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LONDON — Newly elected British prime minister Keir Starmer on Saturday began his first full day in charge with a meeting of his Cabinet after his Labour party’s landslide election win ended 14 years of Conservative rule.

Starmer held his first Cabinet meeting at 11 a.m. (1000 GMT), with Britain’s first woman finance minister Rachel Reeves and new foreign minister David Lammy in attendance.

The Labour leader spent his first hours in Downing Street on Friday appointing his ministerial team, hours after securing his center-left party’s return to power with a whopping 174-seat majority in the UK parliament.

“The work of change begins immediately,” Starmer said Friday shortly after being confirmed as prime minister by King Charles III and flag-waving crowds of cheering Labour activists welcomed him to Downing Street.

“But have no doubt, we will rebuild Britain,” he added.

Reiterating his five key “missions” for government in his maiden speech, the 61-year-old vowed to get the state-run National Health Service “back on its feet,” ensure “secure borders” and safer streets.

But daunting challenges await his government, including a stagnating economy, creaking public services and households suffering from a years-long cost-of-living crisis.

“Changing a country is not like flicking a switch. The world is now a more volatile place. This will take a while,” Starmer said.

‘Historic’ result

World leaders lined up to congratulate the new British leader.

Starmer spoke by phone with U.S. President Joe Biden and “discussed their shared commitment to the special relationship between the UK and US and their aligned ambitions for greater economic growth,” according to London.

He also spoke to President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

However, former — and potentially future – U.S. president Donald Trump ignored Starmer, instead hailing the electoral breakthrough of his ally Nigel Farage’s far-right Reform UK party.

Its capture of five seats and around 14% of the vote, alongside Farage becoming an MP on his eighth attempt, was one of the stories of the election.

But it paled in comparison to Labour’s triumphs, after the party neared its record of 418 seats under ex-leader Tony Blair in 1997 by winning 412.

The Conservatives suffered their worst-ever defeat, capturing just 121 constituencies, prompting Rishi Sunak to apologize to the nation and confirm that he will resign as Tory leader once a successor is selected.

Former leader William Hague, a Sunak mentor who represented the same northern English constituency until 2015, conceded it was “a catastrophic result in historic terms.”

A record 12 senior ex-government ministers lost their seats, alongside former prime minister Liz Truss, whose economically calamitous short-lived tenure in 2022 wounded the party irreparably ahead of the election.

It is now poised for another period of infighting between a moderate wing eager for a centrist leader and those who may be willing to court Farage as a new leader.

‘Challenges’

The election also saw the centrist Liberal Democrats make their biggest gains in around a century, claiming more than 70 seats to become the third largest party in parliament.

But it was a dismal contest for the pro-independence Scottish National Party, which was virtually obliterated in Scotland. It dropped from 48 seats to just nine, with one still to declare early Saturday.

The Green Party had its best general election, quadrupling its MPs count to four.

Meanwhile an unprecedented six independent lawmakers were elected — four of them defeating Labour candidates in districts with large Muslim populations and campaigns centered around the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Delight within Labour at its seats landslide will be restrained by recognition that it only secured around 34% of the vote — a drop on 2019 and the lowest ever to secure a majority.

Meanwhile turnout, at just below 60%, was the lowest since 2001, suggesting widespread apathy.

“While this shouldn’t overshadow Labour’s victory today, it may point to some challenges Labour may face,” Chris Hopkins, political research director at the pollster Savanta, said of those factors.

“Simply put, they likely won’t be able to return 400-plus MPs (in the) next election with less than 40% of the vote.”
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KYIV, Ukraine — Russia launched an overnight drone attack across Ukraine on Saturday, hitting an energy facility in the Sumy region in the northeast of the country, officials said.

Ukrainian mobile drone hunter groups and air defense units shot down 24 of the 27 Russian drones fired on 12 regions, the air force said.

National grid operator Ukrenergo said the energy facility in the Sumy region was damaged, forcing emergency electricity shut-offs for industrial consumers in the city of Sumy. Repair teams were working to restore supplies, it said.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or other damage details from the regions.

Since March, Russian forces have intensified their bombardments of the Ukrainian power sector, knocking out the bulk of the thermal and hydropower generation and forcing long blackouts across the country.

Ukrenergo planned scheduled cut-offs of electricity throughout the day across the country as domestic generation and electricity imports could not cover the deficit.

Ukraine’s energy system was already hobbled in the first year after Russia’s invasion in February 2022. The power system lost about half of its available generation capacity due to the Russian missile and drone attacks in the past four months.  
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Kyiv, Ukraine — On his way to the Kyiv train station to greet his wife and daughter returning from Poland to Ukraine, Oleksander Tryfonov made a stop.   

He bought two red roses from one of a half-dozen flower shops lining a dimly lit underpass — something beautiful for the two most precious people in his life.   

