Volodymyr Zelenksyy has hailed a “new stage in the use of Ukrainian weapons” after his security services struck a Russian pumping station more than 900 miles (1,500km) from the border with Ukraine. The president said these long-range weapons, targeted at oil-producing infrastructure, would “limit the potential of Russia’s war”. Ukraine finally regained more territory than it lost in February, and built on these wins in March, but there is still no end in sight.

Can Ukraine win?
Kyiv’s “inherent weakness is that it depends on others for funding and arms”, said the BBC’s international editor, Jeremy Bowen. By contrast, Russia “makes most of its own weapons” and is “buying drones from Iran and ammunition from North Korea” with no limitations on how they are used. It also enjoys an advantage in raw manpower, bolstered by massive conscription drives.

But a newly approved €90 billion loan from the EU will bolster Ukraine’s cause, allowing it to replenish both its air defences and its rapidly depleting stockpile of weapons, equipment and ammunition.

How likely is a peace deal?
The Trump administration has centred peace talks “around a core bargain”, said Samuel Charap and Jennifer Kavanagh on Foreign Affairs: that Ukraine cedes the roughly 20% of the Donbas region it still holds to Russia “in exchange for security commitments from the US and Europe”. Kyiv has raised the option of establishing a demilitarised “free economic zone” in eastern Donbas, but it would never agree to hand over control of territory.

There is little incentive for Vladimir Putin to engage with peace talks now that Russia’s oil revenues are rising because of the war in the Middle East. Of course, he’d gladly have taken a “Kremlin-friendly peace plan that enshrines Ukraine’s perpetual subordination”, said The New York Times. But he’d also see “a failed process” as a victory if it leads Donald Trump to “pull remaining support for Ukraine”.

How many troops have died?
By the start of this year, Russian forces had suffered “nearly 1.2 million casualties” – “more losses than any major power in any war since World War II”, said the Center for Strategic & International Studies think tank. Ukrainian casualty tolls are estimated to be around 500,000 to 600,000.

“London’s bridges really are falling down,” said The New York Times, as the state of the capital’s river crossings made headlines across the Atlantic. Three Thames crossings are closed to cars and reopening them may not be a simple task.

‘National embarrassment’
Engineers conducting a safety assessment of Hammersmith Bridge in 2019 noticed micro-fractures in the cast iron pedestals holding the bridge together. The west London crossing has been closed to cars ever since. Broadmead Road Bridge, a main route in Redbridge, northeast London, has been shut for several years and Albert Bridge (pictured above), “another vital west London crossing”, is shut to vehicles until the beginning of next year because of structural damage, said The Times.

Three more London bridges – Westminster, Lambeth and Vauxhall –have also been placed on the “critical” list. Although these three aren’t at “immediate risk of closure, the news brings into sharper focus the state of the capital’s river crossings”. It has become “something of a national embarrassment”. London’s bridges are now a “target of international jibes”.

‘Managed decline’
Many of the city’s most important crossings, like Hammersmith Bridge and Westminster Bridge, were built more than 100 years ago. They were never designed for today’s levels of traffic – both in terms of volume and weight – and local authorities are now struggling to afford their maintenance and repair.

In 2023, the “State of the City Report” found that London’s bridges were in a “state of managed decline”, and £238 million a year needed to be spent to preserve their condition. From 2010-21, just £100 million had been spent.

Simon Lightwood, the roads minister, has said Hammersmith Bridge is a “good candidate” for investment from the Structures Fund, a pot of government money reserved for infrastructure projects. Meanwhile, TfL has recently improved the road surfaces on Vauxhall and Lambeth Bridges – to protect “below deck structural elements”. But experts told the BBC that, as London’s infrastructure “ages and struggles to cope with more and heavier traffic”, it’s “inevitable” that other bridges “will need to be shut in the future”.

A visitor photographs Ron Mueck’s “In Bed” installation at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. The London-based artist, known for his hyper-realistic sculptures, is opening his second solo exhibition in Japan today.

Christopher Jue / Getty Images

Tony Schumacher gave himself a “tough act to follow” with “The Responder”, said Carol Midgley in The Times. Based on the years he spent working as a police officer, the “quietly glorious” drama about a beleaguered first responder “electrified the flagging cop show format”.

His new series stars the “endlessly watchable” Michael Socha as Matty, a “likeable but chaotic” Liverpool casino manager, and Sheridan Smith (pictured above) as the “equally likeable” Leanne, who works as a cashier. Both have money worries and both start “cooking the books to steal cash until they realise they are both on the fiddle, and begin to work together”.

Schumacher has a “rare talent for fleshing out every character and relationship”, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. Leanne is a single mother of two, facing eviction and struggling to make ends meet while looking after her kids and caring for her grandmother who has dementia. Meanwhile, “recovering drug addict” Matty is still in the “grip of a gambling addiction” and is “too ashamed of himself” to see much of his teenage daughter “whom he loves dearly”.

On the surface, this is the tale of a robbery at a casino. But, in reality, it’s an “astonishing, deeply angry, deeply moving state-of-the-nation piece merely masquerading as a mesmerising, perfectly paced and plotted thriller”.

Leanne and Matty soon find themselves “in over their heads” and “at the mercy of serious criminals”, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. It’s an “enthralling watch”, carried by the “sheer force” of the “charisma” of Socha and Smith. “You’ll be rooting for this hopeless Bonnie and Clyde.”

Is Andy Burnham actually the answer?
Jonn Elledge in The New Statesman
If Andy Burnham can find a way to replace Keir Starmer, “there are reasons to be excited”, writes Jonn Elledge. He’s “personable, well-liked” and has “impressed as mayor of Greater Manchester”. But it’s not so easy “to convince people you’re on their side” from “inside Downing Street”. Getting the UK “out of this mess” requires a high “level of honesty with the public”, and it’s “not clear that Burnham’s political instinct is to tell people things they don’t want to hear”.

I’m not just any shoplifter…
Anonymous in the Daily Mail
I’m a “discerning shoplifter” and take a “moral approach to my pilfering”, says an unnamed writer. I know it’s illegal, but I follow “my own shoplifting code of conduct”, stealing “low value” food items, and only when the other “contents of my basket come to more than £25”. I’ll admit “I do get a buzz”, but that’s not my “main reason”: I think “the big supermarket coffers” can “take it – and so I will”.

Meghan has no reason to still be whingeing after all this time
Celia Walden in The Telegraph
“Another day, another chance to remind the world just how much hardship you’ve endured”, at least if you’re the Duchess of Sussex, writes Celia Walden. She’s now sharing “astrological Instagram stories” about having been through “the hardest seven years” of her life. “The strings on that violin must be almost worn through.” Yet her life actually “looks pretty damn good to most people”. She’d be far “more appealing” if “she dropped the whingeing”, so “how about that happy rebrand, Meghan”?