Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed an agreement with the Council of Europe (CoE) to create a tribunal that would allow for the prosecution of senior Russian officials who have led the war on Ukraine.

Zelensky signed the accord on Wednesday alongside CoE Secretary General Alain Berset in the French city of Strasbourg, where the organization is headquartered.

The Ukrainian leader has portrayed the special tribunal as paramount to holding Russian officials responsible for the full-scale invasion of his country, which began in February 2022 and has grinded on for more than three years, with a huge human cost.

The establishment of the tribunal is aimed at widening the net for those who can be tried over the conflict. The International Criminal Court (ICC), which focuses on crimes against humanity, has already issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and several other high-profile political and military Russian figures.

The new body will deal with the crime of aggression, specifically regarding the use of armed force by one state against another. It marks the first time that the CoE has set up such a tribunal.

“The Tribunal, formally launched today, creates a real opportunity to hold the leadership of the Russian regime accountable for the crimes committed against our state and our people,” the Ukrainian president wrote on X.

“We will continue working to ensure justice for all victims. Criminals must face trial in The Hague and be punished.”

Berset said: “This historic signature reminds us that international law must apply to all – with no exceptions, and with no double standards.”

Alongside Putin, the ICC, based in The Hague, issued an arrest warrant for Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s presidential commissioner for children’s rights, in March 2023. Both are accused of the illegal deportation and transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia.

In March 2024, the court also issued arrest warrants for Viktor Sokolov, a Russian navy officer and former commander of the Black Sea Fleet, and Sergei Kobylash, a lLieutenant general in the Russian Armed Forces. The two are accused of the war crime of causing excessive incidental harm to civilians and the crime against humanity of inhumane acts.

Meanwhile, ceasefire negotiations to end the war in Ukraine have mostly stalled despite mediation from the Trump administration.

The talks between Russia, Ukraine and third countries have struggled to make progress after Moscow refused to back off its maximalist demands and presented a ceasefire proposal that would essentially amount to Ukraine’s capitulation.

At the same time, Russia keeps ramping up its attacks against Ukrainian cities. Russian forces killed dozens of Ukrainian civilians in less than 48 hours on Monday and Tuesday, according to Ukrainian officials, two of the deadliest days in many months.

The clasped hands of French and German leaders have long embodied the spirit of European unity – most famously in 1984, when François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl stood hand-in-hand at Verdun in a symbol of reconciliation.

So, when Chancellor Friedrich Merz grasped President Emmanuel Macron’s hand on the steps of the Élysée palace in early May – a handshake that was long, warm, and accompanied by backslapping – it wasn’t just a photo-op.

It was the clearest sign yet that Europe’s most important alliance was back in motion. After years of sputtering and frustration under Olaf Scholz, the Franco-German engine is humming again, and it has a new name: Merzcron.

Since Merz’s election, the two have met six times – most recently with other NATO leaders at The Hague. They will sit down together again on Thursday at the European Council meeting in Brussels.

Their shared agenda: to drive the European Union response on security, Ukraine and Trump-era uncertainties, and shape Europe’s role on the global stage.

Ahead of Wednesday’s NATO summit, Macron and Merz laid out their vision in a joint opinion piece in the Financial Times.

“In these testing times, Germany and France – together with our European and transatlantic friends and allies – stand united and strong, to defend our common values as well as the freedom and security of our citizens,” they wrote.

They outlined plans to boost defense spending – aiming to reach 3.5% of GDP in core military investments – and to deepen cooperation between NATO and the EU, calling for a stronger, more sovereign Europe that is no longer reliant on others for its security. They pledged to ensure Ukraine emerges “prosperous, robust and secure,” and warned that European stability for decades to come hangs in the balance.

The signs are that the powerful ‘Mercron’ or ‘Merkozy’ alliance, portmanteaus derived from the names of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Macron and his predecessor Nicholas Sarkozy, is evolving into an equally influential ‘Merzcron.’

The two-day European Council summit now underway in Brussels, hot on the heels of a G7 meeting in Canada and the NATO leaders’ summit in The Hague, is the first of Merz’s chancellorship. It will likely be another demonstration of how strong this union could be.

Leaders who ‘love interaction’

Under Scholz, the former German chancellor, the Berlin-Paris axis became strained, something that both Ischinger and Hollande noted.

Stefan Seidendorf, director at the Franco-German Institute in Ludwigsburg, Germany, said Scholz spent so much time doing “domestic homework” that he was never able to fully focus on Europe.

The three-way coalition he headed was beset with infighting on domestic and Europe issues and eventually collapsed in November last year, triggering an early election.

He added that the same went for Scholz, “who found it difficult to get along with this French president living in the palace of Élysée with all the gold and the glitter and the ceremony.”

