Sri Lankans elected Marxist-leaning Anura Kumara Dissanayake as their new president on Sunday, putting faith in his pledge to fight corruption and bolster a fragile economic recovery following the South Asian nation’s worst financial crisis in decades.

Dissanayake, 55, who does not possess political lineage like some of his rivals in the presidential election, led from start to finish during the counting of votes, knocking out incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe and opposition leader Sajith Premadasa.

“We believe that we can turn this country around, we can build a stable government … and move forward. For me this is not a position, it is a responsibility,” Dissanayake told reporters after his victory which was confirmed after a second tally of votes.

The election was a referendum on Wickremesinghe, who led the heavily indebted nation’s fragile economic recovery from an economic meltdown but the austerity measures that were key to this recovery angered voters. He finished third with 17% of the votes.

“Mr. President, here I handover to you with much love, the dear child called Sri Lanka, whom we both love very dearly,” Wickremesinghe, 75, said in a statement conceding defeat.

Dissanayake polled 5.6 million or 42.3% of the votes, a massive boost to the 3% he managed in the last presidential election in 2019. Premadasa was second at 32.8%.

It was the first time in the Indian Ocean island’s history that the presidential race was decided by a second tally of votes after the top two candidates failed to win the mandatory 50% of votes to be declared winner.

Under the electoral system, voters cast three preferential votes for their chosen candidates. If no candidate wins 50% in the first count, a second tally determines the winner between the top two candidates, using the preferential votes cast.

About 75% of the 17 million eligible voters cast their ballots, according to the election commission.

This was the country’s first election since its economy buckled in 2022 under a severe foreign exchange shortage, leaving it unable to pay for imports of essentials including fuel, medicine and cooking gas. Protests forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee and later resign.

Dissanayake presented himself as the candidate of change for those reeling under austerity measures linked to a $2.9 billion International Monetary Fund bailout, promising to dissolve parliament within 45 days of taking office for a fresh mandate for his policies in general elections.

“The election result clearly shows the uprising that we witnessed in 2022 is not over,” said Pradeep Peiris, a political scientist at the University of Colombo.

“People have voted in line with those aspirations to have different political practices and political institutions. AKD (as Dissanayake is popularly known) reflects these aspirations and people have rallied around him.”

Dissanayake has worried investors with a manifesto pledging to slash taxes, which could impact IMF fiscal targets, and a $25 billion debt rework. But during campaigning, he took a more conciliatory approach, saying all changes would be undertaken in consultation with the IMF and that he was committed to ensuring repayment of debt.

Grinding poverty for millions

Buttressed by the IMF deal, Sri Lanka’s economy has managed a tentative recovery. It is expected to grow this year for the first time in three years and inflation has moderated to 0.5% from a crisis peak of 70%.

But the continued high cost of living was a critical issue for many voters as millions remain mired in poverty and many pinned hopes of a better future on the next leader.

Dissanayake ran as a candidate for the National People’s Power alliance, which includes his Marxist-leaning Janatha Vimukthi Peremuna party.

Although JVP has just three seats in parliament, Dissanayake’s promises of tough anti-corruption measures and more policies to support the poor boosted his popularity.

He will have to ensure Sri Lanka sticks with the IMF program until 2027 to get its economy on a stable growth path, reassure markets, repay debt, attract investors and help a quarter of its people out of poverty.

“Root cause for the downfall of this country is bad management. We have a strong feeling if we have a good manager to rule this country… we can be successful in future,” said Janak Dias, 55, a real estate businessmen.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) looked set to fend off the far right in a state election in Brandenburg on Sunday after trailing behind the Alternative for Germany (AfD) throughout the campaign, exit polls indicated.

The SPD, which has governed the state surrounding the capital Berlin since reunification in 1990, scored 31.8% of the vote, ahead of the far-right Alternative for Germany on 29.2%, in a last-minute comeback, according to the exit poll by broadcaster ZDF.

The success for the SPD could give Scholz a slight reprieve from party discussions about his suitability to be once more be its chancellor candidate for the federal election scheduled for next September given his unpopularity with voters.

It is unlikely, however, to give him or his party a major boost given the popular, incumbent SPD premier Dietmar Woidke had distanced himself from Scholz during the campaign and criticized the federal government’s policies.

“Dietmar Woidke and his Brandenburg SPD have made a furious comeback in recent weeks,” said SPD party general secretary Kevin Kuehnert.

