标签： Europe

Escalating cross-border hostilities between Russia and Ukraine have spilled into Russia’s second-largest city St Petersburg, where an overnight drone attack left at least one civilian dead and five others injured, targeting critical energy infrastructure and major commercial facilities across the urban area. Regional Governor Alexander Beglov confirmed Saturday that emergency response teams were working to contain large blazes that broke out at two major energy sites: the city’s primary St Petersburg Oil Terminal and the Ruchyi oil depot. Additional targets in the coordinated strike included a logistics hub operated by Ozon – Russia’s leading e-commerce platform, often compared to Amazon – and a regional data center belonging to VKontakte, the country’s dominant domestic social media network that serves as a local alternative to Facebook.

Ukrainian officials have not yet issued an official claim of responsibility for the strikes, which come amid a sharply escalating cycle of energy infrastructure attacks ahead of the winter heating season. The strike also follows a recent breakdown in a temporary truce on energy targets brokered by former U.S. President Donald Trump during ongoing negotiations to secure Russian diesel supplies for the U.S. market.

Over the past week, the intensity of mutual attacks has surged rapidly. Zelensky stated Saturday morning that Russian forces have carried out 76 separate strikes on Ukraine’s energy sector since Trump announced his so-called “energy ceasefire” initiative just seven days prior. Ukraine initially paused its own campaign of strikes on Russian energy infrastructure – which Kyiv frames as a targeted effort to cut off Moscow’s primary source of revenue for its full-scale invasion – for three days following Trump’s announcement. But Ukrainian officials quickly accused Russia of violating the truce by continuing its own attacks on Ukrainian energy sites, prompting Kyiv to resume its strikes earlier this week. That resumption drew sharp public criticism from Trump, who has defended his deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to import diesel to the U.S.

This is not the first time St Petersburg has come under Ukrainian drone attack: the city’s oil terminal was previously hit in a July strike, though strikes on Russian territory are far more frequent in regions directly bordering Ukraine. Following Saturday’s attack, Beglov confirmed that 12 multi-story apartment buildings and two private residential homes sustained damage in the attack, prompting authorities to temporarily suspend all flight operations at Pulkovo International Airport, the region’s main air hub. The governor also warned residents of potential temporary disruptions to mobile internet service across affected districts.

Both companies whose facilities were targeted confirmed the attack but sought to downplay long-term disruptions. VKontakte confirmed that a drone struck its regional data center, acknowledging early morning service outages reported by users but emphasizing that full functionality had been restored quickly and platforms were operating “as usual.” Ozon also confirmed a drone hit its St Petersburg logistics center, sparking a small fire that was contained by emergency crews. The company stated that all staff were safely evacuated before the fire was extinguished, and no injuries were reported at the site. Ozon added that it has temporarily stopped accepting new seller shipments at the location while structural and operational assessments are completed.

Ukraine’s recent drone campaign has expanded beyond energy infrastructure to target key Russian commercial and digital assets in an effort to disrupt broader economic activity tied to the war effort. Earlier this month, Kyiv launched a series of coordinated cyber and physical strikes against Yandex, Russia’s largest internet search engine and technology conglomerate, causing widespread temporary service disruptions across the country.

The U.S. deal to import Russian diesel has sparked significant political friction between Washington and Kyiv, as relations between the two allies have frayed in recent weeks. The deal, struck ahead of U.S. midterm elections, is designed to lower skyrocketing domestic U.S. energy prices that have surged amid the ongoing Iran war. Zelensky has publicly condemned the agreement, arguing that it amounts to the U.S. directly funding Russia’s war machine. Trump’s accompanying decision to temporarily suspend a broad package of economic sanctions on Russia has also drawn fierce criticism from political opponents, including a number of lawmakers within his own Republican party.

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine enters its fifth year, both sides have ramped up attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure as winter approaches. Russian military officials maintain that all of their strikes target facilities tied to Ukraine’s war effort, but a United Nations report released Friday noted that the first two weeks of October marked the deadliest period for Ukrainian civilians in years. Russian strikes on energy infrastructure across Ukraine have already left hundreds of thousands of households without access to electricity, stoking widespread international concerns that Ukrainian civilians will face another deadly freezing winter without reliable heating or power. Speaking Saturday, Zelensky confirmed that tens of thousands of Ukrainians remain without power as of Saturday, adding that Russian forces launched nearly 2,700 drones, 1,700 aerial bombs, and 66 guided missiles against Ukrainian targets over the past week – the vast majority targeting energy infrastructure sites.

Russian defense ministry officials claimed overnight into Sunday that their air defense systems had intercepted and destroyed more than 1,000 Ukrainian drones launched across Russian territory.