But neither was Macron and Merz’s friendship a given, considering their different styles. Macron, 47, is Jupiterian and theatrical, hailed by some as a visionary, dismissed by others as a narcissist. Merz, 69, is impulsive, prickly under pressure and occasionally leans into populist bluster.

That said, Ischinger said both leaders “met rather easily – and got their act together.” Speaking about their shared character traits, he said they “love interaction. They enjoy difficult questions. These two have a way of understanding each other – they are open.”

‘Perfect unity’ over Ukraine

Their recent trip to Kyiv, alongside British and Polish leaders Keir Starmer and Donald Tusk, “was a symbol of a new kind of determined getting-together of the major European powers to make progress,” Ischinger said.

Paris has long been more hawkish than Berlin on its support for Ukraine. Macron has been a strong proponent of boots on the ground in the country and has allowed Ukraine to fire French-made long-range missiles deep into Russia.

However, Hollande said, “we’ve seen that Merz’s position is a bit different from that of his predecessor… including on the delivery of missiles capable of reaching Russian territory.”

Since taking office, Merz has welcomed Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to Berlin and unveiled a new $5 billion package for Ukraine that includes joint co-operation in the development of long-range missiles capable of being fired deep into Russia, some of which could be online by the end of the year.

“Now we’re in perfect unity,” Ischinger said of the Franco-German alignment on Ukraine.

Russia’s unease over a more coordinated Franco-German approach to Ukraine is already starting to show.

News of last month’s visit to Kyiv by Merz and Macron was accompanied by the release of a photo taken ahead of a meeting between them. Sitting on the table was a white tissue.

Its presence sparked an online rumor, amplified by Kremlin officials and later traced back to pro-Russian accounts, that falsely claimed the crumpled tissue – which Macron picked up and pocketed – was a cocaine bag.

The Élysée countered by saying “when European unity becomes inconvenient, disinformation goes so far as to make a simple tissue look like drugs. This fake news is being spread by France’s enemies, both abroad and at home.”

European security

US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House has also forced a new alignment between the European powerhouses, particularly on the issue of Europe’s security.

The Trump administration’s insistence that Europe should do more to defend itself triggered the shift, Hollande explained, saying that it “forced France and Germany to work together diplomatically and militarily, whereas until then, their main alignment had been on monetary issues.

“Today there is a shared responsibility. Germany must do more for its defense, and France must be willing to share a number of proposals and initiatives – including on defense – with Germany,” Hollande says.

Before even formally taking office, Merz managed to push through the reform of Germany’s constitutional debt brake to unlock over half a trillion dollars in defense spending. He has also committed to creating Europe’s largest army. Both represent a major shift for Germany.

Previously, Hollande suggested, those moves might have been difficult for France to stomach.

“We used to be very reluctant about German rearmament. That was a politically sensitive issue after the war. But today, no one in France fears German rearmament –we welcome it,” he said.

Macron and Merz also appear to have taken a similar approach to dealing with Trump. Both have had effusive and positive meetings in the Oval Office with a president who has not always been so welcoming to visiting leaders.

Europe’s shifting center

Paris and Berlin are also trying to revive the decades-old “Weimar Triangle.” Established after German reunification in 1991, it aimed to bring Poland deeper into the European fold, led by Germany and France.

Ischinger feels the relative weight of the European Union has shifted eastwards due to the war in Ukraine, meaning that Warsaw, now more than ever, must now be a vital ally for Paris and Berlin. “Harmony (between France and Germany) is key, but it’s not sufficient,” he said.

“The center of gravity of the good old European Union was somewhere between France and Germany. But today, almost half of the members are to the east of Germany,” he added, and giving Poland more say is the best way to bring the continent together.

That shift, too, is already playing out. As well as taking part in the Kyiv trip, Tusk has found himself directly involved in European talks with Trump, as the US president has attempted to broker an end to the Russia-Ukraine war.

Poland’s status as Europe’s fastest growing economy, its commitment to NATO defense spending – way above other member states’ at 4.2% of GDP in 2024, projected to rise to 4.7% this year – and its geographic location bordering Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, have made the nation a key nexus for the continent.

Nonetheless, for Hollande, “Europe only moves forward when France and Germany speak with one voice and pull in the same direction. Only then can the European machine function properly.”

Ischinger added: “If Franco-German cooperation works well, you have a perfect precondition to get the entire European Union underway, moving forward.”

For now, the “Merzcron” engine is firing up and, if it keeps its momentum, it could pull the rest of Europe into gear.

India has celebrated another step on its mission to become a space power, after Shubhanshu Shukla became the first astronaut from the country to blast off to the International Space Station (ISS) Wednesday.

Shukla was aboard the private Axiom Space Mission 4, or Ax-4, which lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the latest mission organized by the Texas-based startup in partnership with Elon Musk’s rocket venture SpaceX.

