As the World Pushes a Truce, Russia and Ukraine’s War – and Peace – Drag On
NEED TO KNOW
As the World Pushes a Truce, Russia and Ukraine’s War – and Peace – Drag On
UKRAINE/RUSSIA
Fifty thousand Russian troops are amassed on Ukraine’s northeastern border, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
They are presumed to be a major part of a new summer offensive that Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to launch despite international efforts to seal a peace deal between the two, Reuters reported.
Russia wants to show Ukraine and the world that it’s decisively winning the war, mainly because things are not going so well for it right now, analysts say.
The offensive aims to eject the last remaining Ukrainian troops from the Kursk region of Russia and initiate a new Russian invasion of Ukraine, targeting the northeastern region of Sumy. Analysts are already expecting bloody fighting as well as humanitarian crises. “Current Russian troop movements and battlefield dynamics indicate that the coming summer offensive may be one of the largest and most ambitious of the entire war,” wrote the Atlantic Council.
Even so, the fighting has already been heating up lately. Earlier this week, Ukraine launched an audacious drone attack against five strategic air bases deep inside Russian territory, including in Siberia, destroying 41 aircraft that carry cruise missiles and detect enemy planes. It was an attack, commentators said, that showed the resilience and ingenuity of the Ukrainians.
That followed the collapse of two bridges causing two trains to derail in separate regions of Russia near the Ukrainian border Saturday, killing at least seven people. Russia blamed the collapse of the bridges on explosions caused by Ukraine, which has not commented on the incidents.
Russia, meanwhile, has been pounding Ukraine with airstrikes across the country over the past few weeks, with some of the most brutal assaults since the war began.
The escalation in the fighting comes as peace talks stumble on: On June 2, another round of talks took place in Turkey, but the negotiations ended in less than an hour with little progress, Reuters reported. Still, the two sides exchanged draft peace accords and agreed to another prisoner swap.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump is pushing for peace, Fox News noted, even as he is getting frustrated by the lack of progress on a ceasefire deal and also with Russian intransigence. European leaders, especially in Germany, have pledged more economic and military support for Ukraine, as the Wall Street Journal explained, and recently imposed new sanctions on Russia.
Still, the West has yet to make game-changing moves like harsher sanctions proposed by some US officials that would cripple the Russian economy, Axios reported. As a result, some Ukrainians feel as if the US has abandoned them and that the Europeans are too weak to help on the scale they need, wrote the Financial Times.
Yet the Ukrainians fight on. Their troops, while losing ground incrementally, continue to punish the Russian military with colossal losses. As of April, Russia has lost an estimated 800,000 troops to death, captivity, or debilitating injury since Putin launched the war in early 2022, according to US government estimates. Ukraine lost more than 400,000 soldiers, according to those same estimates. Neither side officially releases casualty figures.
Some analysts say time appears to be on Putin’s side. The Russian president is willing to sustain these mammoth losses in return for creeping success and territorial gains, argued the Institute for the Study of War.
Still, those Russian losses are one reason why the New York Times doesn’t foresee much success from this summer’s offensive, as Russia’s slow battlefield advances would almost certainly fail to achieve a decisive victory, the newspaper wrote. Instead, the war is likely to drag on into yet another winter unless diplomats can convince Putin and Zelenskyy to accept a peace deal.
And for the first time in three years, some analysts now say that Russia is heading toward defeat, in spite of an adversary that is far smaller and weaker.
“Russian President Vladimir Putin is skilled at escaping the optics of defeat…(and) with Ukraine, Putin can orchestrate scenes of success,” wrote Michael Kimmage of the Wilson Center in Foreign Policy. “In Ukraine, Russia’s military is stalled while deaths and casualties mount. Putin has no way out of the war – other than to admit a version of defeat… Slowly and not yet suddenly, Russia is starting to lose the war.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
Bulgaria to Adopt Euro in January Even As Corruption Concerns Linger
BULGARIA
Bulgaria will adopt the euro as its official currency in January 2026, the Eastern European country announced Wednesday, even as protests broke out earlier this week against the move due to worries about inflation, Politico reported.
Both the European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB) approved a move to make Bulgaria the 21st member of the eurozone, acknowledging its achievements in meeting the necessary economic criteria. The ECB said Bulgaria met the requirements regarding currency stability, inflation, public finances, and interest rates, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty noted.
The final endorsement of the accession is expected during a meeting of European Union finance ministers in July, but European officials have told Politico they don’t anticipate opposition from other eurozone members.
Despite that optimistic view, concerns remain about money laundering and high-level political corruption in Bulgaria.
Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007 and committed at the time to adopting the euro currency. However, the country has seen seven elections in the past four years, and legislative failures – including some aimed at fighting money laundering, inflation, political stalemate, and instability – have complicated its path toward the eurozone.
On Saturday, thousands of Bulgarians took to the streets to protest against the decision to adopt the euro and ask the government to keep the lev, the currency in use today. Opponents worry that sellers and companies will exploit the transition to raise prices, while increased trade with the rest of the bloc could also push up local costs.
After the decision, Bulgarian politicians said that the priority is to make sure the adoption of the euro brings benefits instead of disruption.
Entry into the eurozone is Bulgaria’s second big step in one year on its path toward full integration into the EU. In January, the country became a full member of the Schengen Agreement, which allows the free movement of people across the borders of the member countries.
Guatemala Orders Arrest of Colombian Officials Over UN Graft Probe
GUATEMALA
A Guatemalan court this week ordered the arrest of two senior Colombian officials who previously led a United Nations anti-corruption mission in the country, drawing condemnation from both Colombian and Guatemalan authorities, Al Jazeera reported.
