World roundup: June 23 2026
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Ukraine, Colombia, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
June 23, 1757: A British East India Company army defeats a combined Bengali-French army at the Battle of Palashi (Plassey). EIC officials managed to turn Mir Jafar, the field commander of the Bengali army, to their side by promising to elevate him to the Bengali throne. This proved key to securing victory even though the EIC went into the battle heavily outnumbered. After the battle the British commander, Robert Clive, installed Mir Jafar in place of the ousted Siraj ud-Daulah as the Nawab of Bengal and effectively annexed Bengal into the East India Company’s territory. Plassey thus became one of the key battles in establishing British control over the Indian subcontinent.
June 23, 1865: Stand Watie surrenders to US forces at Fort Towson, in the Oklahoma Territory. In doing so he became the last Confederate general to capitulate in the US Civil War. Watie was one of two principal chiefs of the Cherokee Nation, elected by Confederate-sympathizing elements of the Cherokee and recognized by the CSA government. By 1865 he’d been promoted to brigadier general in the CSA army, commanding the First Indian Brigade of the Army of the Trans-Mississippi. That army was the last CSA theater command to surrender, on May 26. After the war Watie, no longer recognized as chief, largely stayed out of politics and died in 1871.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
United Nations Syria envoy Claudio Cordone told the Security Council on Monday that efforts to repair relations between the Syrian government and the country’s Druze community have “stalled.” The UN has been monitoring those efforts since violence between Druze militias on the one hand and Bedouin militias and government security forces on the other left hundreds of people dead in southern Syria’s Suwayda province in July 2025. The government unveiled a “roadmap” to guide the process back in September but according to Cordone the parties have made zero progress since then.
LEBANON
The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least two people in southern Lebanon on Monday in what may have been a violation of the “ceasefire” that was re-re-re-renewed over the weekend. That lasted around three days. The IDF claims that its soldiers fired on “armed terrorists who posed an immediate threat” to them.
Elsewhere, Israeli and Lebanese delegates began a new round of negotiations in Washington on Tuesday. Maybe they can discuss re-re-re-re-renewing the ceasefire, or the Lebanese side might try to get the Israelis to commit to at least a future withdrawal from Lebanese territory. There is no reason to think that the Israeli government will do that, though the two sides could discuss an eventual transfer of parts of southern Lebanon from IDF control to the Lebanese army.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The IDF reportedly killed a teenage girl in Gaza city on Monday in an airstrike that allegedly targeted a “Hamas militant.” It’s unclear if said militant was also among the casualties (at least three people were wounded in strikes in the vicinity). Coincidentally, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel published a report on Tuesday accusing the IDF of deliberately targeting children in Gaza as a component of its genocide. The report found that around 30 percent of those killed in Gaza since the October 7 attack have been children and that the IDF has intentionally targeted “neonatal and maternity care” facilities in the territory. Its humanitarian aid blockade has also taken a disproportionate toll on children.
Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill and Jawa Ahmad contend that Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” is operating less as an independent mediating body than as an agent of the Israeli government:
Now, with Western and regional media coverage firmly focused on Iran and the Israeli assault on Lebanon, the current negotiations between Palestinians and the BoP have been almost entirely ignored.
But the Board of Peace is continuing to try to chisel away at any possibility of Palestinian statehood through a 15-point “roadmap” it first presented to Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions in April. Drop Site News obtained two documents from the latest round of negotiations between the Palestinians and Trump’s board. The first is the full text of the Palestinian negotiators’ proposed amendments to the board’s roadmap for addressing a range of issues, including the demand that Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and their allies submit to total disarmament. The revised document was delivered to the board on June 13. The second document is the response delivered to the Palestinian side last week by Nickolay Mladenov, the BoP’s “High Representative.”
Taken together, the two versions of the roadmap offer detailed insights into the extent to which Trump’s board is trying to erode Palestinian insistence that any long term deal must include a clear path to statehood, that Gaza and the occupied West Bank be treated as a single Palestinian territory, and that the rights of the Palestinian people to resist Israeli occupation and annexation be preserved.
IRAN
In Iran-related news:
The first round of technical negotiations between the US and Iran wrapped up in Switzerland on Tuesday, with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi hailing their progress in establishing the terms of the next round(s) of talks. In addition to the developments I outlined yesterday, Iranian parliament speaker Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf said that the parties had agreed to free some $12 billion in frozen Iranian assets. However, that release is already emerging as a point of contention. The Trump administration claims that the Iranian government will only be permitted to use those funds to purchase food from US farmers, while Iranian ambassador to the UN in Geneva Ali Bahreini is insisting that Tehran and Tehran alone will “decide what to do with its assets.”
The frozen assets issue is the second dispute that’s emerged over the past couple of days. Iranian officials are also pushing back pretty strenuously against the Trump administration’s claims that they’ve agreed to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to resume inspection work at Iranian nuclear sites. Donald Trump is now threatening to call off negotiations altogether if the Iranians don’t agree on resuming IAEA inspections, though at this point he’s only demanding an agreement in principle without a timetable. There’s probably no way that the US and Iran can successfully reach a grand deal without the resumption of IAEA inspections, so I assume the Iranian objection is to the US assuming concessions before they’ve been offered. It would be silly if the talks derailed over this issue. but sillier things have happened.
