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The attack comes shortly after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy promises to increase Ukraine’s drone production.

A Ukrainian drone attack at an industrial plant in central Russia has killed three people and injured 35 others, a Russian regional governor has said.

Alexander Brechalov, head of the Udmurt Republic, said in a post on Telegram on Tuesday that the attack took place at a factory in Izhevsk city. Ten of the wounded were in a serious condition, he noted.

There was no immediate official comment from Kyiv. But a Ukrainian security official confirmed the attack, telling the news agency Reuters that the Kupol plant had been hit, with a fire breaking out as a result.

The facility, which produces air defence systems and drones for the Russian army, is located roughly 1,300km (800 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

If confirmed, the Ukrainian mission would be one of the deepest attacks of its kind inside Russia since the start of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion.

However, it is not as far as one Kyiv claimed last May, which reportedly hit an early-warning radar in the Russian city of Orsk, some 1,800km (1,120 miles) from Ukraine.

Speaking to the AFP news agency on Tuesday, an unnamed Ukrainian security service (SBU) official hailed the most recent drone mission.

“Each such special operation reduces the enemy’s offensive potential, disrupts military production chains and demonstrates that even deep in Russia’s rear, there are no safe zones for its military infrastructure,” they said in written comments.

The attack came a day after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine would increase its drone production, following a surge in Russian drone attacks.

Moscow fired some 5,438 long-range drones at Ukraine in June, its highest monthly total yet, according to an analysis by AFP.

“The priority is drones, interceptor drones and long-range strike drones,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram late on Monday about Ukraine’s manufacturing drive.

The message followed a promise last month by Ukraine’s top military commander to improve the “scale and depth” of strikes on Russia.

In other developments, the Kremlin has denied the suggestion from one of United States President Donald Trump’s special envoys that it was deliberately stalling ceasefire talks.

Keith Kellogg, Trump’s Ukraine envoy, said on Monday, “Russia cannot continue to stall for time while it bombs civilian targets in Ukraine.”

In response, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed that Russia was “not interested in drawing out anything”.

A date for a third round of negotiations has yet to be agreed.

Meanwhile, a Russian-backed official in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk said it is now fully under the control of Moscow. Ukraine is yet to respond to the claim.

President Lee Jae-myung has pledged to tackle the economy and improve relations with North Korea after his swearing-in.

South Korea’s new President Lee Jae-myung has pledged to “heal wounds” after months of political and economic turmoil across the country and to reopen dialogue with North Korea in his first speech after taking office following a landslide win at the polls.

Lee, who hails from the liberal Democratic Party of Korea, replaces ousted President Yoon Suk-yeol, who last year triggered a national emergency when he briefly imposed martial law, citing antistate forces and North Korean infiltration.

After taking the oath of office at parliament on Wednesday, Lee pledged to help South Korea reverse course following months of uncertainty and political protest.

South Korea has also found itself under attack from the United States, a top economic and security ally, where trade protectionism is on the rise under President Donald Trump.

“A Lee Jae-myung government will be a pragmatic pro-market government,” Lee said in a speech.

Lee said he would try to make headway in South Korea’s relations with Pyongyang, working to “deter North Korean nuclear and military provocations while opening communication channels and pursuing dialogue and cooperation to build peace on the Korean Peninsula”.

“We will heal the wounds of division and war and establish a future of peace and prosperity,” he said.

“No matter how costly, peace is better than war,” he added.

Lee also warned that “rising protectionism and supply chain restructuring” posed a threat to South Korea’s export-driven economy, and said he would address cost-of-living concerns facing middle- and low-income families.

South Korea’s caretaker government, which ruled after Yoon’s ouster, failed to negotiate a trade deal with the Trump administration to cut down proposed tariffs on imports from the country.

Trump’s 25 percent “Liberation Day” tariffs on South Korea – aimed at addressing the US trade imbalance – are currently on pause pending negotiations, but South Korean exporters were hit with a new 50 percent tariff on steel and aluminium products.