It is expected to dock in the space-facing port of the station’s Harmony module at 7 a.m. ET on Thursday.

The private mission includes decorated former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, as well as Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary – two other spaceflight novices who will become the first from their countries to visit the ISS.

Shukla, who is the mission’s pilot, and the others are expected to spend about two weeks aboard the ISS, helping to carry out roughly 60 experiments before returning home.

NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) are collaborating on the mission, according to a statement from the US space agency.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Shukla “carries with him the wishes, hopes and aspirations of 1.4 billion Indians” in a post on X.

“Wish him and other astronauts all the success!” he wrote.

Shukla is only the second Indian citizen to travel into space after Rakesh Sharma, who flew aboard a Soviet rocket in 1984.

Sharma wished the Ax-4 crew well.

“Wishing you all the very best. To the crew, godspeed,” he said in a video message posted online by the Press Trust of India.

“Spend as much time as possible looking out of the window.”

Shukla’s parents were seen getting emotional as they watched a livestream of the blast-off in the northern city of Lucknow.

“He’s the first person, the first Indian in the ISS. It is really a great moment for us Indians,” student Isma Tarikh told Reuters. “It is an inspiration for me… Even I want to become something great and be a world contributor just like (Shukla).”

Another student, Mohammad Hamughan, called it a “proud moment for Indians.”

He told Reuters: “It inspires me to become a space scientist. I have always loved to read about sci-fi and all of the stuff, but this is inspiring for us as a student.”

Shukla’s flight is seen as a precursor to India’s own Gaganyaan mission, the country’s first human space mission, set to take off in 2027.

Four Indian air force pilots selected for that mission have completed initial training in Russia and are undergoing further training in India, according to a May statement from the Indian government.

India’s space ambitions have accelerated under Modi, who was elected to a third term last June and has tried to assert India’s place on the global stage.

In January, it became only the fourth country to successfully achieve an unmanned docking in space.

In 2023, India joined an elite space club becoming the fourth country to land a spacecraft on the moon. The historic Chandrayaan-3 mission, the first to make a soft landing close to the moon’s unexplored South Pole, has collected samples that are helping scientists understand how the moon was formed and evolved over time.

The country has also set its sights on building its own space station by 2035, which will be called the Bharatiya Antariksha Station, and launching its first orbital mission to Venus in 2028.

Iran’s defense minister has traveled to diplomatic and economic ally China on his first reported trip abroad since a 12-day clash with Israel that briefly dragged the US into a new regional conflict.

Aziz Nasirzadeh is one of nine defense ministers that Chinese state media say attended a gathering of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a China- and Russia-led regional security grouping that has grown in prominence as Beijing and Moscow look to build alternative international blocs to those backed by the United States.

The two-day gathering began Wednesday in the Chinese coastal city of Qingdao, a day after a ceasefire between Iran and Israel quelled what had been days of aerial assaults between the two, punctuated by a US strike on three Iranian nuclear facilities.

The SCO gathering coincided with a meeting of NATO leaders at The Hague, where US President Donald Trump said the US would meet with Iran “next week” about a potential nuclear agreement.

Beijing’s gathering, part of events for its rotating SCO chairmanship, spotlighted China’s role as a key international player, even as it remained largely on the sidelines of the Israel-Iran conflict – and the importance Tehran places on its relationship with Beijing.

Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun did not directly address the conflict in remarks to gathering nations Wednesday, as reported by Chinese state media, but aimed to position China as a country with an alternative vision for global security.

“Unilateralism and protectionism are surging, while hegemonic, high-handed, and bullying acts severely undermine the international order, making these practices the biggest sources of chaos and harm,” Dong said, employing language typically used by Beijing to criticize the US.

The Chinese defense chief called for SCO countries – which, in addition to China and Russia, include India, Iran, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus – to enhance coordination and “defend international fairness and justice” and “uphold global strategic stability.”

Attending countries “expressed a strong willingness to consolidate and develop military collaboration,” according to China’s official news agency Xinhua.

Iran’s Nasirzadeh “expressed gratitude to China for its understanding and support of Iran’s legitimate stance,” Xinhua also reported.

The minister “hopes that China will continue to uphold justice and play an even greater role in maintaining the current ceasefire and easing regional tensions,” he was quoted as saying.

Chinese officials have condemned Israel’s unprecedented June 13 attack on Iran, which took out top military leaders and sparked the recent conflict, as well as the subsequent US bombing. It’s also backed a ceasefire and criticized Washington’s foray into the conflict as a “heavy blow to the international nuclear non-proliferation regime.”

A key diplomatic and economic backer of Iran, Beijing has moved to further deepen collaboration in recent years, including holding joint naval drills. Chinese officials have long voiced opposition to US sanctions on Iran and criticized the US withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

In recent days, China has appeared unwilling to become further entangled in the conflict past its diplomatic efforts, analysts say, instead using the situation as another opportunity to paint itself as a responsible global player and the US as a force for instability.