The UN International Maritime Organization said on Tuesday that has begun an “evacuation” operation to get ships that have been stranded in the Persian Gulf out via the Strait of Hormuz. Some 11,000 crew members in total remain stuck in limbo. The agency says that it is working with the Iranian and Omani governments to arrange transit through the strait.
The status of the strait isn’t entirely clear at the moment. The Iranian government “closed” the waterway over the weekend but doesn’t seem to have taken any action in that regard and there doesn’t seem to be much if any discernible reduction in traffic. Likewise the future of the strait remains an open question. The Omani and Iranian governments are moving ahead with discussions about administering the waterway but whether that will result in some sort of fee system being imposed remains to be seen. It may be worth noting that Donald Trump is now also talking about charging a fee for ships transiting the strait in repayment for “services rendered as the Guardian Angel to the countries of the Middle East.” I’m sure that would go over very well.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
The Afghan government was reportedly sending a delegation to Brussels on Tuesday for talks on repatriating Afghan nationals from the European Union. Belgian and EU officials are denying that hosting these negotiators is tantamount to recognizing Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government, but it’s at least verging on recognition despite those protests. Human rights groups have been calling on the EU not to hold this meeting, citing the Afghan government’s record as well as the international legal principle of non-refoulement (that refugees should not be returned to places where they are likely to face persecution or worse).
MYANMAR
Over the six month period between its announcement of elections last August and the conclusion of those elections in late January, Myanmar’s ruling junta killed at least 702 civilians according to a new UN report. As usual, air power was its primary killing method. The report also noted that cuts to international humanitarian funding are “further compounding the suffering of millions of people” in the country.
AFRICA
SUDAN
An apparent Rapid Support Forces drone strike killed at least two people and wounded another 17 in a displaced persons camp in the Sudanese city of El Obeid on Monday. The RSF has been bombarding El Obeid for weeks in what seems to be preparation for a forthcoming assault on the city. That campaign has taken a serious toll on the city’s fuel supplies as well as its electrical and water infrastructure.
Elsewhere, the Sudanese military (SAF) is claiming that it “launched a large-scale clearing operation on Tuesday in the Geissan district of the Blue Nile region, capturing a key rebel stronghold near the Ethiopian border.” That stronghold is, or I guess was, held by a faction of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North. There’s no word on casualties. The SAF is trying to reverse gains made by the RSF and the SPLM-N in Blue Nile earlier this year.
LIBYA
The government based in eastern Libya announced on Tuesday that is is barring Eritrean, Ethiopian, Somali, and Sudanese nationals from entering the country. It described this as a “reorganization of foreign nationals’ entry to Libya,” apparently without offering further explanation. It’s unclear how the western Libyan government is going to regard this edict, which will help to determine its enforceability.
NIGER
Niger formally withdrew from the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute on Monday, becoming the third country to take that step after the Philippines and Burundi. All three Sahelian juntas have expressed an intent to leave the ICC, so Burkina Faso and Mali may be next up. Full withdrawal is a 12 month process, during which the ICC can still assert jurisdiction within the withdrawing country.
NIGERIA
Gunmen killed at least 20 people over the weekend in north-central Nigeria’s Plateau state. Details beyond that are sparse but Plateau is frequently plagued by violence between herding and farming communities contending for land, water, and other resources.
KENYA
The Kenyan government has apparently pulled the plug on plans to build a US Ebola quarantine facility at its Laikipia airbase. The proposed facility has generated substantial public opposition with sometimes violent consequences. Kenyan Health Minister Aden Duale has ignored several court orders to halt construction of the facility and was consequently held in contempt on Monday.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
The Financial Times reports that the Russian government is “growing frustrated” with Donald Trump:
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday said the US was “seemingly stepping back from the role of an objective mediator” in the war and had “forgotten” about Trump’s own statements last year inching towards Moscow’s position.
Instead, Trump was “hugely impressed and enthusiastic” about Ukraine’s recent campaign of long-range strikes on targets deep inside Russia at last week’s G7 summit, said two people briefed on the private discussions among the leaders. Trump at that summit also agreed to increase sanctions on Russian energy.
Those strikes, which have since intensified with attacks on military targets around Moscow and an oil refinery on the outskirts of the city, are supported by US intelligence, which western allies have urged Washington to continue providing.
Lavrov’s comments were the clearest sign yet of growing frustration in Russia that the US has not helped end President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, now in its fifth year, on terms favourable to Moscow.
UKRAINE
A Russian missile attack killed at least three people and wounded another 25 in the Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih on Tuesday. The head of the local defense council accused the Russians of using a cluster warhead in the strike, which could be a violation of international law around the use of such weapons in civilian population centers. Ukrainian strikes on energy infrastructure in Crimea, meanwhile, have reportedly caused a blackout in the port city of Sevastopol.
