Russian bots with a Kremlin disinformation network published 120,000 fake anti-Ukraine quotes falsely attributed to celebrities, including Jennifer Aniston and Scarlett Johansson, in one day, the independent Russian media outlet Agentsvo reported June 15.

Quotes appeared over celebrity photos, displaying messages calling to end aid to Ukraine and describing European collapse.

The images were published between June 14-15 by the Kremlin disinformation network Dvoynyk, a representative of the Bot Blocker project told Agentsvo. The fake quotes have since garnered over 500,000 views.

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Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine overnight on June 1, launching drones and cruise missiles, while damaging energy infrastructure across various regions across the country.

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Ukraine's Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko confirmed that energy infrastructure in Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kirovohrad, and Ivano-Frankivsk oblasts came under attack by Russian forces. Restoration workers are currently on scene and are determining the extent of the damage.

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Ukraine's Air Force announced an air alert throughout the country, including the far-western oblasts, citing the threat of Russian cruise missiles, drones, and Tu-95MS bombers.

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The fabricated video, which is drawn from actual footage, shows the State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, seeming to suggest that the Russian city of Belgorod, just 25 miles north of Ukraine’s border with Russia, was a legitimate target for such strikes.

The 49-second video clip, which has an authentic feel despite telltale clues of manipulation, illustrates the growing threat of disinformation and especially so-called deepfake videos powered by artificial intelligence.

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Belgorod “has essentially no civilians remaining,” the video purports to show Mr. Miller saying at the State Department in response to a reporter’s question, which was also manufactured. “It’s practically full of military targets at this point, and we are seeing the same thing starting in the regions around there.”

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The interview came at perhaps the toughest moment for Ukraine since the early days of the war. Zelenskiy insisted, however, that it was too early to write off the country, and that he remained positive despite all his frustrations. “I’m not in despair at all … I don’t feel like we are on a sinking ship which is going to the bottom. We are not shouting ‘save us’.”

The president is, however, shouting for more urgency. Russia is on the offensive in the Kharkiv region, an advance that came after months of delay in the US Congress over the passing of a major support package, limiting Ukraine’s battlefield capacities. Then, there was the ban on using western weapons to hit Russian military targets across the border, limiting its ability to defend itself.

In the hours after the interview, the US administration finally shifted on that issue, allowing Ukraine to use certain US weapons on targets in the Russian border areas around Kharkiv. It is a permission that may have been more useful three weeks ago, when Ukrainian intelligence could first see Russian troops gathering across the border in preparation for the assault. This sense of decisions being taken long after Ukraine needed them has been a recurring motif of western policy making over the past two years, and one that has caused much frustration.

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The U.S. Ministry of Defense's Intelligence Service reported that Russia has used North Korean ballistic missiles to strike Ukraine.

This conclusion was drawn after comparing missile debris found in Kharkiv on January 2 with images from North Korean state media, noting similarities in specific missile components.

U.N. experts confirmed that the debris originated from a North Korean Hwasong-11 missile, indicating Russia’s violation of the ongoing arms embargo.

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Russian missile attacks on the Novobavarsky neighborhood of Kharkiv killed at least five people and injured 25 others, Governor Oleh Syniehubov said on May 31.

Russian forces attacked a multi-story residential building in the city of Kharkiv, killing one person and injuring 23 others, Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Syniehubov reported. Another person, a security guard at a sewing workshop, was also killed in a strike at a different location within the city, Suspilne reported.

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According to Suspilne, Russian missiles struck three locations within the city - a five-story residential building, a sewing workshop, and a local shop.

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Fourteen people have been found guilty in Hong Kong’s largest national security trial, the prosecution of the so-called “Hong Kong 47” pro-democracy campaigners.

Sixteen of the cohort had pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit subversion for organising pre-election primaries, and were among those detained in mass dawn raids by national security police in January 2021. Most have been in jail awaiting trial ever since.

Among the guilty are former lawmakers and activists including Helena Wong, veteran campaigner Leung “Long Hair” Kwok-hung, journalist Gwyneth Ho, and dual Hong Kong-Australian national Gordon Ng.

The charges of “conspiracy to subvert state power” were laid against them under the national security law which had been introduced seven months earlier.

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In a warehouse off Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway in an industrial area outside Dallas, the future of American military ammunition production is coming online.

Here, in the Pentagon’s first new major arms plant built since Russia invaded Ukraine, Turkish workers in orange hard hats are busy unpacking wood crates stenciled with the name Repkon, a defense company based in Istanbul, and assembling computer-controlled robots and lathes.

The factory will soon turn out about 30,000 steel shells every month for the 155-millimeter howitzers that have become crucial to Kyiv’s war effort.

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To keep Ukraine’s artillery crews supplied, the Pentagon set a production target last year of 100,000 shells per month by the end of 2025. Factories in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pa., together make about 36,000 shells per month. The new General Dynamics facility in Mesquite, Texas, will make 30,000 each month once it reaches its full capacity.

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Efforts by Israel’s intelligence agencies to undermine and influence the international criminal court (ICC) could amount to “offences against the administration of justice” and should be investigated by its chief prosecutor, legal experts have said.

Responding to revelations about Israeli surveillance and espionage operations against the ICC, multiple leading international law experts said the conduct of Israeli intelligence services could amount to criminal offences.

The disclosures about Israel’s nine-year campaign against the court were published on Tuesday as part of a joint investigation by the Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call. It details how the country’s intelligence agencies were deployed to surveil, hack, put pressure on, smear and allegedly threaten senior ICC staff.

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Sol Mamakwa, a New Democratic party member from the community of Kingfisher Lake First Nation, rose on Tuesday to give the province’s first-ever Indigenous language speech in Queen’s Park, telling colleagues the moment left him feeling “thankful and proud”.

Before speaking, Mamakwa asked for the unanimous consent of the house to speak at length in Anishininiimowin, also known as Oji-Cree, receiving applause from lawmakers in response.

“I am speaking for those who couldn’t use their language … and for every Indigenous person in Ontario,” he said. “The language was taken from us by the arrival of the settlers, colonization and residential school. This history removed the children from our ways of life.” He said that children had their mouths washed out with soap for speaking their mother tongue.

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The US does not believe Israel has launched a full-scale invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza, White House spokesman John Kirby has said.

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Mr Kirby told journalists that images from Sunday's strike, which killed mostly women, children and elderly people, were "heartbreaking" and "horrific".

"There should be no innocent life lost here as a result of this conflict," he added.

But he acknowledged that Israel was investigating the incident and said he had "no policy changes to speak to" following the recent events in Rafah.

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Ukraine should be allowed to strike military bases on Russian territory from which Moscow carries out missile attacks against Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron said on May 28, Le Monde reported.

"We think that we should allow them to neutralize military sites where missiles are fired, from where... Ukraine is attacked," Macron said at a press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. "If we tell them that you are not allowed to target the place from which missiles are fired, we are in fact telling them that we are providing you with weapons but you cannot defend yourself."

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