Reports claim Kadyrov’s health is deteriorating to the point that the Kremlin is considering his replacement

Haul represents country’s largest seizure at sea, with officers digging bales out from vast amount of salt

Spanish police have made their largest seizure of cocaine at sea after finding almost 10 tonnes of the drug hidden among a cargo of salt on a merchant ship off the Canary Islands.

Detectives and anti-drug prosecutors investigating a multinational criminal group alleged to be exporting “enormous quantities” of cocaine from South America to Europe had identified a suspect ship that had set off from Brazil, the Policía Nacional said in a statement on Monday.

Annabel Nugent checks into the Andronis Luxury Suites to switch off in picturesque Oia

Le Pen was a frontrunner in the forthcoming presidential elections before her conviction

The US president’s threats to the territory show Europe needs a new strategy for its far north: one based on cooperation, not domination

The new year is still young, yet Donald Trump’s fixation on expanding his homeland signals a troubling geopolitical shift. From Venezuela to Greenland, the world is unmistakably moving away from the relative stability of the post-cold war era – not least also because of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

This erosion of long-established norms has severe implications for Europe, a continent whose core political philosophy is built on limiting (national) power. A rules-based order, international law and negotiated solutions lie at the core of Europe’s self-image. Yet in today’s world, Europe can uphold this vision only if it evolves into a more muscular geopolitical actor itself – and nowhere is this more evident than in the Arctic.

Robert Habeck served as German vice-chancellor and minister for economy and climate action from 2021 to 2025, and is now working at the Danish Institute for International Studies.

Andreas Raspotnik is the director of the High North Center for Business and Governance at Nord University and a senior researcher at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Oslo, Norway

Jens-Frederik Nielsen repeated the government’s statement it would work on strengthening security through Nato

The European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is to travel to Paraquay on Saturday to sign the controversial Mercosur trade deal with a group of Latin American countries this Saturday.

The deal with Brazil, Argentina, Uraguay and Paraguay was adopted by member states on Friday, ending 25 years of negotiation and months of wrangling with member states over the final compromises.

These small countries punch well above their weight in terms of culture, history and views. This is your guide on where to stay and what to see

Organisers for Milan Cortina said that the worker had a heart attack

UK vows to arm Ukrainians with advanced weapons after Putin's hypersonic missile strike on Lviv

Complaint against Cécile Desprairies over Nazi collusion novel alleges that ‘resentment permeates the entire work’

The Polish poet Czesław Miłosz is famously credited with the line: “When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.” In contemporary European literature, a book these days is often the beginning of a familial feud. With thinly disguised autobiographical accounts of family strife undergoing a sustained boom across the continent, it can increasingly lead to family reunions in courtrooms.

Such was the case with the French historian Cécile Desprairies, who on Wednesday was sued for defamation by her brother and a cousin over the depiction of her late mother and her great-uncle in her 2024 novel La Propagandiste.

UK government starts contest to have deep-strike prototypes delivered within 12 months; heat-starved Kyiv under Russian attack again. What we know on day 1,419

Britain is to develop a new deep-strike ballistic missile for Ukraine, the government has announced. Under the project, named Nightfall, the British government said on Sunday that it had launched a competition to rapidly develop ground-launched ballistic missiles that could carry a 200kg (440lb) warhead to a range of more than 500km (310 miles).

“Nightfall missiles will be capable of being launched from a range of vehicles,” said the UK defence ministry (MoD), “firing multiple missiles in quick succession and withdrawing within minutes – allowing Ukrainian forces to hit key military targets before Russian forces can respond.”

Three industry teams would each get £9m to design, develop and deliver their first three Nightfall missiles within 12 months for test firings, said the MoD. Ukraine’s current ballistic missiles include Atacms, for which it relies on the US, and the self-developed Sapsan.

Russia was again attacking Kyiv early on Monday, the Ukrainian military said, sparking a fire in at least one district. Ukrainian air defences were at work against incoming targets, said Timur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration.

The renewed attack came as more than 1,000 apartment buildings in the Ukrainian capital remained without heating because of a Russian bombardment on Friday. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, said that despite repairs the situation was “still extremely difficult”, particularly in border regions.

At the Vatican, Pope Leo offered prayers for the people of Ukraine, saying the “particularly serious” strikes on energy infrastructure were “hitting the civilian population hard, just as the cold weather is getting worse … I pray for those who are suffering and renew my appeal for an end to violence and for efforts to achieve peace to be intensified.”

Ukraine’s forces hit three drilling platforms operated by Russian oil company Lukoil in the waters of the Caspian Sea, the Ukrainian military general staff announced on Sunday. The strikes on Russian energy sites aim to deprive Moscow of oil export revenue used to fund the war. Moscow meanwhile said a Ukrainian drone strike killed one person and wounded three others in the Russian city of Voronezh.