标签： Europe

In the battered southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, public transport has become one of Russia’s most deliberate frontline targets. For the bus drivers who keep their routes running every day, every trip through the city’s streets is a journey made under the constant threat of death. Earlier this month, Anatoly Dmytrov was steering his full Route 14 bus through a busy intersection when a Russian drone slammed into the vehicle. In an instant, every window shattered into shards of glass. Shaken but focused on protecting his passengers, Anatoly managed to pull the bus to the next stop near a bomb shelter before he even noticed his own bleeding.

“I looked in the mirror and saw blood,” Anatoly recalled. “I thought – oh, I need to get to the shelter quickly because sometimes they send a second drone immediately.” He escaped with non-life-threatening injuries, but at least eight of his passengers were hurt in the attack. For drivers in Kherson, this grim scenario is not an anomaly – it has become a daily reality. “It’s no fun working here,” Anatoly said bluntly. “This happens almost every day, they’ve started hunting buses down. You go to work and you have no idea if you are going to come home.”

Data from Kherson’s municipal transport company, where Anatoly is employed, confirms the escalating danger of the job. The company says Russian drone operators have prioritized public transport as a target since last year, and the violence has grown steadily worse. In 2026 alone, three transport workers have been killed, eight more wounded, 21 trolleybuses destroyed or damaged, and eight municipal buses left unusable. Local authorities add that six privately operated passenger buses have also been struck this year, bringing the total number of buses hit to 27.

Kherson, a city that was home to roughly 300,000 residents before Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion, still holds approximately 65,000 civilians who have chosen to stay despite constant bombardment. Recaptured by Ukrainian forces in late 2022 after an initial Russian occupation in the first weeks of the war, the city remains the administrative capital of one of the four Ukrainian regions Moscow illegitimately claims as its own. From positions across the Dnipro River, Russian forces have carried out relentless daily attacks on the Ukrainian-held city for more than three years.

Rita Dobrinova, a manager at the Kherson municipal transport company, says the threat has grown even deadlier in recent months as Russian forces have shifted to using fiber-optic guided drones, which are immune to standard electronic jamming technology. “Some are just hovering, waiting. Others are scout drones. They look the driver right in the eye through the windscreen,” she described. She recounted one particularly horrific fatal attack in April, when a bomb was dropped directly through a bus cabin’s roof onto the driver’s head, killing him instantly.

Local authorities have attempted to put protective measures in place for drivers and passengers: anti-drone nets have been strung above the busiest city streets, and drivers have been issued helmets, bullet-proof vests, and handheld drone detectors locally called *chuyka*. But these defenses are severely limited. The detectors only pick up drones that use pre-identified navigation frequencies, leaving fiber-optic guided drones and devices using new frequencies undetectable. All the devices can do when triggered is alert drivers that a drone is within range, with no further details on its location or intent.

When a detector alarm sounds, drivers are instructed to immediately stop the bus, evacuate all passengers, and guide them to the nearest shelter. Even the commute to work itself can be deadly. On May 3, bus driver Eduard Zadorozhny was riding in a company van with colleagues to their shift when the vehicle was targeted by a drone. “They hit us, we got out, and when an ambulance arrived to help us, they hit the ambulance,” Eduard said. This second strike on emergency responders meets the international legal definition of a deliberate war crime, a pattern that has become common in Russian attacks on Kherson. “What they do is hit you, and then they hit you again. They’ve turned people’s lives into a horror show,” Eduard added. He survived with a concussion, but one of his colleagues, an engineer, was killed in the attack.

Even after surviving drone strikes and facing daily mortal risk, these drivers overwhelmingly choose to return to their routes. When asked why they keep working when escape to safer territory is still possible, their answer is consistent: the civilians who remain in Kherson have no one else to rely on. Maksym Dyak, another municipal driver who was injured in a drone attack earlier this year, is one of these drivers. He was hospitalized with a broken rib and shrapnel permanently embedded in his chest after the strike, but he has already returned to driving.

