Ukraine, Iran, Mali and California: the nightly news

War in Ukraine: Putin rejects the meeting proposed by Zelensky. Vladimir Putin on Friday rejected Ukrainian President Volvodymyr Zelensky’s proposal for a one-on-one meeting to end the war in Ukraine. “I don’t see the point in a meetingâ€declared the Russian president from the International Economic Forum in Saint Petersburg. “This is only of interest to the Ukrainian side in order to stop the advance of our armed forces…he said, adding that “hostilities will end… when Russia has “reached [ses] objectives… Mr. Zelensky proposed the organization of this meeting in a rare personal letter sent Thursday to his Russian counterpart. “Unfortunately, Russia once again chooses war…reacted the Ukrainian president, according to comments reported by The Kyiv Post. Vladimir Poutine “just doesn’t want to end the warâ€he added.

Iran targets Kuwait and Bahrain after US strikes on its radar sites. The US military announced that Iran had fired on Friday “seven missiles aimed at Kuwait and Bahrain, its Gulf neighbors, but none had reached their targetâ€reports Al-Jazeera. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) confirmed, via the semi-official Tasnim agency, that it had attacked “enemy bases in the regionâ€. According to the United States, six of the missiles fired by Iran were intercepted, and the seventh deviated from its trajectory and did not reach its target. Earlier in the day, U.S. forces “downed four Iranian drones launched towards the Strait of Hormuz†and hit “Iranian coastal surveillance radar sitesâ€on the island of Qeshm and in Goruk, on the southern coast of Iran, specifies the Qatari channel. Kuwait and Bahrain host major US military bases in the Gulf, and have become targets for Tehran since the US and Israel launched their war against Iran on February 28.

A French diplomat heavily sentenced in Mali. A Malian court on Friday sentenced a French intelligence agent, employee of the French embassy, ​​to twenty years in prison, accused of espionage and“atteinte à la sûreté de l’Éatâ€. This conviction “brings a new blow†to relations between Mali, led by a military junta since the 2021 coup, and France, a former colonial power, observes Euronews. The French agent, detained in Mali since his arrest in August 2025 for conspiracy against the country’s institutions, “is also banned from staying in Mali for 20 years and will have to pay a fine of 5,400 euros…specifies the string. When the judgment was announced, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs once again denounced “unfounded accusationsâ€.

United States: The Trump administration launches investigations into the primaries in California. The Federal Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California announced Friday that it had launched, in coordination with the FBI, “of multiple enquêtes sur des electoral frauds†during the Californian primaries on June 2, reports the Los Angeles Times. These primaries, organized ahead of the mid-term elections next November, were open to candidates from all parties. Already on Wednesday, Donald Trump had accused the state’s Democrats of having “triché†during the vote. “Democratic officials strongly rejected Trump’s claims of fraud – accusations they predicted even before the vote, given his habit of challenging and denouncing fraud in elections lost by him or his party…covers the daily life of the west coast. And as usual, the American president “has provided no evidence to support his claims…adds the title.