A Russian counteroffensive to recover parts of Kursk lost to Ukrainian forces following a surprise, cross-border attack is underway but is yet to gain momentum.

Ukraine launched its assault last month, capturing scores of settlements, a move that stunned even Kyiv’s allies. But from the beginning observers have said it was unlikely that it would be able to hold on to its gains.

Geolocated video shows that Russian units have retaken a couple of villages, but the situation remains fluid. Both the quality and number of Russian troops committed to the region are hazy, and reliable frontline accounts are few and far between.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has acknowledged the start of Russia’s counteoffensive and says it intends to deploy 60,000 – 70,000 troops in the Kursk region. But he said Friday that the Russians “have not yet had any serious success. Our heroic soldiers are holding on.”

The US has assessed that Russia would need up to 20 brigades – about 50,000 men – to expel Ukrainian forces from Kursk, but Defense Department spokesman Major Gen. Pat Ryder said Thursday that Russian actions so far were “marginal” and analysts have not seen the sort of mass or quality that would quickly drive out the much smaller Ukrainian force.

Some high-caliber units do appear to be involved in the Russian counter-offensive geolocated video showed elements of the elite 51st Airborne Regiment involved in an assault on Thursday. But the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assesses that little of the Russian grouping in Kursk “is comprised of combat experienced units.”

Initial indications are that Russian forces may try to cut off Ukrainian troops near the town of Korenevo before beginning a larger-scale counteroffensive operation.

Video surfaced of the Russian flag – and incidentally, the flag of the Wagner private military company – being raised in the village of Snahost. But the officer said the situation had stabilized and there was fierce fighting in another nearby village.

There are also signs that Ukrainian units may be developing a new assault route into a different part of Kursk, near the town of Veseloe. This might be intended to distract Russian forces.

“By launching surprise offensives across the thinly defended border, Ukraine can pursue operational-level guerrilla warfare to support an overall strategy of exhaustion,” says Robert Rose of the Modern War Institute at West Point.

Despite the gathering Russian counterattack in Kursk, and mounting Ukrainian losses, Zelensky insists the incursion into Kursk is necessary and valuable, and has slowed Russian advances in eastern Donetsk, where the city of Pokrovsk is under immediate threat. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is seeking to fully capture four eastern Ukrainian regions he already partly controls, and most of the fighting in the war has focused on this area.

“The speed [of the Russian advance] in the Donetsk sector was even faster before the Kursk operation. And not only in Donetsk [sector], but in the whole of the east,” Zelensky said.

While Russian momentum slowed in the first week of September, no significant units were withdrawn to fight in Kursk, although some were redeployed from less contested areas along the 1,000-kilometer (621-mile) front line. The Kremlin appears to prioritize the goal of progress in Donetsk over retrieving lost Russian territory – for now.

The Ukrainians have offered several reasons for the Kursk operation – that it would force Russia to redeploy troops currently committed on the front-lines in Ukraine; that it would provide Ukraine with land to trade in any negotiations; that it would make a mockery of Putin’s ‘red lines’; and that it would provide a pool of prisoners-of-war to exchange (which it already has.)

Zelensky claims that the Kursk operation has shown Putin’s warnings about the consequences of escalation to be hollow.

Zelensky has now added another justification for the Kursk offensive: that it forestalled a Russian plan to take a large swathe of northern Ukraine as a buffer zone, a plan that would have swallowed “regional centers.”

He told the Kyiv panel that “information from our partners” indicated that the Russians intended to create “security zones” deep inside Ukraine.

The ISW, a think-tank in Washington DC, said Friday that the Russian military command may have intended “additional offensive operations along a wider and more continuous front in northeastern Ukraine to significantly stretch Ukrainian forces.”

For now, such Russian ambitions are on hold. They still hold the advantage in firepower and men along most of the existing frontlines and will continue to use the tactic of intense bombardment – followed by infantry advances through the ruins of what has been destroyed – as a way of grinding down the enemy.

The Ukrainians have several immediate priorities: creating and strengthening defensive lines in the east and accelerating the formation of new units. They are developing longer-range strike capabilities to degrade Russian infrastructure such as airfields and fuel depots. And they are demanding greater freedom to use precision western missiles in strikes deep inside Russian territory.

Zelensky told Fareed Zakaria Friday that Russia’s guided aerial bombs, known as FABs, were responsible for 80% of destroyed infrastructure – and Ukraine urgently needed to hit the airfields from which they are launched.