Lee won this week’s snap election with 49.4 percent of the vote, well ahead of conservative candidate Kim Moon-soo, as South Korean voters turned out in the highest numbers since 1997.

Gaza is the “hungriest place on Earth”, the United Nations has said, as Israel continues to block all but a trickle of humanitarian aid from entering the Strip, where famine stalks the entire Palestinian population, and the Israeli military relentlessly bombs the besieged enclave.

Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said on Friday that 100 percent of the 2.3-million population of Gaza is now on the verge of “catastrophic hunger”.

The “limited number of truckloads coming in [Gaza] is a trickle – it’s drip-feeding food,” Laerk said.

“The aid operation that we have ready to roll is being put in an operational straitjacket that makes it one of the most obstructed aid operations not only in the world today, but in recent history”, he added.

What paucity of aid is entering the enclave is under the control of a new, shadowy NGO backed by Israel and the United States – the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

On Friday, sources at Gaza hospitals told Al Jazeera that 20 people were shot by Israeli troops as they desperately tried to get food at a GHF aid distribution point.

That distribution site, located near Israel’s Netzarim Corridor bisecting the territory, is the third to have been set up, after two distribution points were established in the southern city of Rafah.

Armed surveillance is administered around the clock. “People are telling us that the sites managed and operated by the GHF are metres away from where the Israeli military is stationed. They can see the tanks, they can see the armoured vehicles,” said Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City.

Ten people were killed earlier this week trying to access food distribution points, and images showed many being herded into cage-like lines. Palestinians desperately trying to get hold of any aid must risk Israeli fire and military forces.

“There are also reports of enforced disappearances. A lot of families reported that many of their children, of their family members, who went to the sites … have gone missing as they were trying to get food,” Mahmoud said.

The aid delivery scheme has been roundly condemned by UN officials and the humanitarian community, who have accused the group of aiding Israel’s war objectives by forcibly displacing Palestinians under the guise of aid.

Critics maintain that the currently inadequate aid could be safely scaled up in Gaza, if Israel would allow access to aid and let the organisations that have decades of experience handle the flow.

“Through this dangerous and reckless approach, food is not being distributed where it’s needed most but is instead directed only to areas where Israeli forces choose to amass civilians,” said Doctors Without Borders Secretary-General Christopher Lockyear. “This means the most vulnerable – especially the elderly and people with disabilities – have virtually no chance of accessing the food they desperately need.”

Famine is declared in an area where at least 20 percent of households face an extreme lack of food. At famine levels of deprivation, 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition, and at least four children in every 10,000 die each day from starvation or malnutrition-linked disease. OCHA said at least 1 in 5 people in Gaza is currently facing starvation.

Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, says it’s “safe to say there is famine” in Gaza. Fakhri told Al Jazeera that Israel is using aid “as bait to corral people” and push them out of the north and into militarised zones”.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza was already catastrophic when Israel imposed a total blockade on March 2, causing conditions to deteriorate even further. After growing international pressure, Israeli authorities said they would allow minimal supplies of food and medicine into the Strip, but critical supplies are still not reaching the people.

France’s sanctions threat

The chorus of condemnation against Israel was underscored by France’s President Emmanuel Macron on Friday. The French leader warned that Paris could “apply sanctions” unless the Israeli government responds to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Speaking during a visit to Singapore on Friday, Macron said the international community could not remain passive while Palestinians in Gaza face a deepening hunger crisis that is “untenable”.

“If there is no response in the coming hours and days in line with the humanitarian situation, we will have to harden our collective position,” he added, suggesting that France may consider applying sanctions against Israeli settlers.

Palestinian daily deaths as ceasefire remains uncertain

At least 30 people have been killed since dawn on Friday in attacks in southern Deir el-Balah, northern Jabalia and on eastern Khan Younis.

The Israeli army has also been expanding its military operation on the ground, issuing new forced displacement orders for five areas in northern Gaza. According to a UN spokesperson, nearly 200,000 people have been displaced in Gaza in the last two weeks by Israel’s displacement orders.

