Today, I signed a decree establishing a new special day – the Day of the Unmanned Systems Forces. From now on, it will be observed every year on June 11. A day of our respect and gratitude to the USF. For the first time in the world, such a branch of the military was created – in Ukraine. We are developing the USF to the max, and it is Ukrainians who have proved that through technology, ingenuity, and courage, we can change the nature of warfare. We can achieve objectives that were previously either completely out of reach of conventional weapons or extremely difficult to achieve and required an enormous expenditure of resources. In just one year since the establishment of the USF Grouping, Russian targets of various levels worth nearly $40 billion have been struck. Most importantly, these are different types of strikes, and each one expands our ability to save lives. The Unmanned Systems Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are truly a model for many other militaries.

I’ve just bought my 1st dress rehearsal ticket for the new season @rbo_org - Un Ballo in Maschera!🎵🎶🎼👏👏

The first rule of eating in Spain is if you see a green vegetable, grab it, even if it means having salad for breakfast. You might not get another opportunity.

Even today's Twitter would probably take down the kind of bad language I'd like to use for this. theguardian.com/music/2026/j…

Anthony Head was, most importantly, Robin Fairbrother (Toby and Rex’s father) in @BBCTheArchers.

A message to all sane Republicans: He pardoned 1,600 violent criminals. You said nothing. He bulldozed the East Wing. You said nothing. He interfered with the release of the Epstein files. You said nothing. He took over the Kennedy Center and renamed it after himself. You said nothing. He accepted a $400 million airplane as a personal gift. You said nothing. He threatened Canada, Cuba, Denmark, Greenland, Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil. You said nothing. He tariffed just about everyone but Russia, causing inflation and instability worldwide. You said nothing. He attacked a nation during mediated negotiations. You said nothing. His ill-conceived war killed 175 children on day one. You said nothing. He alienated and insulted our allies. You said nothing. His ICE Army terrorized and murdered U.S. citizens. You said nothing. He committed murder on the high seas. You said nothing. He co-opted the Justice Department and directed it to prosecute his political enemies. You said nothing. It’s time to start talking.

🙌 👏 OMG watch Lord Spencer Livermore - Treasury Minister - the first serving minister to publicly face Brexit reality! “Should we in due course re-enter the European Union? My personal view is that that is an inevitability. Of course the UK will re-enter the EU because it is absolutely in our national economic interest.” He acknowledges Brexit has cost us 4–8% of GDP. Cutting a few tariffs is a drop in the ocean compared to that damage. The reset is a start, but full rejoin is the logical destination.”

Wow, @Iberia - you really are absolutely appalling! Almost unimaginable incompetence - good luck for winning World’s Worst Airline. You must be favourite to win, hands down… congratulations in advance.

Too on point not to share. This is great, but too bad the Orange Felon’s enablers won’t let him see it. This Australian's reply to #Trump's rant about “NATO not being there for America” is perfect. "Mate. You run a country with 600,000 homeless people sleeping on the street tonight. A country where 40% of adults can't cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money. A country where insulin costs more than a car payment and people are rationing it to survive. A country where medical debt is the number 1 cause of bankruptcy. A country where women are dying in hospital car parks because doctors are too scared of abortion laws to treat a miscarriage. You lock up more of your own citizens than any nation on earth. More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea. The land of the free has 2 million people in cages, and a quarter of them haven't even been convicted of anything. They're just too poor to make bail. Your life expectancy is going backwards. You're the only developed nation where that's happening. Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba's. Your kids do active shooter drills between maths and English while you sell the gunmaker's stock to your mates. Your minimum wage hasn't moved in 15 years. You've got teachers working 2 jobs and veterans sleeping under bridges and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that didn't attack you. And you’ve got a convicted felon, adjudicating raping, paedophile protecting, porn star shagging insurrectionist running the biggest dumpster fire war campaign since the Taliban thanked you very much for losing again. And you're calling Greenland poorly run? Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world. Nobody goes bankrupt there because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because their insurance said no. 'NATO wasn't there when we needed them." When exactly was that, champ? September 11? Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU. Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU. Australia wasn't even in NATO and we still showed up. For 20 years. And you pulled out at 2am without telling anyone and left them to deal with the mess. So maybe before you start calling other countries poorly run, have a look at your own backyard, you spray-tanned aluminium siding salesman. The only thing poorly run in this picture is your f----- mouth." - Tony Locke