This appeal appears to be gaining traction. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said at his meeting Friday with US President Joe Biden that “the next few weeks and months could be crucial – very, very important that we support Ukraine in this vital war of freedom.”

But the Biden Administration is wary of the consequences of what the Kremlin sees as an escalation that would bring NATO directly into the conflict.

The Kursk incursion may encourage Ukraine to develop another tool that “could fundamentally change Ukraine’s approach to fighting,” according to Rose at the Modern War Institute.

“Ukraine cannot use manoeuvre to achieve a decisive victory over Russia. What it can do is use manoeuvre to exploit vulnerabilities, force Russia to over-extend, create chaos, encircle Russian forces, and capture Russian equipment.”

The crux, according to Matthew Schmidt, University of New Haven Associate Professor of National Security, is how Ukraine changes Putin’s decision-making, whether in Kursk or by much deeper strikes inside Russia, or both.

“Does it make him negotiate? Does it cause him to pull back or pause in Donetsk?”

Kursk may have succeeded in persuading Biden and other western allies to approve deeper strikes, Schmidt says – and “If follow-on attacks can sustain the war deep inside Russia, so it affects Russians and then affects the Kremlin’s decision making.”

That would define it as a success. But we need to ask the bigger question, as the US eventually did in Iraq, says Schmidt. “How does this end?”

Hundreds of people, mostly women, gathered in cities around France on Saturday in support of Gisèle Pélicot, a woman whose husband is on trial, accused of drugging her and recruiting dozens of strangers to rape her over nearly a decade in a case that has shocked the nation.

Feminist associations have called for some 30 gatherings in cities ranging from Marseille to Paris, where on the Place de la Republique banners read “Support to Gisèle” or “Shame Must Change Camp” or “Victims We believe you”.

As her extraordinary story has rippled through France since the trial began earlier this month, Pélicot, now aged 72, has become a symbol of courage and resilience and of the fight against sexual violence.

It was her decision to forgo a private trial and instead insist on a public trial, due to run until December, to alert the public to sexual abuse and drug-induced blackouts, her lawyers have said.

“We thank her a thousand times for her enormous courage,” feminist Fatima Benomar from the “Coudes a Coudes” association told BFM TV, adding the gatherings were also to pay tribute to all rape victims.

The 71-year-old Dominique Pélicot is accused of repeatedly raping and enlisting strangers to abuse his heavily sedated wife in the couple’s home over the course of a decade.

He was initially due to testify this week but was finally excused due to ill health. He is expected to testify on Monday, provided he is in condition to do so.

Prosecutors said Pélicot offered sex with his wife on a website and filmed the abuse. Fifty other men accused of taking part in the abuse are also on trial.

Pélicot’s lawyer Beatrice Zavarro has told French media Pélicot admits to his crimes. Some of the other defendants have admitted their guilt while others say they thought the wife had pretended to be asleep, according to French media.

They each face up to 20 years in jail if found guilty.

At least four people have died, thousands of homes have been damaged and hundreds have been evacuated after some of the heaviest rain in years hit central and eastern Europe.

A slow-moving low pressure system dubbed Storm Boris dumped a month’s worth of rain onto several of Europe’s historic capitals, including Vienna, Bratislava and Prague.

Four people have died in Romania, where the rainfall left hundreds stranded in flooded areas. Rescue services have been launched in hard-hit counties as authorities warn that they have recorded the heaviest rainfall in 100 years over the past 24 hours.

Rivers burst their banks in Poland and the Czech Republic. In Poland’s south, authorities ordered the evacuation of residences in the town of Glucholazy. The level of the river Biala Glicholaska rose by two meters, or 6.5 feet, overnight into Saturday.

After a difficult night and hundreds of incidents reported Poland’s Interior Minister, Tomasz Siemoniak told TVN24 they were “focusing on what the threats will be in the next few hours.”

Significant flooding is expected to continue in the Czech Republic, where authorities have ordered mandatory evacuations for some areas. Footage released by the Czech Republic Fire and Rescue Service showed flooded streets in the southern Benešově nad Černou municipality, where two women who didn’t follow evacuation orders had to be rescued by boat.

In Germany, southern and eastern states in particular are preparing for flooding. Flood warnings have been issued for rivers in the state of Saxony. In neighboring Austria, heavy rainfall has caused water levels to rise in several rivers, leading to rescue services being called out to parts of the country overnight.

Widespread and significant flooding is expected to continue through the weekend.

Red alerts, the highest level of warning, have been issued for portions of Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria and Slovakia. This level of alert is associated with “intense meteorological phenomena” and “major damage is likely,” according to Meteoalarm.