“For us in the federal SPD, this evening, if things go well, the problems that lie ahead of us will not have gotten any bigger. But they have not gotten any smaller either,” he said.

Three-quarters of those who voted for the SPD did not do so out of conviction but rather to fend off the AfD, according to the exit poll published by broadcaster ARD. Turnout rose to 73% from 61% five years ago, according to ZDF.

The SPD is polling just 15% at national level, down from the 25.7% it scored in the 2021 federal election. That is behind the AfD on around 20% and opposition conservatives on 32%.

All three parties in Scholz’s ideologically heterogeneous coalition combined are currently polling at around 30%, less than the conservatives alone.

The coalition has come under fire for its constant bickering and for its handling of immigration. In the formerly Communist-run East, many voters are also critical of its delivery of weapons to Ukraine to help it fend off Russia’s full-scale invasion.

No time for complacency

The vote in Brandenburg comes three weeks after the Russia-friendly AfD became the first far-right party to top a state election in Germany since World War Two, in Thuringia. It also performed strongly in neighboring Saxony, coming hot on the heels of the conservatives in second place.

Woidke warned against complacency, noting the AfD was still gaining momentum. The ZDF poll suggested it had gained 5.7 percentage points since the last Brandenburg election in 2019.

AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla noted the AfD had made strong gains among young voters – a trend that was reflected for far-right parties across Europe in the EU elections in June.

The new leftist Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht was on track to come in third place, on 12% according to the poll, ahead of the conservatives on 11.6%, underscoring the ongoing upheavals in Germany’s political landscape making predictions tricky.

The Greens, one of the junior partners in Scholz’s coalition at a federal level, came in on 4.7%, just below the 5% threshold to automatically make it into state parliament.

The result achieved by the other junior coalition partner, the Free Democrats (FDP), was too insignificant to be reflected in the poll.

The last 48 hours has seen the most intense exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah in almost a year of war in Gaza, as the Lebanese militant group fired projectiles deeper into Israeli territory than has previously been seen.

On Saturday Israel pounded Hezbollah targets with nearly 300 strikes it what they described as preemptive action to thwart a planned attack. Hezbollah meanwhile has been launching a barrage of rockets and other projectiles at Israel in what it says is retaliation for Israeli attacks in Lebanon.

Hezbollah – the Lebanon-based, Iran-backed militant group – has been left reeling after two days of blasts targeting pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members was followed by an Israeli strike on southern Beirut, which killed at least 45 people including a top commander and other senior operatives.

Here’s what we know about the escalation of tensions.

What’s happened, when and where?

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Lebanon was rocked by two similar, surprise attacks. On Tuesday afternoon, pagers exploded at the same time across several parts of Lebanon, including capital Beirut, and in several towns in the central Beqaa valley, strongholds for the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

Almost exactly 24 hours later, Lebanon was rocked by a second attack Wednesday, when walkie-talkies detonated in the suburbs of Beirut and in the south of the country.

Lebanese health minister Firass Abiad put the death toll from both attacks at 39; 12 on Tuesday and 27 on Wednesday.

The exploding devices attacks were followed by an Israeli strike on the Lebanese capital of Beirut on Friday, which killed at least 45 including senior Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil, and levelled a multistory building in a densely populated neighborhood.

The developments put the region on a knife edge, with Hezbollah targeting northern Israel with a series of rockets and missiles overnight on Saturday into Sunday, striking deeper into Israeli territory than they have done in other recent attacks. The attacks, Hezbollah said, were in response to repeated Israeli strikes in Lebanon that have led to the deaths of “many civilians.” Among the targets, Hezbollah said it hit an air base with Fadi 1 and Fadi 2 missiles, a longer-range weapon seemingly not used so far.

Most were intercepted but some fell, causing damage. The Israeli military reported impacts in Kiryat Bialik, Tsur Shalom and Moreshet near the port city of Haifa, around 40 km (25 miles) south of the border, marking one of the deepest direct hits by the Iran-backed group since the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war.

Schools have closed in many northern areas of Israel, and gatherings have been restricted.

Israel meanwhile fired nearly 300 projectiles into southern Lebanon on Saturday in what the military said was pre-emptive action against a planned Hezbollah attack. Israel continued its strikes into Sunday, with Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) reporting two people were killed Sunday morning in southern Lebanon.

Will the conflict escalate?

Exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah have occurred consistently since the outbreak of war in Gaza on October 8, the day after Hamas’ attack on Israel, in skirmishes which have long sparked fears of the fighting spilling over into a wider regional conflict.

Key players have at times appeared to walk right up to the brink, but tensions have de-escalated given the grave consequences of an all-out war in the Middle East.

However, the intensity of attacks between Israel and Hezbollah seen over the past few days has been unprecedented, renewing fears of a wider war that could drag in the entire region, as well as Israel’s chief ally the United States.

While Hezbollah’s leader has previously stated he does not want a fully-fledged regional war, experts have said he may now be under more pressure to act following the spate of explosions, and with Israel set on moving its military objectives to its northern border.

Israeli President Israel Herzog told Sky News on Sunday said that Israel “is not interested to be at war with Lebanon.” He instead blamed Hezbollah for the military escalation between the two nations.

Hezbollah has admitted the attacks have left them weakened but also show little sign of pulling back. Naim Qassim – the group’s second most important figure after leader Hassan Nasrallah – said a “a battle without limits” was now underway.

Why did Israel target Lebanon now?

Hezbollah and Israel have been in conflict for decades – but the two have ramped up their cross-border attacks on each other since last October when the war in Gaza began, following Palestinian militant group Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel.

Hezbollah is part of a larger Iran-led axis across the Middle East spanning Yemen, Syria, Gaza and Iraq that has engaged in a simmering conflict with Israel and its allies over the past 11 months.

The axis has said they will continue striking Israeli targets as long as the war in Gaza goes on, rebranding themselves as a “supportive front” for Palestinians in the strip, as described by a senior Hezbollah leader.

Israel may have chosen this timing for the attacks because it believed Hezbollah had discovered the pagers’ capability – making it a “use it or lose it” moment, said an Israeli source familiar with national security.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may also have wanted to shore up domestic support. Officials and residents from the northern region have become increasingly vocal about the need to return to their homes after being evacuated due to attacks, piling pressure on the government to act against the threat of Hezbollah’s rockets from southern Lebanon.

On Tuesday, Israel made it a new war objective to return Israel’s northern residents to their homes near the border – which has long been understood to be a political necessity.

Speaking on Sunday, Netanyahu again put the focus on ensuring the return of Israel citizens to their homes in northern Israel and to restore security in that region.

Speaking ahead of a government meeting, he said: “If Hezbollah didn’t get the message – I assure you – they will get the message. We are determined to return our citizens in the north to their homes safely.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering a plan to force all Palestinian civilians out of northern Gaza, including Gaza City, in order to lay siege to Hamas and force the release of hostages.

It is unclear how many Palestinians remain north of the so-called Netzarim Corridor, which splits Gaza in two, but estimates run into the hundreds of thousands. The plan does not mention whether, when, or how civilians would be allowed to return to northern Gaza. After nearly a year of war, with no part of Gaza immune from Israeli airstrikes, Palestinians have been increasingly unwilling to heed Israeli demands to relocate.

The idea comes from a group of retired Israeli military generals, who have formally presented it to the Israeli cabinet and a powerful parliamentary committee. The goal, they say, is to use siege tactics to starve Hamas fighters and force them to release 101 hostages still held in the territory.

“Those who leave will receive food and water,” Giora Eiland, a retired Israeli military general who is spearheading the proposal, says in a slickly produced video posted online earlier this month. “But in a week the entire territory of the northern Gaza Strip will become military territory, and this military territory as far as we are concerned, no supplies will enter it.”

“It is one of the plans being considered, but there are several others,” he said, according to Kan. “We are committed to dismantling the civilian control of Hamas.”

It is unclear when the meeting took place.

An Israeli official confirmed the veracity of that quote, but said, “seeing it positively does not mean adopting it.”

The official said that the head of the Israel Defense Forces’ strategic division will in the coming days present to Netanyahu “several alternatives” for how to “deprive Hamas of civilian control capabilities in Gaza.”

Calls to adopt plan

The public face of the proposal is Eiland, who had an illustrious career rising to the rank of major general and serving as head of the prime minister’s National Security Council from 2004 to 2006.

“The reality today in Gaza is that Sinwar is really not stressed,” he says in the video. “The right thing to do is to inform the approximately 300,000 residents who remained in the northern Gaza Strip, citizen residents, of the following: Not that we are suggesting you leave the northern Gaza Strip, we are ordering you to leave the northern Gaza Strip.”