Putin didn't invade Ukraine because of NATO. He invaded because Ukrainians were proving democracy works. Historian and Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Applebaum puts it plainly: Putin looked at Ukraine's democratic movement and thought, "If they can do it in Ukraine, then people could do it in Russia. So I need to crush this." That's the real threat Ukraine posed. Not missiles. Not borders. A working democracy next door. Applebaum frames the war as a fault line between the democratic and autocratic worlds. Russia isn't just trying to take territory. It's trying to erase Ukraine as a nation, reduce it to a colony, and send a message to every country that the post-1945 rules of Europe no longer apply. Those rules were simple: no invasions, no wars, borders don't change by force. Russia understood exactly what it was breaking when it crossed into Ukraine.

Whoever is Prime Minister in the coming months for heaven’s sake try to get David Miliband back into UK politics to be part of your team. His interview on Today programme just now a reminder of how much his voice and his brain are missed.

The Guardian has asked a panel of authors and critics to nominate their favourite novels to make up a 'Top 100', and to nobody's surprise the highest places were bagged by that well-known half-back line: Proust, Tolstoy and Joyce. 'Reigning supreme', as Fluff Freeman might have said, was George Eliot. Yes, Middlemarch, the supreme novel of provincial England, was number one. Great writers, all. Yet how flat it seems. Ulysses, for instance, is a remarkable book, even if it is savoured more by writers than readers. It is long, self-consciously clever, and assumes a familiarity with the ancient world. But not everybody has the patience to last the course. ✍️ Michael Henderson Article | spectator.com/article/the-pr…

Laura Kuenssberg, "Rejoining the EU.. Which Streeting and Burnham have mentioned" Wil Self, "I think the public would be much happier if Streeting stood up and said we have a problem with governmental legitimacy, because of the way the vote on Europe is still perceived" "We need a need to have a national debate on the mismatch on our electoral systems between Proportional Representation and FPTP" "We need to educate the British public again on our own constitution" "The real issue is we have a war with Russia" "I have blood cancer, the blood testing service last year was attacked by Russian hackers" "We have a low intensity conflict, its all over the place now" "NATO is falling apart" "The issue about the EU is about existential defence in Europe" "Don't people understand that?" "Talk about fiddling while Rome burns" Well said @wself 👏

Alas, poor Bizet... The Pearl Fishers makes its debut at the Wiener Staatsoper: review for @Operanow opera-now.com/content/review…

This is a brilliant investigative piece on Farage, the dark millions behind him and the double standards of so much British journalism. Read and retweet! Nigel Farage pocketing £5m from a donor shows he’s unfit for power app.prospectmagazine.co.uk/s…

JD Vance is FURIOUS with King Charles' speech! 👀

One of the most cynical Russian war crimes is the systematic, calculated transfer of Ukrainian children, scattering them across Russia, concealing their fate, “reprogramming” their culture, and continuously, shamelessly subjecting them to militarization. It is vitally important to bring our children back home from there. Before the Russians break them. And every initiative, every activity, every effort that helps achieve this also helps Ukraine. I said this while addressing participants of the Civil Society and Expert Day. Thanks to our Bring Kids Back UA initiative, we have secured 2,126 returns, and we will continue this work. We have engaged strong international mediators to help bring the children home. I am grateful to every country that has joined our Coalition for the Return of Children. I want to thank every leader of the countries contributing to the effort, and every First Lady of countries that care and are concerned about the fate of abducted children. I thank our Bring Kids Back team. I am grateful to all diplomats, international organizations, and journalists who maintain focus on the rescue of children.