At least two people have been killed and 29 injured in a train collision in Egypt, the country’s health ministry said Saturday.

Thirty ambulances and reinforcement medical teams were sent to the scene of the collision in the city of Zagazig, the capital of Al Sharkia governorate, the ministry said in a statement.

The injured people were transferred to Al-Ahrar and Zagazig University hospitals in the city, and “rescue operations are still ongoing,” the statement added.

Images from the scene showed crowds of people gathered around the twisted wreckage of the trains as the rescue operations took place.

There has been a deadly accident on Egypt’s aging railway system almost every year for the past 20 years. Egypt recorded 2,044 train accidents in 2018 and 1,793 the year before, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS).

In 2021, at least 32 people were killed and 165 injured when two trains collided. In 2019, at least 25 people were killed and dozens injured in a fire at Ramses station in central Cairo, the country’s busiest, after a train collided with the platform, causing its fuel tank to explode.

A collision between two trains in Alexandria, Egypt’s second largest city, in August 2017 left more than 40 dead and many more injured.

In 2012, 44 children died after a train crashed into a school bus in Egypt’s Asyut governorate.

But the most lethal accident in Egyptian rail history occurred in 2002, when a fire on a passenger train traveling south from Cairo to Luxor killed more than 360 people.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Venezuela says it has seized 400 US rifles and arrested foreigners – Americans among them – who it claims are linked to an alleged plot to “destabilize” the country.

The Venezuelan interior minister Diosdado Cabello made the claim in a press conference on Saturday. The minister said that in addition to the Americans, two Spanish and one Czech citizen were arrested.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The Israeli military says it targeted Hezbollah “weapons storage facilities” in multiple airstrikes across Lebanon on Saturday.

One of the strikes – on the outskirts of the town of Al-Kawakh, in the Baalbek-Hermel governorate – injured four people, three of them children, according to the Lebanese health ministry. The ministry said all of the injured required hospital treatment.

Another of the strikes hit “empty shops” in the town of Sareen in Baalbek, reported the state-run Lebanese news agency NNA.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed carrying out strikes in the Beqaa and Baalbek areas, saying it had targeted Hezbollah weapons storage facilities.

It said it had also struck Hezbollah weapons storage facilities in seven other areas of Lebanon, in the south.

The strikes follow what the IDF described as a barrage of 55 projectiles being fired from Lebanese to Israeli territory earlier on Saturday morning. The IDF said the projectiles were aimed at the Upper Galilee and Galilee areas.

The Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah claimed it had shelled the headquarters of an Israeli military brigade in Yiftach Eliklit, northwest of Lake Tiberias, “with dozens of Katyusha rockets.”

Hezbollah also claimed to have carried out several attacks on northern Israel throughout Saturday with rockets and drones targeting Israeli military sites. It described those attacks as being “in support of our steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and their valiant and honorable resistance.”

There have been almost daily exchanges of fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since war broke out between Israel and Hamas in Gaza following the October 7 attack.

India’s second nuclear-capable ballistic missile submarine joined its naval fleet late last month, a move the government says strengthens its nuclear deterrent as New Delhi casts a wary eye at both China and Pakistan.

But India is still playing catch-up, at least compared with China, as the People’s Liberation Army grows its fleet – as well as its land and air capabilities – amid simmering tensions along their shared border.

The nuclear-powered sub, INS Arighaat – “Destroyer of the Enemy” in Sanskrit – will “help in establishing strategic balance” in the region, Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh said at an August 29 commissioning ceremony at Visakhapatnam naval base, the headquarters of India’s Eastern Naval Command on the Bay of Bengal coast.

That balance currently tilts in favor of China, with the world’s largest navy by numbers, including six operational Jin-class nuclear-powered ballistic submarines that outclass India’s two – Arighaat and its predecessor in the same class, INS Arihant – in firepower.

The Chinese subs can carry a dozen ballistic missiles with ranges of at least 8,000 kilometers (4,970 miles) and have the ability to carry multiple nuclear warheads, according to the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, a non-profit organization promoting the development and deployment of missile defense for the United States and its allies.

Both 366 feet long with a 6,000-ton displacement, according to an analysis by the open-source intelligence agency Janes, Arighaat and Arihant carry K-15 Sagarika ballistic missiles that can be launched from four vertical launch tubes. But the range of the nuclear-tipped K-15 is thought to be only around 750 kilometers (466 miles), limiting the targets that can be struck from the Indian Ocean.