“We need to get people to their pharmacies and hospitals: children and the elderly, everyone who has stayed here, everyone who still lives here,” Maksym explained. “No-one apart from us will do this. We realise that if we abandon these people, no one else will drive them.” He described the daily reality of the job as working “like rats in a cage. We get attacked from every side, but we keep driving.” When asked if he had ever considered leaving Kherson to escape the constant violence, his answer was unwavering: “I never thought of leaving. This is where I was born, this is where I live and this is where I’ll live until the very end. I’m not going anywhere.”

Humanitarian observers and local officials have described the deliberate targeting of civilian buses and transport workers in Kherson as a “human safari”, a calculated campaign to terrorize the remaining civilian population and break their will to stay in their home city. Despite the mounting death toll and unrelenting danger, Kherson’s bus drivers continue to show up for work every morning, bound by their loyalty to their city and their neighbors.

Paris, a city that had braced for scenes of celebration following Paris Saint-Germain’s appearance in the Champions League final, instead awoke to a wave of disorder that left hundreds in custody. What was expected to be a night of shared joy for football fans across the French capital quickly devolved into violent confrontation between supporters and law enforcement, leaving authorities scrambling to contain the unrest.

The unrest unfolded in the immediate aftermath of the high-profile continental football final, with clashes breaking out in multiple districts across the city. Police deployed to manage crowds of supporters that had gathered to watch the match and mark the occasion quickly found themselves confronting vandalism, looting, and unruly public behaviour. By the time order began to be restored, law enforcement officials confirmed that close to 800 people had been taken into custody in connection with the violence.

Local officials had previously stepped up security arrangements ahead of the match, anticipating large gatherings of fans whether PSG claimed the title or not. But the scale of the confrontation outstripped many initial projections, prompting questions about crowd management strategies and the underlying social tensions that can boil over during major global sporting events. For residents of central Paris, the night that was supposed to be marked by celebration instead became one of disrupted public order, with storefronts damaged, transport services temporarily disrupted, and hundreds of ordinary locals forced to avoid affected downtown areas.

In the days following the clashes, authorities have begun processing the hundreds of arrests, with many of those detained facing charges related to public disorder, violence against police, and property damage. The incident has also sparked wider discussion about how major European cities balance the excitement of elite football events with the need to maintain public safety, as clubs continue to compete for the sport’s most prestigious continental titles.

A transatlantic United Airlines flight traveling from New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport to Palma de Mallorca, Spain, was forced to abort its journey and turn back to its origin airport on Saturday following an unexpected potential security threat that unfolded thousands of feet in the air.

According to official records from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the flight departed Newark just after 6 p.m. local time, but safely touched down back at its departure gate at 9:37 p.m. the same evening. The wide-body Boeing 767 aircraft carried 190 passengers and a 12-member crew, airline officials confirmed.

Records from air traffic control audio reveal the root of the security alert: a passenger’s Bluetooth device was labeled with a provocative four-letter threat term. Multiple onboard reports shared on social media indicate that flight crew repeatedly made announcements asking all passengers to power down their personal Bluetooth connections, yet two devices remained active and detectable throughout the cabin. After coordinating directly with United’s Chicago-based corporate headquarters, the flight crew made the decision to divert back to Newark as a precaution.

Once the jet landed, all passengers and crew were immediately evacuated to allow Port Authority police K-9 and inspection teams to conduct a full sweep of the aircraft for potential hazards. Every traveler was required to go through a complete secondary security screening by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Customs and Border Protection agents before being allowed to board a replacement aircraft. United Airlines initially declined to share detailed specifics about the incident to avoid compromising security protocols.

Passengers eventually boarded a substitute flight operated by an entirely new crew, which departed Newark in the early hours of Sunday and reached its destination in Palma de Mallorca without further incident that same afternoon.

