Spotlight
Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Kyiv of seeking to "frighten" Russians after drones hit Moscow high-rises in the first such attack since the beginning of the Kremlin's assault on Ukraine.
As drones struck in and around Moscow, Russian drones targeted Kyiv for a third straight day while Ukraine gears up for a major offensive against Russian forces.

The United States and the European Union's top justice official on Tuesday criticized Polish plans for a law that could keep political opponents from holding public office without full legal recourse, and the EU threatened to take measures if it became fully clear such a law would undermine democratic standards.
Polish President Andrzej Duda said early this week he would sign a bill that critics view as a tool to remove from political life the opponents of the ruling party — mostly notably opposition leader Donald Tusk, the former EU Council president. Parliament last Friday already approved the bill, which was proposed by the ruling conservative Law and Justice party as the country heads toward a parliamentary election in the autumn.

China on Tuesday expressed its support for Serbia's efforts to "safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity" following renewed violence between ethnic Serbs and NATO peacekeeping troops in Kosovo.
China's ruling Communist Party has long been a critic of the NATO alliance, stemming partly from the bombing of Beijing's embassy in Belgrade during the 1999 air campaign to end Serbia's brutal crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won reelection in a runoff Sunday, following a nail-biter first round two weeks earlier. Having secured another five years, Erdogan now faces a host of domestic challenges in a deeply divided country, from a battered economy to pressure for the repatriation of Syrian refugees to the need to rebuild after a devastating earthquake.
Here's a look at the challenges ahead.

After securing a strong new mandate in a runoff presidential election, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan could temper some positions that have irritated his NATO allies. But observers predicted that the country's longtime strongman leader is unlikely to depart from his policy of engaging with both Russia and the West.
Erdogan won reelection Sunday with more than 52% of the vote, extending his increasingly authoritarian rule into a third decade. He must now confront skyrocketing inflation that has fueled a cost-of-living crisis and rebuild in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people and leveled entire cities.

Russia launched a pre-dawn air raid on Ukraine's capital Tuesday, killing at least one person and sending Kyiv's residents again scrambling into shelters to escape a relentless wave of daylight and nighttime bombardments, while Moscow authorities said the Russian capital was attacked by drones.
At least 20 Shahed explosive drones were destroyed by air defense forces in Kyiv's airspace in Russia's third attack on the capital in the past 24 hours, according to early information from the Kyiv Military Administration. Overall, Ukraine shot down 29 of 31 drones fired into the country, most in the Kyiv area, the air force later added.

The situation in northern Kosovo remained tense Tuesday as ethnic Serbs continued to gather in front of a town hall in Zvecan after violent clashes with NATO-led peacekeepers left 30 soldiers injured.
The NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) soldiers wearing full riot gear have put a metal barrier around the municipal building in Zvecan and are stopping several hundred Serbs from entering, an AFP journalist at the scene said.

Explosions rattled Kyiv during daylight Monday as Russian ballistic missiles took aim at the Ukrainian capital, hours after a more common nighttime barrage of the city by drones and cruise missiles.
Debris from missiles intercepted by Ukrainian air defenses fell in Kyiv's central and northern districts during the morning, landing in the middle of traffic on a city road and also starting a fire on a building's roof, the Kyiv military administration said. At least one civilian was reported hurt.

North Korea on Monday notified neighboring Japan that it plans to launch a satellite in coming days, which may be an attempt to put Pyongyang's first military reconnaissance satellite into orbit.
Japan's coast guard said the notice it received from North Korean waterway authorities said the launch window was from May 31 to June 11, and that the launch may affect waters in the Yellow Sea, East China Sea and east of the Philippines' Luzon Island.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday confronted the tough task of uniting his deeply divided country after winning a historic run-off election to extend his two-decade rule to 2028.
Turkey's longest-serving leader brushed aside a powerful opposition coalition, a biting economic crisis and widespread anger following a devastating February earthquake to beat secular challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu in Sunday's vote.