On Monday, Guatemalan prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche announced arrest warrants for Colombian Attorney General Luz Adriana Camargo Garzón and former Defense Minister Iván Velásquez, accusing them of corruption, influence peddling, and obstruction.
The charges stem from their past work with the UN-backed International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), which investigated bribes paid by Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.
CICIG – active from 2007 to 2019 – dismantled a number of criminal networks and implicated high-level officials before being shut down by then-President Jimmy Morales after it linked his relatives to a graft case.
The current accusations focus on a plea deal CICIG struck with Odebrecht to obtain testimony in exchange for reduced penalties. Curruchiche claimed to have emails as evidence, but their authenticity has not been independently verified.
On Tuesday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro dismissed the warrants as politically motivated and said Guatemala’s prosecutor’s office was “subordinate to the mafia.” The prosecutor’s office is an independent agency.
Velásquez – now serving as Colombia’s ambassador to the Vatican – blasted the charges on social media as the product of “the corrupt Guatemalan attorney general and her prosecutor Curruchiche.”
Human rights groups and analysts said there is “no credible evidence” and described the move as part of a broader pattern of judicial overreach by Guatemala’s Attorney General Consuelo Porras, who has been sanctioned by both the United States and the European Union, the Associated Press noted.
Despite widespread criticism, some Colombian opposition figures praised the court’s decision. Conservative presidential frontrunner Vicky Dávila vowed to extradite Camargo and Velásquez if elected in next year’s presidential election.
Vietnam Scraps Two-Child Policy to Increase Population
VIETNAM
Vietnam scrapped its longstanding policy of limiting families to two children as the communist-run country tries to reverse a declining birth rate, Agence France-Presse reported.
On Wednesday, state media announced that families can now decide how many children to have and how much time to wait between births.
The Southeast Asian nation imposed the two-child limit in 1988.
Over the past three years, birth rates in Vietnam have been historically low, falling from 2.11 children per woman in 2021 to 1.96 in 2023. The total fertility rate dropped to 1.91 children per woman in 2024, a level that is not enough to maintain the current population size, according to the Guardian.
Deputy Health Minister Nguyen Thi Lien Huong had previously warned that, despite efforts to boost families, it was becoming difficult to persuade couples to have more children. This declining trend is dangerous for long-term socio-economic development, as it can lead to an aging population, creating workforce shortages and putting social welfare systems under strain.
The declining birth rate trend is more visible in urban and economically developed areas where life is more expensive.
Some provinces are offering rewards and subsidies to couples who have children to combat the problem. For example, some offer certificates of merit and financial compensation for women who have two children before they turn 35.
Other measures include directly rewarding the communes and wards where a certain percentage of couples have a certain number of kids. However, birth rates are falling in these areas as well.
Vietnam is also dealing with sex imbalances because of a historic preference for sons. It is forbidden to tell parents the sex of their child before birth and to request abortion for sex-selection reasons, with penalties for clinics that do not respect these laws. But the sex ratio at birth remains tilted at 112 boys for every 100 girls, prompting the ministry of health to propose tripling the current fine to $3,800 “to curb fetal gender selection.”
China had imposed a stricter, one-child policy in the 1980s due to concerns of overpopulation but opted to scrap it in 2016, initially allowing families to have two kids and later increasing the limit to three.
However, rising living costs have proved too impactful for the move to successfully reverse China’s demographic decline, and the country’s population fell for the third consecutive year in 2024.
Japan, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia are also facing similar trends.
DISCOVERIES
The Flamingo’s Storm
They may look serene and graceful as they move through shallow lakes, but flamingos are anything but passive when it comes to mealtime.
Scientists recently found that these pink-legged performers are highly active predators, crafting miniature underwater tornadoes to snare tiny prey – and do so with remarkable precision and flair.
The new study overturns the long-held notion that flamingos simply strain food from the water like baleen whales do.
Instead, they choreograph a full-body feeding performance, “chattering” or clapping their beaks rapidly, plunging their heads into the water, and conducting a rhythmic foot dance that stirs up sediment and snacks.
“They are actually taking animals that are moving,” explained lead author Victor Ortega-Jiménez in a statement. “Think of spiders, which produce webs to trap insects. Flamingos are using vortices to trap animals, like brine shrimp.”
Working with three flamingos at the Nashville Zoo, Ortega-Jiménez and his team used high-speed cameras, laser visualization, and 3D-printed models of beaks and feet to understand how the creatures engineer their meals.
They noticed that each upward flick of the head creates vertical whirlpools that lift particles and agile invertebrates off the lakebed. At the same time, the flamingos’ L-shaped beaks chatter at up to 12 times per second, generating eddies that funnel prey straight into their mouths.
“The chattering actually is increasing seven times the number of brine shrimp passing through the tube,” Ortega-Jiménez noted. “It’s this trick of fluid dynamics.”
The researchers added that the bird’s webbed feet also play a critical role: They are flexible enough to avoid suction when lifting off mud, but effective in pushing swirling currents forward. These feet act like biological plows, stirring prey into the flamingo’s filter zone.
The findings not only upend the notion that these flamboyant avians are passive, but could also help scientists in developing new filtration tech for pollutants, such as toxic algae or microplastics.
The authors are now planning to study what is going on inside the flamingos’ beaks during feeding.
“What’s at the heart of filter feeding in flamingos?” Ortega-Jiménez wondered in an interview with the New York Times. “We as scientists want to understand both the form and function of these fascinating and mysterious birds as they interact with their fluid environment.”
Correction: In Wednesday’s NEED TO KNOW section, we said in our Burundi piece that the country’s capital is Gitega but incorrectly displayed Bujumbura as the capital on our map. We have corrected the map to reflect Gitega as the capital. We apologize for the error.