“I haven’t seen them for two years,” Tryfonov, a burly 45-year-old driver said of his family. “Flowers are important for women.”   

Flowers have always been linked with Ukraine’s culture, but since Russia’s 2022 invasion, their significance has only grown, with blooms becoming a symbol of both resistance and hope. 

Despite hardships brought by war — or perhaps because of them — Ukrainians take every chance they can to fill Kyiv and other cities with flowers from the country’s vast rural heartland, anxious to reconnect with and rediscover their roots. 

Deep purple petunias and yellow rock roses burst out of planters that line Kyiv’s backroads and grand boulevards. Some are fixed to lampposts; flowers can even be spotted in Ukraine’s prison yards. 

They are depicted on Ukrainian banknotes, textile patterns and murals — next to advertising billboards and army recruitment posters. Across the country, young men on dates and soldiers, sometimes missing a limb, carry bouquets on their return home.   

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy famously brought a bouquet on a hospital visit in 2022 to a teenage girl injured while fleeing advancing Russian forces outside Kyiv. 

At an underpass flower stall below Kyiv’s central Maidan Square, vendor Olha Semynog sells bunches of flowers for $2.50 each. For those with more in their pockets, she can go all the way up to a giant bouquet for $75. 

Even during wartime, her busiest day, she says, is March 8 — International Women’s Day. Her business has also picked up with men drafted into the military sending flowers home with online orders. 

On the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, where the Russian advance was halted two years ago, residents still tend to the gardens of their damaged or completely destroyed homes. A park in Kyiv, near the left bank of the Dnieper River, features a large flower installation, welcoming F-16 fighter jets due to arrive this summer from Ukraine’s Western allies. 

Flowers, explains Iryna Bielobrova, head of Ukraine’s Florists’ Association, are inextricably linked with Ukrainians’ culture, traditions and celebrated stages of life. They are also an emotional connection with the land.   

“Life cannot be bright, full, and rich without flowers,” she said. “Wreaths of flowers are preserved for years, and embroidered shirts are passed down to younger generations.”

Bielobrova fled in the aftermath of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion, moving to the Netherlands, the world’s flower-producing powerhouse. In comparison, Ukraine had a modest pre-war export market.   

Once in the Netherlands, she worked with other florists who fled to make sure flowers were present whenever solidarity events for Ukraine were held in European capitals. 

Sunflowers, grown since the 1700s in Ukraine, have become the country’s national flower — a symbol of Ukraine’s defiance and resilience in the war.   

Fields of the shoulder-high flowers are often seen across Ukraine and Zelenskyy’s Cabinet named the flower the symbol of national Remembrance Day in 2020.   

“They provide an escape from the horrors of bombings, destruction, pain, and tears,” said Bielobrova, who has returned to Ukraine from the Netherlands and lives in Kyiv. 

“Emotions are easily expressed with flowers,” she said. “Each flower speaks for itself, and together in a bouquet, they tell a whole story.”   

Flowers, Ukrainians say, stand not only for tradition but also for hope and healing. 

Dobropark, a 370-acre (150 hectare) privately run garden and recreation area west of Kyiv, was rebuilt after a Russian attack and occupation that lasted for more than a month in 2020. 

“This entire area was occupied by the Russian military,” the park’s landscape designer Olha Lyhvar said. 

When the Russian forces pulled out, the park’s tractors and electric buggies were also gone, she said. A three-story hotel that once stood on the property was leveled to its foundations.   

Today, people come to the park to “reconnect with nature,” she said, standing next to a door frame — all that remains of the bombed-out hotel. 

“People come here and can feel the force of life and see that it continues despite everything,” Lyhvar said. “We must live on and find for ourselves joy and beauty in what surrounds us.” 
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Lausanne, Switzerland — In the battle against drug use at the Paris Olympics, the International Testing Agency plans to deploy a more streamlined, high-tech approach to identify and target potential cheats.

In an interview with Agence France-Presse, Benjamin Cohen, director general of the ITA, said potential tools at its disposal included biological and performance passports as well as a mountain of other data.

Upgraded software, possibly using artificial intelligence, could also help; an investigative unit aided by whistleblowers was making inroads; and increased cooperation with sports bodies and police was bearing fruit.

The ITA, which was founded in 2018, runs the anti-doping program for the Olympics, the Tour de France and “more than 65 international organizations,” said Cohen.

The challenge was to refine the “risk analysis” and identify athletes to monitor using as little time and resources as possible, said Cohen, a Swiss lawyer who has headed the agency since its creation.

The problem is accentuated in the run-up to the Paris Games.

“We still have 30,000 potentially qualifying athletes and we cannot wait to have the final list to focus on the 11,000 participants,” Cohen said.