“In a week, the entire territory of the northern Gaza Strip will become military territory. And this military territory, as far as we are concerned, no supplies will enter it. That is why 5,000 terrorists who are in this situation, they can either surrender or starve.”

“Dictators like Sinwar are not afraid of military pressure. They are afraid of two other things: a governmental alternative and the existence of an angry mob that can overthrow them.”

The Commanders and Reserve Fighters Forum, a group of retired and reservist commanders, has championed the plan “to bring about a de facto change in the war situation.”

“It will all depend on what will happen in the future,” Retired Major-General Gershon Hacohen said in a text message. “But there is no indication in the plan that they will never be able to go back.”

The plan has been presented to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Meirav Cohen, a member of Knesset from the centrist Yesh Atid party, lambasted the government for allowing aid trucks into Gaza.

“The only threat that they are facing is obesity,” she said during a meeting with the pressure group, including Giora Eiland. “Is this how we will bring our hostages back home? So I think that the plan that Giora and other commanders presented here is very smart. It sets clear rules. We have to implement it.”

In the letter addressed to Netanyahu and his fellow ministers, 27 of the 120 members of Knesset lament that “we have not yet reached the finish line in any of the goals defined by the War Cabinet.”

They call on the government to implement Eiland’s plan in northern Gaza. “After carrying out the program in this area, it is possible to carry it out in other parts of the strip,” they say.

An Israeli airstrike reduces a nine-story apartment building in Beirut’s southern suburb to a large mound of rubble. A man covered in dust flails lifelessly in the arms of a rescuer. A corpse in a body bag is whizzed past parked ambulances on the back of a quad bike.

Suspicion pierces through the catastrophic aftermath of the attack. Plainclothes Hezbollah members snatch the phones of people snapping photos, demanding they be deleted. “Get the cell phones out of here!” screams one woman.

It was Iran-backed Hezbollah’s darkest hour. A meeting that gathered commanders of the group’s elite Radwan force in the basement of a residential building had been struck down by Israeli warplanes.

At least 45 people, including women and children, were killed, along with 16 Hezbollah militants, including the Radwan force leader Ibrahim Aqil and senior commander Ahmad Wehbe.

Just two days earlier, hundreds of walkie-talkies belonging to the Lebanese militant group’s members detonated in a single minute. A day before that, thousands of exploding Hezbollah pagers maimed hundreds of people. Overall, at least 80 people have been killed in attacks since Tuesday. Most were Hezbollah operatives, but the casualties also include women and children.

Now, the Middle East’s most formidable non-state fighting force is reeling from the biggest-ever hit to its military structure, as well as the most visible Israeli infiltration of its ranks and communications infrastructureinits more than 40-year history. The internal breach enabled the successive blows this week and sowed panic within Hezbollah, according to Lebanese security sources.

In a Saturday news conference, Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi gave an impassioned speech, declaring that the country was in the throes of an Israeli “breach” and vowing to ramp up the monitoring of “foreigners, hotels and Syrian camps.”

The enemy’s firepower had pursued Hezbollah to its lair, attacking rank-and-file and military leadership alike.

Weakened militarily and stripped of its cloak of secrecy, Hezbollah has arrived at the most delicate phase of its decades-long fight against Israel. It hoped that a low-level fight on the border on behalf of the Palestinians would prop up Hamas’ position in the negotiations, but a ceasefire in Gaza seems more elusive than ever before. Now its limited confrontation with Israel has exacted a seemingly unlimited price from the militant group.

Yet the compulsion to lash out has rarely been greater, bringing the region even closer to the brink of a catastrophic war.

In its most high-level statement since the Israeli airstrike on Friday, Hezbollah’s second in command Naim Qassem declared “a new chapter” in the confrontations which he called “a battle without limits.”

Hezbollah’s retaliation in the early hours of Sunday appears to be its most forceful attack since confrontations at the Israel-Lebanon border began last October. The group said it targeted the Ramat David airbase in southeast Haifa, and the Rafael military industries site, north of Haifa. The Israeli military did not respond to questions about whether the site was impacted but officials confirmed direct hits nearby.

This was one of the deepest hits by Hezbollah since the last all-out war between Lebanon and Israel in 2006. The group also said it used new missiles it calls Fadi-1 and Fadi-2, believed to be medium-range rockets. If confirmed, this would mark one of the first time Hezbollah has fired weapons outside of its short-range arsenal.

The group will hope to have restored some of its deterrence power, and to force an end to Israel’s “new chapter” in its fight against Hezbollah.

