

The Defense Department predicted that a steady stream of humanitarian aid would be arriving in Gaza via the pier by now, but little relief has reached Palestinians in the besieged strip, officials acknowledged this week. Several trucks were looted as they made their way to a warehouse, the U.N. World Food Program said, and the complexity of operating the pier project in a war zone is continuing to slow distribution.

The problems, as expected, are on the back end of the operation. Looting of aid trucks has continued, officials said, and forced the World Food Program to suspend operations for two days. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, suspended food distribution in Rafah on Tuesday, citing lack of security. It added that it had not received any medical supplies for 10 days because of closures and disruptions at the Rafah and Kerem Shalom border crossings.

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Two weeks into the offensive, one group of Russian forces is already fighting in the streets of the town of Vovchansk about 70 kilometers away from the city of Kharkiv, while the other is trying to push toward the town of Lyptsi, just under two dozen kilometers away from the city.

The Kremlin has options for what it can try to accomplish in the area: depopulating Kharkiv, taking territory, and most importantly, getting Ukraine to commit reserves needed elsewhere.

So far, Russian troops seem at least partially successful with the latter two. Multiple border villages have reportedly been captured and some Ukrainian units have been moved in from outside Kharkiv to reinforce the defense of the region.

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The far-right German party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has been expelled from its pan-European parliamentary group after a string of recent controversies over its policy choices and the conduct of some of its leaders.

“The bureau of the Identity and Democracy group in the European parliament has decided today to exclude the German delegation, AfD, with immediate effect,” the ID group of populist far-right parties said in a statement on Thursday.

The day before, AfD’s lead candidate in June’s European elections resigned from the party leadership and renounced all further campaign activities following criticism of comments he made last weekend that the Nazi SS were “not all criminals”.

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In Europe, long a vital source of support for Israel, the political center of gravity is moving away from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

Spain, Ireland and Norway on Wednesday recognized Palestinian statehood, despite vehement Israeli and American opposition. And most European governments offered unequivocal support to the International Criminal Court this week, after it requested arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and defense minister, along with leaders of Hamas.

Israel still has staunch allies within the European Union, especially Hungary and the Czech Republic, and key players like Germany, despite growing discomfort with Israel’s conduct, have not shown any inclination to alter their stance. The growing fissures within Europe mean that the consensus-driven European Union will not change its positions any time soon.

But European countries face rising international and domestic pressure to take a firmer stand against Israel’s handling of the Palestinian territories, and particularly the devastating war in Gaza.

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Ireland, Spain and Norway have announced they will formally recognise a Palestinian state on 28 May, triggering an immediate response from Israel, which said it would retaliate by recalling its ambassadors from Dublin, Madrid and Oslo, and withholding vital funds from the Palestinian Authority.

The three European governments made the long-awaited announcements in coordinated moves on Wednesday morning that they said were intended to support a two-state solution and foster peace in the Middle East.

“We are going to recognise Palestine for many reasons and we can sum that up in three words: peace, justice and consistency,” Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, told the parliament in Madrid, to applause. “We have to make sure that the two-state solution is respected and there must be mutual guarantees of security.”

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France is investigating whether graffiti painted on the wall of Paris’s Holocaust memorial last week was a destabilisation operation coordinated from Russia, French media have reported.

On the morning of 14 May, about 20 spray-painted red hand symbols were discovered on one of the memorial’s exterior walls, which is dedicated to honouring individuals who saved Jews from persecution during the Nazi occupation of France.

The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, immediately reported the graffiti to prosecutors as a possible antisemitic act. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, condemned the act as one of “odious antisemitism”. He wrote on X that this vandalism damaged “the memory” of those who saved Jews during the Holocaust and of the victims.

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Ukraine will receive the first delivery of funds stemming from the revenue of frozen Russian assets in July, the European Commission said on May 21.

Ukraine's Western partners and other allies froze around $300 billion in Russian assets at the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. Roughly two-thirds are held in the Belgium-based financial services company Euroclear.

In March, the European Commission submitted a proposal on using 90% of the generated funds to purchase weapons for Ukraine and allocate the remaining 10% to the EU budget to support the country's defense industry.

After many weeks of debates, EU ambassadors reached a political agreement on the proposal on May 8.

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