Images from the scene show an enormous orange fireball in the sky over the Rome suburb of Prenestino

Moscow is accused of using deadly choking agent chloropicrin to flush Kyiv’s troops out of trenches

The blaze has razed forests and olive groves, forcing thousands to evacuate

All-night attack on Kyiv injured at least 23 people, damaging railway infrastructure and setting buildings and cars on fire throughout the city

• Russian drone attack on Kyiv

Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski told US president Donald Trump in a social media post that Russia’s Vladimir Putin was “mocking your peace efforts” as he urged him to “restore supplies of anti-aircraft ammunition to Ukraine and impose tough new sanctions on the aggressor.”

Sikorski added that the massive Russian attack last night has caused “fires and much damage, including to the Polish consulate in Kyiv.”

Eni has filed at least six defamation suits against journalists and NGOs since 2019 in what critics say is intimidation campaign

When Antonio Tricarico was summoned to his local police station in October and told he was being investigated for defamation, he was stressed but not shocked. Months earlier, Tricarico, the director of the Italian environment NGO ReCommon, had filed a joint legal challenge against the country’s biggest oil company, Eni, which he knew had a history of using lawyers to clamp down on critics.

The company had previously limited itself to civil defamation lawsuits, including against ReCommon, but in Tricarico’s case it initiated criminal proceedings over statements he had made in a television interview.

Railway infrastructure was also damaged in the attack, the latest in a series of intensifying Russian assaults on the Ukrainian capital

At least 14 people have been injured in an overnight drone attack on Kyiv that also damaged railway infrastructure, and set buildings and cars on fire throughout the city, the mayor has said, while separate explosions were reported in a city near Moscow.

The attack was the latest in a series of Russian airstrikes on Kyiv that have intensified in recent weeks and included some of the deadliest assaults of the war on the city of three million people.

Support is lowest in France, Spain and Poland, while 21% back authoritarian rule under certain circumstances

Only half of young people in France and Spain believe that democracy is the best form of government, with support even lower among their Polish counterparts, a study has found.

A majority from Europe’s generation Z – 57% – prefer democracy to any other form of government. Rates of support varied significantly, however, reaching just 48% in Poland and only about 51-52% in Spain and France, with Germany highest at 71%.

After US jury said it should pay oil pipeline firm $660m, Greenpeace is hoping to reclaim funds via EU anti-Slapp law

The outcome of a court case in the Netherlands could shape the right to protest around the globe for decades to come, campaigners have warned, as figures show a dramatic rise in legal action taken by fossil fuel companies against activists and journalists.

Greenpeace International is using a recently introduced EU directive to try to reclaim costs and damages it incurred when a US jury decided it should pay the oil pipeline corporation Energy Transfer more than $660m in damages earlier this year.

Sell-offs of public housing and the right’s promotion of home ownership has left too many unable to afford accommodation

• Csaba Jelinek is an urban sociologist based in Budapest

When I left my family home to study at university in 2007 and moved to downtown Budapest, housing costs were hardly a topic of conversation among my friends. I rented rooms in centrally located flats for £80-£100 per month. Fast forward to 2025 and a similar room in a shared flat would set you back at least £200 – double the price of 15 years ago. Talk to anyone in their 20s in Budapest today, and the deepening housing crisis will inevitably come up as one of the defining struggles of their lives.

The statistics paint an equally grim picture. Between 2010 and 2024, Hungary saw the largest increase of the housing price index among EU member states. While the EU average rose by 55.4%, Hungary’s housing price index rocketed by 234%. Meanwhile, per capita net income only grew by 86% in the 2010s. Budapest, the capital, is the centre of this crisis. According to the Hungarian National Bank, residential property prices are overvalued by 5-19%. This is partly explained with the high proportion of investment-driven purchases: these accounted for 30-50% of all transactions in the last five years in Hungary. Unlike in many other EU capitals, property investors in Budapest are not primarily foreign nationals – who accounted for just 7.3% of transactions between 2016 and 2022 – nor are they institutional players. Instead, they are typically individual Hungarian citizens. As real estate has become an increasingly appealing investment for upper- and middle-class households amid growing economic uncertainty, the result has been a deepening polarisation within Hungarian society.

Csaba Jelinek is an urban sociologist based in Budapest, focusing on housing and urban development. He is co-founder of Periféria Policy and Research Center and board member of the Alliance for Collaborative Real Estate Development

Russia launches drone attack on Kyiv hours after presidents’ phone call; US company Techmet to bid in first pilot project of US-Ukraine minerals fund. What we know on day 1,227

• Read all our Ukraine war coverage

Syrian man, 32, was granted asylum in 2014 but lost refugee status because of a criminal conviction

Austria has returned a Syrian with a criminal conviction to his birth country in what it described as the first such deportation since the fall of the Assad regime.

“The deportation carried out today is part of a strict and thus fair asylum policy,” Austria’s interior minister, Gerhard Karner, said in a statement.

Fire on island being fanned by gale-force winds, with blazes also raging on mainland Greece and in other parts of Europe

A wildfire fanned by gale-force winds has forced the evacuation of about 5,000 people on the Greek island of Crete, authorities and hotel association officials have said, as large swathes of continental Europe baked in a punishing early summer heatwave linked to at least nine deaths.

About 230 firefighters, along with 46 fire service vehicles and helicopters, were battling the blaze on Thursday after it broke out 24 hours earlier near Ierapetra, on the south-east coast of the island – the country’s largest – threatening to engulf houses and hotels.

Sources say no complaint has been made to police – with expectation that garment will ‘turn up’

Lauren Sánchez packed 27 designer dresses for her wedding to the billionaire Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, in Venice last week, but left with only 26 after one went missing.

The couple, who are now honeymooning in Taormina, Sicily, were wed during a star-studded three-day celebration in the lagoon city.