What is certain is that there are new unwritten rules of engagement between Hezbollah and Israel. Until a few months ago, an Israeli strike in Beirut was believed to provoke a Hezbollah retaliation in a major Israeli city. After Israel killed a Hamas leader in southern Beirut in January, that turned out not to be true. Since then, Israel has attacked the Lebanese capital five times.

Hours before the Israeli airstrike on Friday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called the strikes on the wireless devices “unprecedented and severe.” The group had lost this battle, he seemed to say, but not the war.

Hezbollah’s supporters are trying to put on a brave face. “War is a boxing match. One day you win, another day you lose,” said Hussein, attending the funeral of three Hezbollah fighters slain in Friday’s strike.

“We are strong in our faith … We are all ready to spill blood for Nasrallah.”

Israel’s military has raided and ordered the closure of Al Jazeera’s office in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, the network said.

Al Jazeera broadcast live footage early on Sunday of Israeli soldiers entering its offices in Ramallah, capturing the reactions of bureau chief Walid Omary and staff members live on air.

Video broadcast by Al Jazeera showed one soldier informing Omary of a military order to close Al Jazeera’s office for 45 days.

Reading the military order given to him on air, Omary said staff members had only ten minutes to take their personal belongings and cameras and vacate the office.

When Omary asked the Israeli soliders why the office was being closed, he was told the reason had been provided in the written military order.

Al Jazeera’s office in Ramallah has been operational for decades. It became even more essential for the network after Israel shut down its Jerusalem office and seized some of its communication equipment in May, prompting condemnation from the United Nations and rights groups over what they said were Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s moves to restrict press freedoms.

After Al Jazeera staff left the Ramallah office, live footage showed Omary and others in the street outside, as the journalist said soldiers had taken over the office and were confiscating materials.

Shortly after, as Israeli soldiers approached Omary, the live video feed was cut, and Omary could be heard saying that soldiers had taken the camera and broadcast equipment the team had been using.

The Foreign Press Association (FPA), which represents foreign press in Israel and the Palestinian territories, said it was “deeply troubled” by what it described as an “escalation which threatens press freedom.” The FPA called on the Israeli government to reconsider the decision.

The Israeli government has long complained about Al Jazeera’s operations, alleging anti-Israeli bias and accusing the network of being a “mouthpiece for Hamas.”

The Qatari-based news network, which has produced on the ground reporting of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, denies this. Several of its journalists have been killed or injured since the Gaza offensive began after the October 7 attacks.

A gas explosion in a coal mine in Iran’s South Khorasan Province killed at least 51 people and injured 20, Iran’s state media said on Sunday.

The accident was caused by a methane gas explosion in two blocks, B and C, of the mine run by the Madanjoo company, state media said.

“76% of the country’s coal is provided from this region and around 8 to 10 big companies are working in the region including Madanjoo company,” the governor of South Khorasan Province Ali Akbar Rahimi told state TV on Sunday.

The rescue operation in block B has been completed. Of the 47 workers who were in the block 30 died and 17 were injured, Rahimi said earlier.

Rescue operations in block C have started. Methane density in the block is high and the operation will take around 3-4 hours, he added.

There were 69 workers in the blocks at the time of the explosion, state TV reported.

“Seventeen injured people were transported to the hospital and 24 people are still missing,” it said earlier on Sunday citing the head of Iran’s Red Crescent.

The explosion occurred at 9 p.m. (1730 GMT) on Saturday, state media said.

President Masoud Pezeshkian expressed condolences to the victims’ families. “I spoke with ministers and we will do our best to follow up,” Pezeshkian said in televised comments.

One person has died and several people are missing after record rainfall brought flooding and landslides to coastal Japan, in the same region that was hit by a massive earthquake on New Year’s Day, local authorities said.

Japan’s weather agency issued its highest emergency warning for Ishikawa prefecture Saturday, urging residents to take extreme precautions in what it said is the heaviest rainfall the region has ever experienced. The warning was downgraded Sunday morning, but the weather agency asked residents to remain on high alert.

The torrential downpour caused 16 rivers in the area to breach their banks, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported.

One person in the city of Suzu died after their home was swallowed by a landslide, NHK reported. At least six people are missing, Ishikawa authorities said, and tens of thousands of people have been forced to evacuate, according to NHK.

The storm has knocked out power in more than 6,200 households, authorities said.

It’s a region that has already endured destruction and misery once this year.

