The images that show Putin is losing his grip on his biggest prize

Russian authorities in Crimea declared a state of emergency this week, as Ukrainian attacks caused fuel shortages and power cuts, threatening the vital peninsula.

Fuel is now only available to government agencies, not ordinary citizens or businesses, according to Crimea’s Russian-installed government. Children’s summer camps have been cancelled and there are frequent air raid sirens.

Photographs showed queues of cars waiting for fuel, while video footage reportedly showed traffic jams as residents attempted to flee Crimea, over the Kerch Bridge into Russia.

New EU border checks should be suspended before peak summer, aviation industry leaders have said, after Brits reported huge delays due to the new Entry/Exit System (EES). 

The system, rolled out fully in April, involves people from the UK having their fingerprints registered and photographs taken to enter certain countries.

The EES is used to enter the Schengen Area, which consists of 29 European countries, mainly in the EU.

For most UK travellers, the process is done at foreign airports.

Severe operational consequences disrupting passengers and putting border authorities, airports and airlines under unsustainable pressure.

Senior figures at three major aviation industry bodies wrote to Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission warning waiting times at border control had “increased significantly, now reaching up to five hours”.

Since it’s implementation, the EES has caused travel chaos for Brits.

England’s stunning victory over the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) may have England fans elated, but some are wondering if Tuchel is still the right choice to lead the team to a World Cup victory.

England had never lost to an African side in a World Cup match, and only once in their entire history.

Inside seven minutes, a defensive calamity and mistake from Jordan Pickford put the DRC on the cusp of history. 

It was Kane’s two goals within the last fifteen minutes of the match which saw England narrowly take the win.

England’s full-backs were a mess against DRC because Tuchel went weird with his selection and Ezri Konsa looks jumpy.

Gareth Southgate protected an average defence that was the weak point of the team and England became boring to the point of fault. Tuchel is ostensibly doing mostly the same but without the defensive protection bit.

England now face Mexico in Mexico: far harder, far more altitude, far better opponent, far more febrile atmosphere. The worry from Atlanta that won’t leave this brain: what if better are better against us and we’re already living on the edge of incompetence?

Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv with missiles and drones, killing at least 13 people and injuring dozens more.

Russia launched a series of strikes on Kyiv, hitting residential ⁠buildings and ⁠triggering ​a fire in a hotel on a central boulevard.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko has said 13 people had been killed, ⁠with about three dozen locations across the city damaged in the attacks.

Many residents took shelter at metro stations after the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, issued the first warnings of the attack.

Zelenskyy was forced to cut short a trip to Dublin on Wednesday, citing intelligence reports of a large-scale Russian attack.

Ukraine said on Tuesday it hit one of Russia’s largest satellite communication centers in north Moscow for the second time in just over a week.

Russian president Vladimir Putin also recently admitted Russia is facing fuel shortages after Ukraine launched repeated strikes on oil refineries, while Kyiv notably launched a large-scale attack on Moscow last month.

Three families reflect on the early signs of the illness, which affected their parents.

They include the things they missed or dismissed, what they’d do differently and what they’d want other people in the same position to know.

One of the first incidents that rang alarm bells for Robert was his mum falling victim to a suspected scam from someone selling mattresses door-to-door. 

She also started to struggle with cooking and making her special dishes she’d been making for decades without a problem.

We [had] just sort of played along with everything. But on one particularly bad day, I blurted it out over the phone, ‘Because you’ve got dementia, mum!’ She threatened to kill herself, which was very scary. Maybe it’s something I should have explained properly to her from the get go…

I think we missed some of the really early subtle signs.

Rosie’s mother was diagnosed with Young Onset Alzheimer’s Disease at 58 but some symptoms, like brain fog, were put down to the menopause.

She had become more forgetful, and was repeating herself, but as she had always “been scatty” it was dismissed.

It was on strange things like going to the same buffet.

Chloe was just 14 when her mum, Sarah, was diagnosed with young onset frontotemporal dementia, a rare form of the disease.

Another time Sarah, who was diagnosed in her forties, forgot how to boil an egg.

On Saturdays, when she’d usually go shopping, she’d go out and come straight back home, almost like she forgetting
what she was going out for.

Officials have drawn up contingency plans to cut further green levies from energy bills if prices remain high this winter, The i Paper has been told.

Several options are now circulating among Burnham’s transition team who are believed to be weighing up how to deliver on that pledge. A Treasury source said work on a package was ongoing to help with rising costs.

Burnham could remove remaining green levies from energy bills, funded through general taxation instead.

One proposal would be to raise the bank surcharge from its current 3 per cent.

Replace stamp duty, loosen fiscal rules and tax the capital gains uplift on inherited assets.

A written statement published by the Chancellor said the remaining sum would be “confirmed at Budget 2026, in a fair and balanced way”.

The coronation of Andy Burnham is fraught with dangers. Never will a prime minister have arrived in Downing Street with so little scrutiny of what he wants to do.

Sir Keir Starmer’s much-delayed Defence Investment Plan had one big bet at its heart: drones are the future of warfare.

American company Anduril makes the “Seabed Sentry“- a weighted cylinder that uses sensors and AI to monitor what is happening under the sea. They could be used to listen out for spying and sabotage by Russian submarines. They are far cheaper than crewed submarines using traditional sonar.

A dozen of the cylinders can be dropped onto the seabed at a time by an autonomous submarine, with the devices forming a network which communicate between themselves and listens out for undersea activity.

The UK is woefully unprepared with the Royal Navy in a desperate condition. Whoever sits in Downing Street come next September will need to address matters of defence, homeland and cyber defence especially, with urgency.