Founded in 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to combat terrorism and promote border security, the SCO has grown in recent years in line with Beijing and Moscow’s shared ambition to push back against a US alliance system they see as suppressing them.

While not an alliance, the group says it aims to “make joint efforts to maintain and ensure peace, security and stability in the region.”

The SCO has long been seen as limited, however, by overlapping interests and frictions between members, including Pakistan and India, which earlier this year engaged in a violent conflict, as well as China and India, which have longstanding border tensions.

Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh also attended the Qingdao meeting, the first visit from an Indian defense chief to China since a deadly 2020 border clash between the two countries.

Dara Ojo was once afraid of spiders, particularly the biting, venomous kind. How times have changed. Not only is the photographer willing to get up very close and personal with arachnids of all stripes, he’s passionately conserving insects through this work.

Ojo, 34, is a master of macrophotography — extreme close-up shots, in this case of wildlife — showing tiny critters in all their odd, beautiful glory.

For the photographer, who describes himself as a conservation storyteller, it is about “shining the light on these tiny little details that people just walk past because they’re small.”

Born in Lagos, Nigeria, and now living in Canada, Ojo’s first encounter with photography was using his father’s Nikon camera as a child. He photographed birds, snakes, frogs and other creatures. Much later, he was teaching English in China when the Covid-19 pandemic struck and began photographing insects as a remedy to the boredom of lockdown.

But there was another purpose too: amid the deluge of photographs of different animals he saw online, Ojo noticed relatively little high-profile work of nature’s smallest creations. He wanted to fill this gap, “and also create some positive publicity for insects.”

Eyes like speakers, posterior like pagodas

Ojo first learned how to shoot macrophotography from YouTube tutorials and took a course called “Bugs 101: Insect-Human Interactions” at the University of Alberta, Canada. In 2020 he created his first macro image, of a dragonfly. Two years later, his photos of a white-striped longhorn beetle taken in China went viral.

The beetle is typically 20-40 mm long, but Ojo’s image of the insect makes it feel human-size, with an intimidating yet intriguing poise. Its eyes look like speakers, and details invisible to the naked eye, like its microscopic facial hairs, are on full display.

His work has circulated the internet, with some Instagram posts hitting almost a million views. It has also caught the attention of the UN Deputy Secretary-General, Amina J. Mohammed who shared some of them on X, to mark the 2025 World Biodiversity Day.

But the recognition brings certain pressures. “Now that eyes are on me, globally, I have to keep the bar higher than the last, each time I shoot. Also, as a black person, I feel like a role model, giving a voice as people of color who are not usually seen in this kind of field. I therefore can’t stay comfortable,” he says.

Some other striking images are of the primrose moth, with distinct vivid pink and yellow coloring; a spiny-backed orb weaver spider with a pagoda-like posterior; a katydid — a type of cricket — with a face akin to a church dome; and a wolf spider eating a frog.

Ojo says, “I’m in awe of them when I am shooting. I see in them how God is a perfect designer, and the need for us to protect them.”

He has photographed more than 40 types of spiders, 50 moths and 30 butterflies species, over 20 dragonflies and at least 70 damselflies. Among all the fauna he’s photographed, the state of bees worries him the most. “Bees are rare and really endangered even though they are essential to our existence because of their pollination.” Ojo says.

Now, his work is being featured in “Insect Apocalypse,” the first episode of the documentary “Bugs that Rule the World,” which is being shown in the US and Canada. The four-part series focuses on the decline of insects and how this is detrimental to the ecosystem and to human existence, and includes photographs Ojo took in Costa Rica.

Ojo is working to release the first coffee table book of his works in 2026, and plans to add three more in the next five years.

Yet photography is not Ojo’s full-time occupation. He works as a data analyst at the University of Alberta, and has an MBA in information technology from Edge Hill University in Ormskirk, United Kingdom.

His tech background, he says, gives him an edge with processing the pictures, which are best taken at night and early morning when insects are asleep or resting, he explains. He captures multiple photographs at different depths of field and combines them using stacking software so the whole insect is in pin-sharp focus. Since the images are shot without alterations, he then digitally edits them, mainly to enhance colors.

Though he occasionally sells prints of his photography, his advocacy for his subjects is his main motive, Ojo says. Insect populations around the world are in peril. Among his once-feared spiders, for example, scores are categorized as critically endangered.

“The primary goal is to use my images to reveal the beauty of insects and other small creatures,” he says. First he draws people in, then shares a conservation message, then, hopefully, people will take action, Ojo explains.

“When people are blown away by the pictures, they are curious and develop empathy to conserve them.”