France entered Sunday morning under a shadow of chaos, after a day of mass nationwide demonstrations devolved into rioting, arson, and looting that left major urban centers scarred with shattered storefronts, burned vehicles, and mounds of smoldering debris across public sidewalks.

Organized protests drew roughly 550,000 people to the streets across the country on Saturday, with the vast majority of demonstrators gathering peacefully to voice their anger over skyrocketing fuel costs, a soaring cost of living, and crumbling public services ranging from primary education to municipal infrastructure. Student-led demonstrations have been growing in intensity for weeks, with campus organizers demanding increased education funding to address crippling staff shortages, overcrowded classrooms, and decades of disrepair to school buildings.

But the largely peaceful mobilization was hijacked by small, organized groups of violent agitators, many clad in black clothing and concealing their identities with masks and balaclavas. These rioters spread destruction across Paris, Marseille, Lille, and dozens of other major cities, setting vehicles and commercial structures ablaze and triggering widespread looting of retail locations.

In central Paris, violent clashes erupted between protesters and riot police, who deployed tear gas and high-pressure water cannons to disperse unruly crowds. Riot officers were witnessed charging assembled crowds and striking multiple demonstrators with batons. By Sunday morning, the scale of destruction in the capital was clear: high-end designer retailers including Ralph Lauren, Gucci, and Versace had their glass storefronts completely shattered, many storefronts were defaced with political graffiti reading slogans like “tax the rich” and “eat the rich,” and at least one central restaurant was completely gutted by fire.

The violence was not contained to Paris. In Marseille, protesters used a metal fence as a battering ram to break into the city’s main town hall. In Lille, authorities confirmed a local McDonald’s outlet was set on fire, and an Apple Store in the city center was broken into and looted. In Lyon, the city’s historic tourist office, a beloved landmark building, was destroyed by fire in what Mayor Grégory Doucet called “a tragedy that breaks all our hearts.” Local authorities reported that hostile agitators blocked firefighters from reaching the blaze, preventing crews from stopping the fire before it destroyed the building.

Further damage was recorded at the 143-year-old town hall in Limoges, where a deliberate fire caused a partial collapse of the structure, leaving most of the historic building a total loss. “A wild horde deliberately set fire to this irreplaceable local landmark,” said Maurice Barate, prefect of the Haute-Vienne department, which oversees Limoges. In Saint-Étienne, a southeastern French city, Mayor Régis Juanico confirmed a young man suffered the amputation of his hand after being struck by a small explosive device, calling the incident “a tragedy that should never have occurred.”

Official figures released by the French government confirm around 1,500 police officers were injured during the unrest, and police took roughly 1,800 people into custody across the country on Saturday. Damage to public and private buildings was reported in more than a dozen cities across France, including Grenoble, Avignon, Pau, Montpellier, and Valence.

As dawn broke on Sunday, local residents and business owners emerged to survey the wreckage across Paris. Shopkeepers took to the streets early with brooms to clear large shards of broken glass, while municipal waste collection trucks worked through major boulevards to clear tons of debris. One small clothing store owner near Place de la République, whose shop was ransacked, told the BBC his business was looted for more than 90 minutes, with no police presence to intervene during the attack. He noted that none of the looters appeared to be genuine protesters, saying they were simply opportunists exploiting the demonstration to commit theft and vandalism. Surveillance footage broadcast on France 2 showed groups of masked teenagers stealing inventory from a mobile phone store, casually taking devices from unlocked display shelves.

France’s interior ministry released a statement describing the violence as “targeted acts of violence” carried out by hooded agitators who operated in multiple major urban centers, including the capital, Marseille, Rennes, Toulouse, and Angers.

On Saturday, mass demonstrations against declining education standards and soaring living costs across France descended into widespread civil disorder, leaving a trail of destroyed property, hundreds of arrests, and deep political division in the country. An estimated 550,000 protesters gathered in cities from Paris to Marseille, marking the latest escalation of weeks of growing public unrest that has compounded existing pre-election political uncertainty.

While the bulk of the officially organized march in central Paris remained peaceful through the afternoon hours, pockets of unrest broke out across the capital and other major urban centers. By the end of the day, at least 400 people had been taken into police custody, a figure the French government cited as evidence of a sharp escalation in violent activity during the demonstrations. Riot police deployed tear gas and water cannons to disperse disruptive crowds in multiple locations, including Paris’ iconic Place de la République, where vehicles and street fixtures were set ablaze by agitators.