“Certain doping practices enable athletes to achieve results very quickly,” he said. “Traditionally the pre-Olympic period is high-risk time … the last moment to make a difference. Athletes know that they will be very closely monitored at the Olympics, so I would hope that very few, if any, will be tempted to take drugs in the Olympic Village in Paris.”

At the Games, only medalists are automatically tested, but the ITA wants to find ways to target potential dopers before the finish.

Cohen said the ITA tries to identify patterns. It looks at the demands of each discipline and the substances it might tempt athletes to use. Then the ITA looks at delegations and “the history of doping in that country.” Finally, it scrutinizes each individual athlete and “the development of his or her performances, any suspicious biological passport profiles, suspicious anti-doping tests and so on.”

“That’s hundreds of thousands of pieces of data.”

“Risk analysis”

“Today we have our own software, and the next stage” will involve “programming computers to extract this data, because we still do a lot of this work manually.”

After that, the ITA hopes to “seize all the opportunities offered by artificial intelligence,” provided “we use these new tools ethically.”

“If it’s done properly,” he said, “AI will enable us to go much further in risk analysis and prediction.”

The ITA is developing a “performance passport” as a counterpart to the long-established biological passport.

The objective is to “predict results on the basis of what an athlete has done over the last four years,” said Cohen.

“Artificial intelligence will enable us to say: ‘This is really an unusual result, which could suggest doping,'” he said. “It could help us flag them.”

The performance passport project was initially tested in swimming and weightlifting, two indoor sports in which athletes compete in identical environments each time.

Weightlifting also is one of the sports that have returned a vast number of positive tests at Summer Olympics.

In 2021, the ITA carried out “a major investigation into weightlifting,” and that enabled them to set up a specialized unit in cooperation with the sport.

Focus on cycling

It now has more than 10 such units. “Cycling is a particular focus,” but “other sports are beginning to understand the benefits of gathering intelligence, having anonymous sources and promoting whistleblowers.”

“It’s a new method that complements traditional testing.”

Cohen said the ITA has been working to build links with law enforcement and exploit “synergies.”

“They are bearing fruit,” he said, referring to the case of 23-year-old Italian cyclist Andrea Piccolo, arrested on June 21 by the Italian Carabinieri who caught him returning to the country with growth hormones.

“ITA asked the Italian authorities to open his luggage, which would not have been possible six years ago,” Cohen said.

“We carry out the controls, we monitor the performances of these athletes, we know the networks, the doctors involved and the drugs they are taking. And they can seize and open suitcases and enter hotel rooms.”
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Britain has a new government. Keir Starmer’s center-left Labour Party won a landslide victory in Thursday’s election with a 412-seat majority in Parliament. How might Britain’s role in the world change under Prime Minister Starmer? Henry Ridgwell has more from London.
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Washington — The United States will host a NATO summit in Washington next week, at which more military support for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s ongoing invasion will top the agenda. 

Douglas Jones, deputy U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, told VOA earlier this week that NATO will put forward “concrete ways” to accelerate Ukraine’s eventual membership in the alliance. 

Retired U.S. Air Force four-star General Philip Breedlove was the commander of U.S. European Command and the 17th Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO Allied Command Operations from 2013 to 2016.  

In an interview with VOA, Breedlove said that NATO should use next week’s summit to detail how it will help Ukraine “win the war against Russia and to expel Russian forces from Ukrainian lands.”  

Allowing Russia to keep that Ukrainian territory it has occupied would amount to “capitulation,” Breedlove said, adding that whoever wins the U.S. presidential election in November must remember that capitulation to Russia’s ambitions in Ukraine “is not a way forward.”  

The following transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity: 

VOA: What are the main challenges for NATO ahead of the summit in Washington? 

Retired four-star U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove: I think the main challenge is going to be how to move forward with Ukraine. There are quite a number of NATO nations that want to get started on Ukraine’s program to join [NATO], there are other nations that are not ready for that yet. And so I think that the compromise is this “bridge” to NATO, whereby Ukraine will be invited to join in the headquarters on a U.S. base somewhere. I hear that maybe Wiesbaden [Germany] is that place. More importantly though, since there will not be a formal offer to Ukraine for membership, the members of NATO are going to need to discuss how do we begin to guarantee the security of Ukraine. 

VOA: How do you think the elections in Europe and the U.K. will affect — and maybe already have affected — NATO’s immediate future?  

Breedlove: So I would broaden that scope. In elections in America, elections in many of our countries, we see a growing nationalistic trend, some isolationist trends, and these are all going to have to be addressed by NATO as a body. Because the strength of NATO is solidarity first, and so we have to figure out how to maintain that solidarity in the alliance when we have several nations that are now challenging norms. NATO has always made it through this. I remind people — and some of my French friends hate it when I do — but we were once thrown out of a capital of a NATO country. And so NATO has faced challenges in the past.  