“The INS Arihant-class can barely reach Chinese targets along the eastern Sino-Indian border from the coastal waters of northern Bay of Bengal, which is dangerously shallow for a submarine,” said analyst Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center.

The de facto border between India and China, known as the Line of Actual Control, has been a longtime flashpoint between the two. Troops most recently clashed there in 2022 and in 2020, when hand-to-hand fighting between the two sides resulted in the deaths of at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers in Aksai Chin.

India developing second-strike capabilities

The Indian government has been tight-lipped about the capabilities of the Arighaat, saying only “technological advancements undertaken indigenously on this submarine make it significantly more advanced than its predecessor,” which was commissioned eight years ago.

India has not even released pictures of Arighaat since its August 29 commissioning.

Naval analysts say India is clearly on course to develop a subsea nuclear deterrent that, while it may not be as big as China’s, will pack enough second-strike wallop to deter Beijing from taking hostile action against it.

India has newer, bigger subs with longer-range missiles in the works. Those missiles could have ranges up to 6,000 kilometers (3,728 miles), according to analysts, enabling strikes anywhere in China.

“Although India’s sea-based nuclear deterrent remains in relative infancy, the country clearly has an ambition to field a sophisticated naval nuclear force with ballistic missile submarines at its core,” said Matt Korda, associate director for the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists.

India’s next ballistic missile subs could be years away, however, if history is any predictor of the future. Arighaat was launched almost seven years ago, and if that timeline from launch to commissioning applies to the next Indian ballistic missile sub, it won’t join the service until 2030.

The prestige of SSBNs

Still, a second ballistic missile sub does do something for India’s naval and military psyche, said Tom Shugart, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a former US Navy submarine commander.

“It is a marker of being a great power,” Shugart said, pointing out that the five members of the United Nations Security Council – the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France – all have nuclear-capable ballistic missile submarines, or SSBNs.

The smallest of those SSBN fleets, those of Britain and France, have four boats each, a number Shugart sees as the minimum for keeping one at sea at all times.

Nuclear-powered submarines are complex machines. When things break and need repairing, or just when regular maintenance is needed, the work can take a month or more.

For instance, the US Navy’s Ohio-class SSBNs spend on average 77 days at sea followed by 35 days in port for maintenance, according to the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet.

Refits and overhauls take up to 27 months for a nuclear reactor refueling, according to US Navy documents.

“By having more than one, there’s a better chance India will be able to have one of them at sea in a survivable status,” Shugart said.

“But to keep one at sea at all times is probably going to take more boats” than the current two, he said.

A wary China

Before its commissioning, the Arighaat was drawing attention in China, with state-run newspaper Global Times quoting unnamed Chinese experts as saying India should not “use it to flex muscles.”

“Nuclear weapons should be used in safeguarding peace and stability, not muscle flexing or nuclear blackmailing,” the Global Times report said.

Other analysts have said New Delhi is just responding to increased pressure from Beijing, which now has the largest navy in the world in terms of sheer number of vessels.

“China’s extensive naval buildup and the regular deployment of fully armed nuclear deterrence patrols by Type 094 submarines (the Jin class) are perceived as a threat by other countries in the region, including India,” said Kandlikar Venkatesh, analyst at the GlobalData analytics company.

“The deployment of Arihant-class submarines will provide India some degree of parity with its Chinese counterparts,” he said, adding that more submarine investment is coming, $31.6 billion over the next decade.

Bigger subs and longer-range missiles are reportedly under development, which could eventually see India field nuclear-tipped weapons with a range of 12,000 kilometers (almost 7,500 miles), Venkatesh said.

Another regional rival

It’s not just China that India is looking at with its sub development, according to Abhijit Singh, a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in Mumbai.

“The real impetus for India’s expansion of its second-strike capability is, in fact, the significant growth of the Pakistani and Chinese navies in the Indian Ocean,” Singh wrote in an op-ed for the Hindustan Times, adding that Islamabad is in the process of acquiring eight Chinese-designed Type 039B attack submarines as it modernizes its fleet.

“Pakistan continues to narrow the sea-power differential with India,” Singh wrote.

India and Pakistan have long been at odds in the disputed and heavily militarized region of Kashmir, which both countries claim in its entirety. A de facto border called the Line of Control divides it between New Delhi and Islamabad. The dispute has led to three wars between the two nations.

China remains one of Pakistan’s most important international backers and a major investor in the country.