Electric flying taxis could be above the streets of London by 2028, a manufacturer has claimed. Here’s what you need to know.

Vertical Aerospace is still testing the aircraft and it will need to be approved by both the approval from the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA). But the company says the aim is for air taxis to become as cheap and convenient as ordering an Uber to the airport.

Writer Sadhbh O’Sullivan looked into her own forgotten subscriptions when she became a first-time buyer, and realised how much she was wasting on things she wasn’t using.

I’d long considered myself to be quite a reasonable spender. 

But the hidden costs across her bank accounts, like free trials that hadn’t been cancelled and memberships for abandoned services, proved otherwise.

It was full of small amounts, £2.99 here, £4.50 there. These small amounts added up.

According to a Nationwide survey almost one in five Brits don’t use every platform they pay for.

The bank suggests they could save as much as £400 a year by ditching them. 

National Trading Standards’ 2025 research found 4.7 million people were paying for subscriptions they didn’t know they’d signed up for.

In 2024, a government report found unused and unwanted subscriptions cost consumers up to £1.6bn a year.

Hunt them down

Banking apps usually list your ‘subscriptions’ separately from direct debits and standing orders so you can easily spot what you’re shelling out on.

Check everything

You can be debited through credit cards, E-payment services, your mobile phone bill, Apple Pay or Google Pay.

Don’t vow to use a subscription you’re not going to, even if you
have good intentions.

Many businesses have changed from monthly to annual payments so look further back.

Make sure to track any subscriptions you have kept so you can cancel them, if need be, in future.

The state of emergency came into force at 1pm on Friday, local time, and will stay in place until the situation stabilises, according to the Moscow-installed governor of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov.

During the state of emergency, authorities are granted the power to restrict freedom of movement, halt enterprise operations and carry out forced evacuations, the Kyiv Post reports.

Russia invaded and seized Crimea in 2014, and the largest port city of Sevastopol has been home to the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

Queue at the Crimean Bridge — thousands of Russians are trying to leave the occupied peninsula. pic.twitter.com/cUtmmcaK1s

In recent weeks, Ukraine has escalated its attacks there in a bid to increase pressure on the Kremlin, attacking Sevastopol’s main power substation seven times in the early hours of Wednesday, according to Ukrainian forces cited by CNN.

Kyiv said the ongoing strikes were part of its efforts to “isolate” Crimea from Russia, which annexed the region from Ukraine in 2014, and turn it into an “island.”

“Hell is beginning,” said Ukrainian Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov earlier this month. “Logistics are being cut off. Crimea is being isolated.”

On Friday morning, 2,800 vehicles were attempting to leave Crimea and travel via the bridge to southern Russia, according to the Russian state news agency Tass, as cited by CNN, with nearly twice as many cars seeking to leave the peninsula as to enter.

Crimea is a popular holiday destination for Russians, but there are reports of tourists rushing to return as a result of the attacks. There are reports that at least four people have been killed in the attacks but the figure is not yet clear.

Natia Seskuria, Senior Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Security at defence think-tank RUSI, said that the crisis in Crimea was “strategically and symbolically damaging for [Vladimir] Putin”.

“It shows that Russia can spend money to invest in fortifying Crimea, but it cannot reliably defend it against a smart, persistent Ukrainian strike campaign,” she said.

“Having spent years militarising Crimea and presenting it as one of the most protected regions in Russia, the fact that Ukrainian forces are repeatedly hitting critical infrastructure there exposes several vulnerabilities.

“It suggests that Russian air defence can be saturated or bypassed and that they cannot fully shield high‑value nodes even in a priority theatre. In practical terms, Moscow is unable to guarantee the security of the logistics and energy infrastructure.”

Crimea’s strategic importance is both military and political, Seskuria said, giving Russia control of the Black Sea and a base for its Black Sea Fleet, which helps it attack the south of Ukraine, providing logistics for the wider invasion and a land corridor to the occupied Ukrainian territories.

“Ukraine’s attacks on bridges, fuel depots and other critical infrastructure are directly eroding that utility,” Seskuria said. “By disrupting power, fuel and transport, they create mounting logistical problems for Russia, making it harder and more costly to move troops, ammunition and supplies through Crimea.”

Ukrainian forces have used drones to establish de facto control over traffic on the federal highway R-280 “Novorossiya,” connecting Russia with Crimea through occupied Ukrainian territories, according to the Kyiv Post.

There have also been reports of explosions close to the Kerch ferry crossing on Friday. This area is a key hub for military logistics, particularly for Russian operations in southern Ukraine, and links Crimea to Russia.

It comes as part of Ukraine’s 40-day operation, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said is aimed at “pressuring Russia to end its war”. It is also designed to cut off Russian logistics to weaken them on the battlefield.

Ukrainian forces have hit a series of targets deep inside Russia in recent weeks, hitting St Petersburg earlier this month in an unprecedented attack, as the city hosted the final day of an economic forum.

This comes after an attack on a Moscow oil refinery earlier this month in what was one of the largest strikes on the city since the war began.

Such visible attacks help to cut through Kremlin disinformation around the war to Russian-controlled populations, she added.

“Ukraine is deliberately sending a message that Russia cannot reliably protect even the territory it has showcased as trophies of victory. By hitting fuel depots, power infrastructure and logistics, Kyiv is exposing how vulnerable the peninsula is and bringing the reality of the war much closer to Russians,” said Seskuria.

“That is a significant success in the information space as it deconstructs Putin’s narrative that Crimea is safe and prosperous under Russian rule, and it undercuts the broader Kremlin line that this is a distant conflict from which ordinary Russians will remain insulated.”