On January 1, a powerful 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck the Noto peninsula in Ishikawa, killing hundreds of people and causing widespread destruction that the region is still recovering from.

Temporary housing built for people who lost their homes in the earthquake was surrounded by several feet of murky floodwater, photos showed.

According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, four workers who were doing earthquake restoration work in Wajima city have gone missing. The ministry says it’s possible they were caught up in a landslide.

Earthquakes make soil unstable and prone to further landslides, especially after heavy rains.

Next week, an already very public debate over whether Ukraine should be allowed to use long-range Western-supplied missiles on Russian soil will come under an even brighter international spotlight.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is set to meet not only US President Joe Biden, who has signaled he is open to discussing the issue, but also likely both US presidential candidates on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

Those meetings come as experts say the public wrangling on this topic has raised the stakes of the decision, and potentially shifted the role these missiles – the Franco-British Storm Shadow/Scalps and US-made Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) – might play in this expanding war.

It was almost exactly a year ago, also during an in-person meeting with Zelensky in the United States, that Biden made the decision to supply the ATACMS to Ukraine.

The news did leak out, but official confirmation only came a month later, Zelensky burying it at the end of a nightly address on October 18. “Our agreements with President Biden are being implemented,” he said.  “And they are being implemented very accurately – ATACMS have proven themselves.” By that point the missiles had, according to US officials, already been used in several strikes on Russian-occupied Luhansk and the southern coastal town of Berdiansk.

A few months earlier, a similar story played out with the British Storm Shadows when then-Defence Secretary Ben Wallace only confirmed they had been supplied once they were already in use. In both cases, Ukraine promised not to use them on Russian territory.

This September, Zelensky is employing a strategy of more openly challenging his allies, and that, combined with Russia’s open threats that any lifting of restrictions on their use would mean war with NATO, has turned the issue of firing these missiles into Russia into a political touchstone, an ultimate determinant of the extent of Western support.

Zelensky has refused to allow the topic to fall out of the headlines – publicly criticizing his allies’ hesitation after a Russian strike on a military educational facility in Poltava killed  more than 50 people earlier this month.

“Every day of delay is, unfortunately, the death of people,” he said.

Last weekend, after a Russian bomb attack on an apartment block in Kharkiv, he even made veiled accusations of cowardice, saying: “This terror can be stopped. But to stop it, the fear of making strong, objectively necessary decisions must be overcome.”

“Zelensky has taken a bit of a risk on this,” said Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, a think-tank in London. “He’s almost playing political chicken. He’s kind of daring people to support him.” If it happens though, the political dividend would be significant, says Savill, blunting Russian rhetoric and “demonstrating firm international support” for Ukraine.

As for the battlefield dividend, that, experts say, is less clear cut.

Opinion is divided on the extent to which the public debate around the missile permissions has blunted their potential utility – especially when it comes to targeting Russian fighter jets and missiles before they can be used against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure. US intelligence believes 90% of Russian aircraft that launch deadly glide bombs (at least 100 per day, according to Zelensky), are more than 300 kilometers (186 miles) from Ukrainian-controlled territory, so outside of ATACMS range. And that number may be increasing. Russia recently relocated planes from two bases near the border further east, according to one US official.

Savill agrees “lots of the juiciest targets” have likely been moved deeper into Russian territory, meaning the impact on the war may be “limited.” But that doesn’t mean the missiles have no utility. Storm Shadows, designed to penetrate deep into concrete, could be effective against military headquarters, or ammunition stores, many of which are still in range.  ATACMS, some of which have cluster warheads, could be used to do significant damage to airfields. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a think-tank in Washington DC, has calculated that 15 Russian airfields are in range of ATACMs (though it’s not clear how many aircraft are still housed on them).

George Barros, the author of that ISW research, agrees a less public debate may have been preferable, but if the very prospect of these permissions being granted has forced Russia to move aircraft further from the border, it’s a good thing. It could reduce the number of bombing missions Russian planes can make (known in the military as the “sortie rate”) and buy Ukraine valuable detection and reaction time for incoming attacks.

More importantly, he believes that if Ukraine could strike Russian troops, weaponry and logistics within the 300-kilometer range of the top-end ATACMS, it would for the first time force Russia to calculate the risks of moving large amounts of troops and equipment into Ukraine.

Barros’ research has pinpointed at least 200 potential targets that would be in range of ATACMs, ranging from military regiments to fuel depots, weapons storage depots, and even the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military district in Rostov (all of which would be much harder to move than aircraft).