Meanwhile, hopes for an elusive truce remained unrealised. Hamas said on Friday it is currently reviewing a new US ceasefire proposal that Washington says has been signed off on by Israel, but that in its current form will only result in “the continuation of killing and famine” in Gaza.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday that Israel had “signed off” on the ceasefire proposal, and the Trump administration’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, had submitted it to Hamas for consideration.

Trump said he believes his administration will have an announcement later on Friday, “or maybe tomorrow”.

“We have a chance of that,” he told reporters from the Oval Office.

The details of the new proposal have not been made public, but senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told the news agency Reuters that, crucially, it did not contain commitments from Israel to end its war on Gaza, withdraw from the enclave, or allow aid to freely enter the war-torn territory.

London, United Kingdom — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has proudly described a new deal with the European Union spanning defence, security, and trade as a “win-win” pact that puts the nation “back on the world stage”.

But nine years after Britain narrowly voted in favour of leaving the EU, the deal announced on May 19 has prompted a sigh of relief for some and stinging criticism from others, underscoring just how divisive the legacy of Brexit remains in the country.

While many sections of British society have welcomed the agreement, Richard Tice, an MP for the anti-immigration party Reform UK, responded to the deal with a single-word post on social media: “Betrayal.”

The deal offers concessions on European visas for British citizens, shorter queues at European airports, and possibly cheaper food in the UK. But on the flip side, the UK has agreed to allow European fishing fleets access to British waters for an extra 12 years.

‘Best news in nine years’

Phil Rusted, who runs a firm called Practical Plants in Suffolk that imports plants from Europe, is among those who are delighted.

“My instinct is it is the best news we have got in nine years,” he said. “It almost gets us back to where were before Brexit. It helps me to take on more staff, to develop my business. The last few years have been very unpredictable; I will be more assured about what my costs are going to be.”

The business sector, more broadly, has also largely responded positively to the agreement.

“In a world where higher US tariffs are threatening to throw globalisation into reverse, trade deals, even if relatively minor, are generally good news,” said Philip Shaw, chief economist at Investec Bank. “The obvious gainer is the food sector, which will benefit from a reduction in checks at the EU border, which could make a material difference to exporters’ and importers’ costs.”

The Federation of Small Businesses, a group that represents small- and medium-sized firms in the UK, described the EU deal as “genuine progress”, crediting it for “untangling the rules for small exporters of plant and animal products”.

“For too long, small businesses have shouldered the burden of unpredictable customs rules and red tape that sap confidence and ambition,” it said.

And popular opinion in the UK appears to be behind the agreement. Polling by YouGov shows that 66 percent want to have a closer relationship with the EU, compared with just 14 percent who do not.

To be sure, experts say the UK has to compromise too. “The devil in a trade deal is of course always in the detail,” said Paul Dales, chief economist at Capital Economics. In addition to accepting EU access to British waters for fishing, the UK has also agreed to pay an unspecified “appropriate financial contribution” to join the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, Dales pointed out.

‘Nothing of value in return’

But the deal has also faced strong pushback.

The National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, in a statement on May 19, said the agreement “surrenders the best prospect that the fishing industry and coastal communities had for growth over the coming decade”.

Three days later, it issued a more biting statement, saying the deal “drags UK fishing back into a past we thought had been left behind”.

Shaw conceded that if the food industry had benefitted from the deal, the fishing sector stood “at the other end of the scale”.

And it is not just fishers. The deal has also revived a broader debate over whether the UK, in seeking to realign itself with elements of the EU’s rules and regulations, is violating the mandate of Brexit.

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, under whom Britain formally withdrew from the EU in 2020, described the deal as an “appalling sell out” in a post on X.

Tony Gabana, a web developer from London who was too young to vote in 2016, holds that view.

“Whether it’s a good deal or not, it does seem an attempt to reverse what a lot of people voted for,” Gabana said. “It doesn’t sit right with me. It feels like a step to further concessions, which, again, no one voted for.

“Are we a democracy or not?”