Proliferation fears

Korda, the Federation of American Scientists expert, says it’s not the subs themselves that give him cause for worry, but the multiple-warhead missiles they carry.

That technology – known as Multiple Independently targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRV) – also applies to land-based missiles and can be destabilizing, Korda argues.

“India, Pakistan, and China are all developing missiles that can carry multiple warheads,” he says.

India announced to great fanfare in April that it had joined the MIRV club, which includes the US, UK, France, Russia and China, with a successful test of the domestically developed Agni-V intercontinental ballistic missile.

Pakistan has also claimed to have MIRV technology, but experts say the claim is unverified.

Adversaries need to assume such claims are true, lest they be caught unprepared in the event of actual conflict.

“These systems are ideal first-strike weapons, but they are also the first weapons that would likely be targeted in an opposing first strike,” Korda says.

“As a result, their deployment across the region will likely kick the collective arms race into a higher gear, as countries seek to build missile defenses and conventional strike options that can counter them.”

At least 74 people have died and scores more are still missing in Myanmar following heavy flooding and landslides caused by Typhoon Yagi, state media reported on Sunday.

The flooding across the civil war-torn country has impacted more than 450 villages and wards, according to Myanmar News Agency (MNA).

It added that search and rescue operations were underway to locate 89 people still missing. Around 65,000 homes have also been destroyed, according to MNA.

Images from news agency AFP showed submerged homes and vehicles in the city of Taungoo, an hour south of the capital Naypyidaw. Other images show residents evacuating on boats and bamboo rafts, their belongings wrapped in plastic bags.

Typhoon Yagi, Asia’s most powerful storm this year, left a trail of destruction across Southeast Asia and southern China after sweeping the region with heavy rains and strong winds.

In Vietnam, the death toll has risen to at least 226 as a result of the storm and the landslides and flash floods it triggered, the government’s disaster agency said Thursday, according to Reuters.

And in Thailand, nine people died last week from poor weather brought by the typhoon, Reuters reported, citing the Thai government – out of a total 33 deaths nationwide since August from rain-related incidents including landslides.

Storms are being made more intense and deadlier by the warming ocean, scientists have long warned. While developed nations bear a greater historical responsibility for the human-induced climate crisis, developing nations and small-island states are suffering the worst impacts.

A missile was launched from Yemen into central Israel on Sunday morning, according to the Israeli military, in a rare instance of a missile penetrating so far into the country’s territory since its war in Gaza began.

The projectile crossed into Israeli territory and fell in an open area in central Israel, with no injuries reported, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Explosion sounds heard in the area originated from Israeli military interceptions, the IDF said, adding that it is still checking “the results of the interception.”

Videos and images shared by the Israel Fire and Rescue Authority on Telegram show large plumes of smoke billowing into the air over an open field, and shattered glass inside a train station in Modi’in, a city between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Israeli police said they were working with the police bomb squad in the Shfela area, also known as the Judaean Foothills, where an interceptor fragment had fallen. Authorities are now isolating the impact site and scanning for additional interceptor remains, police said.

Also on Sunday morning, approximately 40 projectiles crossed from Lebanon into Israel’s northern region, some of them intercepted and others falling in open areas, the IDF said. No injuries were reported, and authorities are putting out fires caused by the fallen projectiles.

The military added that an explosive drone had crossed from Lebanon into the northern town of Metula, though no damage was caused.

Tensions between Israel, Yemen and Lebanon have been escalating for months as Israel has waged its war on Hamas in Gaza after the militant group’s October 7 attacks. World leaders have warned of the potential for a wider Middle East conflict.

Since the war began, the Iran-backed Houthi group, which controls Yemen’s most populous regions, has regularly targeted Israel with drones and missiles. Most of these have been intercepted by Israel’s defenses or those of its allies.

It has also targeted shipping in the Red Sea, as a rejection of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

Most notably in July, the group claimed responsibility for a deadly drone attack in Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial center – the first time the city has been struck by a Houthi drone.

Israel struck back the next day with deadly airstrikes on a Yemeni port – the first such strike on Yemen, according to Israeli officials.

The Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon has also carried out attacks on northern Israel, sending rockets and drones on Saturday targeting Israeli military sites.

These direct attacks on each other’s soil have raised alarm that there could be a new front in the ongoing conflict, which is already threatening to spill over across the region.

Israel launched its war in Gaza after the militant group Hamas’ cross-border October 7 attacks, in which more than 1,200 Israelis were killed and 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities.

Since then, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military operations in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the enclave. The health ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its figures, but says most of the dead are women and children.