The list is also conservative, Barros acknowledges, and has not accounted for new targets installed after the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.  And some of the newest targets of all could, according to Savill, include Iranian FATH-360 ballistic missiles, which the US believes have already been supplied and have a range of just 75 kilometers (47 miles), far less than the Western missiles.

Experts also agree the missiles could provide valuable support to Ukraine’s drone and ground operations. Savill believes ATACMS could do serious damage to Russian air defense radars and systems, adding that “if you punch a hole through, actually Ukrainian long-range drones have got better options to penetrate deeper into Russia.” Hitting Russian air defense systems in the border areas could also improve Ukraine’s chances of retaking its own territory, said Barros.

“You actually do open up some interesting areas where there’s parts of occupying Ukraine that are no longer under Russia’s air defense umbrella,” he said.

There’s also the option in theory, Savill said, to extend the range of the missiles by launching from Ukrainian positions inside Kursk, though that could put Ukrainian bombers and missile launchers in the crosshairs of Russian air defenses.

Ultimately, Ukraine continues to argue that the ability to use Western-supplied long-range missiles inside Russia is part of the complex jigsaw puzzle of ending this war on Kyiv’s terms — and a way to show Russia it cannot outlast Ukraine’s allies.

Zelensky is heading to the US on the one hand buoyed by the Kursk offensive providing fresh evidence of both Ukrainian ingenuity and, he argues, the flimsiness of Russian “red lines,” but on the other hand motivated by the prospect of a third winter with critical electricity shortages, and still inadequate supplies of equipment and manpower.

“We need to have this long-range capability not only on the occupied territory of Ukraine, but also on Russian territory,” he told a large gathering of Ukraine’s allies at the US’ Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany earlier this month, “so Russia is motivated to seek peace.”

Zelensky has been pushing Ukraine’s allies to ease restrictions on weapons and although there have been signs of the US shifting its stance he said they are yet to be given the go-ahead.

“We do have long-range weapons. But let’s just say not the amount we need.” Zelensky said Friday, adding that “neither the US nor the United Kingdom gave us permission to use these weapons on the territory of Russia.”

Speaking to journalists, Zelensky blamed the allies’ hesitation to authorize such use on escalations fears.

“There are many different factors, someone is talking about something, someone is negotiating with someone, for someone it is indeed an escalation. I think Biden is actually receiving information from his circle today that there may be an escalation. However, and this is important, not all of his entourage think so. And that’s an achievement, that not all of his entourage thinks so,” Zelensky said.

The Ukrainian leader said he was hopeful his arguments would be heard next week.

“We have had some decisions in the history of our relationship with Biden, some very interesting and difficult dialogues. He would later change his mind,” he said.

Zelensky added that, besides Biden, he would also meet the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I want to see what she thinks about this victory plan. As I told you, the plan includes not only what is needed from Biden today. But it also includes the fact that we will have a different situation after November. That is, there will be a new president in the United States. And we need to talk to each of the candidates about their perception of this,” he said.

He added that he will also “definitely” have a meeting with former president, Donald Trump, who in a recent debate refused to say if he wanted Ukraine to win the war.

Zelensky is expected to visit the US next week, taking part at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Ammunition depots hit

Ukrainian officials meanwhile said on Saturday that they struck two ammunition facilities in Russia’s Krasnodar and Tver regions, part of continued efforts to degrade Russian military infrastructure.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Saturday, that the Tikhoretsk arsenal in Russia’s Krasnodar region was targeted overnight in a joint operation with country’s Security Service (SBU), claiming that the facility is “one of the three largest ammunition storage bases of the occupiers and is one of the key facilities in the logistics system of the Russian troops.”

In a post on Telegram overnight, Krasnodar governor Veniamin Kondratiev acknowledged what he said was a “terrorist attack by the Kyiv regime,” but did not mention any ammunition depot being hit. He said that two drones were intercepted with its falling debris causing a fire, leading to the temporary evacuation of nearby settlements.

“The SBU, jointly with the entire Ukrainian Defense Forces, is systematically reducing the enemy’s missile and artillery potential,” the source said.

On Wednesday, Ukraine claimed it destroyed a large Russian ammunition depot in the western Russian region of Tver.

“Today, it was the next largest depot – one of the enemy’s important logistics facilities where ammunition was stored for attacks on Ukraine” said the source,” the source added on Saturday.