And I think that NATO will survive this current set of issues as well and frankly maybe be stronger. The absolute audacity, the criminality, the inhumane war that [Russian President] Mr. [Vladimir] Putin is waging on Ukraine is in a way drawing NATO closer together, even though there are less than perfect conversations about how we should go about fixing things. Broadly now, people understand what Mr. Putin is, what Russia represents, and the problems that this is going to give us in the future. And we see nations now realizing that they have to invest in their defense.  

VOA: According to Politico, some Trump-aligned national security experts are saying that he is “mulling a deal” where NATO commits to no further eastward expansion, specifically into Ukraine and Georgia, and negotiates with Putin over how much Ukrainian territory “Moscow can keep” in exchange for a cease-fire. What would that mean for Georgia and Ukraine?  

Breedlove: So, what you’re talking about, to me, amounts to capitulation. I don’t believe that Mr. [Donald] Trump would capitulate in quite that manner to Russia and give in to all of Russia’s demands. I think what we need to focus on is what changes in respect to Russia in these conversations, remembering that Russia is a nation that amassed its army, marched across internationally recognized borders and is now trying to subjugate one of its neighbors. I do not believe that even Mr. Trump will sign up to that as an end result. 

At some point we will have to sit down at the table, and what it looks like coming away from the table, I think, is a long way from being determined. And I do not believe that the American people will support capitulation. … And so I think that whoever is the next president, as their team sits down to try to resolve this, we’re going to have to remember that capitulation is not a way forward. 

VOA: If Georgia’s domestic political problems grow, what effect will that have on its prospects for joining NATO? 

Breedlove: I think that the question should be asked like this: if Russia’s interference in Georgia’s internal affairs continues and gets worse, what does that mean? Because I believe that there is Russian bad money and Russian bad people and politics involved in Georgia right now. Georgia is a hybrid warfare battleground whereby Russia is trying to use all manner of influence to drag Georgia away from the West and to regain control of Georgian politics. 

VOA: It’s clear that during next week’s summit, Ukraine will not be offered NATO membership. But apart from the offer to establish a “bridge” at a NATO base, what do you think can be done to bring Ukraine and NATO closer together?   

Breedlove: Well, the first thing to do is to help them win this war. Our policies are very weak. We say things like “we’re going to be there for as long as it takes” or “we’re going to give them everything they need.” What we fail to say is — we’re going to be there as long as it takes to do what? We’re going to give them everything they need to do what? And that “to do what” should sound something like “to completely defeat the Russian forces inside of Ukraine and drive them back behind Russia’s borders.” But we are not doing that. And so one of the most important things about this upcoming summit … is that we need a demonstrative public declaratory policy on how we would support Ukraine to win the war against Russia and to expel Russian forces from Ukrainian lands. 
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MOSCOW — The Kremlin on Thursday said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Russia next Monday and Tuesday and hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The visit was first announced by Russian officials last month, but the dates have not been previously disclosed.

Russia has had strong ties with India since the Cold War, and New Delhi’s importance as a key trading partner for Moscow has grown since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China and India have become key buyers of Russian oil following sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies that shut most Western markets for Russian exports.

Under Modi’s leadership, India has avoided condemning Russia’s action in Ukraine while emphasizing the need for a peaceful settlement.

The partnership between Moscow and New Delhi has become fraught, however, since Russia started developing closer ties with India’s main rival, China, because of the hostilities in Ukraine.

Modi on Thursday skipped the summit of a security grouping created by Moscow and Beijing to counter Western alliances.

Modi sent his foreign minister to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at its annual meeting in Kazakhstan’s capital of Astana. The meeting is being attended by Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Indian media reports speculated that the recently reelected Modi was busy with the Parliament session last week.

Modi last visited Russia in 2019 for an economic forum in the far eastern port of Vladivostok. He last traveled to Moscow in 2015. Putin last met with Modi in September 2022 at a summit of the SCO in Uzbekistan. In 2021, Putin also traveled to New Delhi and held talks with the Indian leader.

Tensions between Beijing and New Delhi have continued since a confrontation in June 2020 along the disputed China-India border in which rival troops fought with rocks, clubs and fists. At least 20 Indian troops and four Chinese soldiers were killed.

After his reelection to a third straight term. Modi attended the G7 meeting in Italy’s Apulia region last month and addressed artificial intelligence, energy, and regional issues in Africa and the Mediterranean.

In the early 1990s, the Soviet Union was the source of about 70% of Indian army weapons, 80% of its air force systems and 85% of its navy platforms.

India bought its first aircraft carrier, INS Vikramaditya, from Russia in 2004. It had served in the former Soviet Union and later in the Russian navy.

With the Russian supply line hit by the fighting in Ukraine, India has been reducing its dependency on Russian arms and diversifying its defense procurements, buying more from the U.S., Israel, France and Italy.
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