In Lyon, one of the hardest-hit cities, demonstrators set fire to the city’s central tourism office, a historic 19th-century structure that stood as a landmark for the community. Lyon Mayor Grégory Doucet called the destruction a devastating loss for the city, telling local outlet BFMTV that the damage “breaks our hearts because it’s a very iconic, well-known historic building.” Local law enforcement officials reported that hostile groups of protesters blocked firefighters from reaching the blaze, preventing them from containing the fire before the building was destroyed. In Paris, a popular local bar named La Barrique was also burned to the ground, multiple shops were ransacked, and at least one central restaurant was completely gutted by fire. Looting spread across the country: an Apple Store in the northern city of Lille was broken into and emptied, while clothing and grocery stores across Paris were targeted by raiders. Reports of vandalism, arson and looting were also confirmed in Marseille, Rennes, Toulouse, Angers, Grenoble, Avignon, Pau, Montpellier and Valence, with city halls, private businesses and public infrastructure bearing the brunt of the damage.

The current wave of protests first began as a student-led movement over recent weeks, with hundreds of thousands of secondary school students (who attend lycées for students aged 15 to 18) walking out to protest severe staff shortages and crumbling, dilapidated campus facilities. On Saturday, the student movement was joined by thousands of trade union members and other activist groups, swelling the size of the protests and amplifying broader anger over the rising cost of living across France. Many peaceful protesters who spoke to the BBC expressed frustration with the lack of political progress on their demands, with a group of young demonstrators saying they identified as pacifists who “just trying to make things change, but nothing is moving.”

This outbreak of unrest comes as France enters a period of profound political uncertainty ahead of next year’s presidential election. Polling indicates the race is likely to be a tight contest between Marine Le Pen, leader of the right-wing National Rally, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of the hard-left La France Insoumise. Both national leaders have weighed in on the Saturday violence, trading sharp political blame. Mélenchon, who participated in the demonstrations, condemned the arson and looting while accusing police of “unleashing” excessive force against peaceful protesters. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu blasted Mélenchon’s comments as “dangerous and cynical,” noting that officers faced “violence of extreme intensity” and arguing that rogue groups were using the protests as a “warm-up” for next year’s election. “No-one will impose their political agenda through violence,” Lecornu said. Le Pen, for her part, said the “legitimate demands” of protesters had been “held hostage by the far left” and blamed Mélenchon for fueling the violence that unfolded Saturday. Outgoing President Emmanuel Macron echoed the prime minister’s hard line, stating that all people found responsible for damaging property, attacking public buildings and looting “will be prosecuted and punished.”

In an attempt to de-escalate the student-led component of the unrest, Education Minister Édouard Geffray announced an apparent concession earlier this month, promising to add 3,000 new temporary supply teachers to understaffed campuses during an October 8 television interview. The gesture has done little to quell public anger, however, and protests have continued to grow in intensity in the weeks since the announcement.

Just four days after undergoing a 90-minute surgical procedure to remove a cancerous growth from his lung, Pope Leo XIV is preparing to leave Rome’s Gemelli Hospital on Saturday afternoon, in a faster-than-expected recovery that has surprised observers globally.

The Vatican confirmed that following his discharge, the Pope will resume one of his most iconic public duties on Sunday: delivering the traditional Angelus prayer and imparting his blessing to gathered pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square. This mirrors his appearance last week, when he shocked the world by publicly announcing his upcoming surgery ahead of the procedure.

On Friday, official photographs were released showing the Pope leading Mass and distributing Holy Communion to hospital staff within his room, offering a visible sign of his improving condition. A formal statement released by his medical team confirmed that routine blood work and a post-operative chest X-ray have documented “steady improvement” in the 80-some-year-old pontiff’s health following Tuesday’s procedure, which removed the lower lobe of his right lung. At this time, results from additional testing to check for any spread of the cancer remain pending.

Beyond his recovery, the Pope held a high-profile diplomatic call on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, their first conversation since June 2025. The Vatican confirmed the core focus of the call was an urgent push for “dialogue and peace” amid a sharp escalation of Russian airstrikes across multiple Ukrainian cities, which has driven a sharp rise in civilian casualties and shown no indication that the Kremlin is preparing to end its full-scale invasion.

In a specific appeal tied to the ongoing conflict, Pope Leo also called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Oleshkiy, where relentless shelling has trapped civilians and cut off access to basic supplies. Recent reporting from the BBC has documented the extreme desperation of Oleshkiy residents, who have reportedly been forced to eat weeds grown in home gardens to avoid starvation.

The pontiff’s public schedule had been fully cleared through October 20, so his rapid return to public life comes as a welcome surprise to millions of Catholic faithful around the world, who have been anxious for updates on his health.

Close associates of the Pope have noted that he is eager to move forward with a planned apostolic trip to Latin America scheduled for early November, which includes a stop in Peru — the country where he served as a missionary for decades prior to his election to the papacy. As of Saturday, it remains unconfirmed whether the pontiff will be medically cleared to undertake the international trip, or if he will need to adjust his schedule to accommodate further cancer treatment.