This incident marks the third notable disruption for United Airlines flights originating or landing at Newark Liberty International Airport within a single month. Just one day before the Bluetooth scare, on Friday, a separate domestic United flight was diverted to an alternate airport due to a security risk triggered by an unruly passenger. Earlier in the same month, a United flight landing at Newark collided with a parked semitrailer truck and a runway light pole, though that incident resulted in no reported injuries to passengers or ground crew.

Overnight attacks targeting Russian energy infrastructure marked a sharp escalation in cross-border strikes between Russia and Ukraine over the weekend, with Kyiv confirming successful hits on key fuel facilities while firmly rejecting Moscow’s accusations of an attack on Europe’s largest nuclear power station. Russian regional officials confirmed Sunday that descending drone debris sparked an inferno at a fuel storage depot in southwestern Russia’s Rostov Oblast, prompting emergency evacuations of nearby residential neighborhoods. A separate wave of drones inflicted damage to civilian infrastructure in neighboring Saratov Oblast, with independent Russian media outlet Astra reporting large flames engulfing a major oil refinery in the region’s capital city, also named Saratov.

In a rare public confirmation of cross-border action, Ukraine’s General Staff acknowledged Sunday that its unmanned aerial vehicles successfully targeted the Saratov refinery, igniting a large-scale blaze that remains under assessment for total damage. The statement noted the facility, owned by Russian state-owned energy giant Rosneft, produces gasoline and diesel for domestic and military use, and has been a key supplier fueling Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that launched in early 2022. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly justified stepped-up attacks on Russian oil, gas and refining infrastructure in recent months, arguing the energy sector generates billions in revenue to fund the war effort while also producing fuel for Russian military vehicles and equipment.

Alongside the confirmed energy strikes, the weekend brought renewed tension over the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, a facility that has been the site of repeated safety scares since Russian forces seized it in the opening weeks of the 2022 invasion. Russia’s state nuclear operator Rosatom claimed Saturday that a Ukrainian kamikaze drone detonated after piercing the exterior wall of the turbine hall for the plant’s sixth power unit. Rosatom CEO Alexei Likhachev called the incident a deliberate, pre-planned attack by Ukrainian forces, though he stressed no critical core equipment was damaged in the blast.

Ukraine’s military swiftly dismissed the accusation as another disinformation propaganda effort, stating it had not launched any strikes targeting the plant and remains strictly committed to upholding international humanitarian law, which prohibits intentional attacks on civilian nuclear infrastructure. The military added that no offensive operations or weapons fire were conducted along the segment of the front line nearest the plant at the time of the reported incident. The Zaporizhzhia plant, which remains under Russian occupation close to active front lines in southern Ukraine, is one of four Ukrainian regions Russia has attempted to formally annex, a move that has not gained recognition from the global community.

Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, posted Sunday on social media platform X that he holds serious concern over the reported incident. Ukraine’s state nuclear regulatory agency has called for the damage alleged by Russian authorities to be independently verified by IAEA inspectors, who have maintained a permanent monitoring presence at the plant since 2022 to mitigate nuclear safety risks. Repeated shelling near the plant since the Russian occupation sparked global fears of a catastrophic nuclear accident, with Moscow and Kyiv repeatedly trading blame for deliberate strikes on the site.

In a parallel wave of Russian strikes overnight into Sunday, Russian forces launched nearly 300 drones across Ukrainian territory, according to Ukraine’s Air Force. Air defense crews successfully intercepted and downed 212 of the incoming unmanned aerial vehicles, while 14 managed to reach their intended targets. Falling drone debris was reported in five separate locations across Ukraine. Russian strikes sparked fires at an apartment area in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro and at an oil refinery in the western Rivne region, local Ukrainian authorities confirmed. Oleksandr Koval, head of Rivne’s regional military administration, reported no casualties at the refinery, with emergency response teams already on site working to contain the blaze.

The cross-border strikes come as Ukraine continues to ramp up pressure on Russian energy supplies amid a grinding war that has stretched into its fourth year, with Kyiv actively lobbying Western allies for additional air defense systems and long-range strike capabilities to counter Russian offensive operations.