Elsewhere, the BBC is reporting (based on accounts of “Ukrainian soldiers”) that the city of Kostiantynivka is no longer under Ukrainian control. The Russian military has heavily infiltrated the city and is now attempting to encircle it, putting it in what the outlet called a “grey zone” where it’s not really controlled by either side. If Russian forces take Kostiantynivka it could prove to be a significant blow to Ukraine’s efforts to hold on to what remains of its territory in Donetsk oblast.
ROMANIA
The Romanian parliament rejected would-be prime minister Adrian Veștea’s would-be government on Tuesday. The vote was 189-23 in favor of Veștea, but due to a large number of abstentions he failed to clear the 233 vote threshold for confirmation. Notably, Veștea’s own National Liberal Party was apparently among the abstainers. Romanian President Nicușor Dan will have to nominate a new PM candidate now, and if this one can’t form a government the prospect of a snap election is looming.
HUNGARY
The prime ministers of Czechia, Poland, and Slovakia visited Hungary on Tuesday to revive the Visegrád Group regional bloc. That group of central European nations had been essentially defunct since 2024, as it fragmented over members’ responses to the war in Ukraine. New Hungarian PM Péter Magyar had made reviving and possibly expanding the group a priority.
AMERICAS
PERU
Peruvian officials are still finalizing the results of the country’s presidential runoff, but current second-place candidate Roberto Sánchez declared on Tuesday that he will not accept the final result due to alleged fraud. Presumably he’ll change his position if the count somehow turns in his favor, but at the moment Keiko Fujimori’s very narrow (50.11 percent to 49.89 percent) lead looks like it will hold up. Sánchez’s campaign is focusing on what it says are “irregularities” in the expatriate vote, which ran heavily in Fujimori’s direction (and to be fair that was expected). He’s demanded the annulment of potentially hundreds of thousands of overseas votes.
COLOMBIA
Jacobin’s Cruz Bonlarron Martínez argues that Donald Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine” contributed significantly to right-winger Abelardo de la Espriella’s apparent victory in Sunday’s Colombian presidential runoff:
Over the course of June, Colombia witnessed the full effect of the doctrine on the country’s electoral process, starting with Trump’s Truth Social post on June 2 endorsing de la Espriella. The US president claimed that his favored candidate “would be tremendously successful in leading Colombia to grow the Economy, Create Jobs, Promote Trade, Stop Illegal Immigration, Crack Down on Crime and Drugs, and Restore LAW AND ORDER.” He branded Iván Cepeda as a “Radical Left Marxist” and stated that the election was “very important to the future of Colombia and its relationship to the United States.”
The post was quickly reposted by several Hispanic Republicans in the United States and right-wing Colombian politicians, and even on the X account of the US Embassy in Bogotá, which constitutes the use of US public resources for a foreign political campaign. In the days leading up to the election, Trump sent out more posts in a similar vein to keep his endorsement of de la Espriella in the Colombian news cycle.
The endorsement was part of a larger strategy by Trump and his government to support de la Espriella’s far-right agenda, which includes a laundry list of right-wing policies, from fracking in protected territories to privatization of health care, the construction of mega-prisons, and Colombia’s withdrawal from international institutions like the UN and the Organization of American States. Another key element of the strategy was a disinformation campaign led by Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and de la Espriella himself to revoke the visas of anyone de la Espriella accused of manipulating the Colombian elections. This was a move used to delegitimize supporters of Cepeda without any evidence.
UNITED STATES
The US Senate on Tuesday adopted the War Powers resolution that passed the House of Representatives earlier this month, ordering Donald Trump to seek congressional authorization to continue/renew his war with Iran. The vote is likely symbolic—as a concurrent resolution, this measure is not subject to a presidential veto but that probably also means it doesn’t have the force of law. Supporters have argued that it is still legally binding but there’s enough gray area here that Trump can probably get away with simply ignoring it. That said, as the first time both houses of the US Congress have voted in favor of a war powers resolution this is a pretty stark criticism of the Iran war. I have to admit I was not expecting it.
Finally, and speaking of defying Congress, consider what ProPublica reports that the Trump administration is doing with respect to humanitarian aid:
After the Trump administration upended the world’s largest foreign aid provider last year, terminating thousands of programs and firing nearly all of its staff, its plan for the agency was clear: Eliminate it entirely.
But because it is a congressionally created agency, President Donald Trump needed lawmakers’ permission to do so. So this year, Trump officials asked Congress for permission to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development and dramatically reduce federal spending on food, medicine and lifesaving work around the world.
Congress said no. Lawmakers, who hold the government’s purse strings and have oversight of federal agencies, wanted USAID to remain, even in its diminished form. They detailed precisely how much the State Department should spend on foreign aid and for what, including $9.4 billion on global health to treat and prevent maladies like HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, and more than $5 billion on emergency humanitarian aid. They also insisted on regular, detailed reports about how the administration was spending the money.
Trump signed the bill, enshrining their orders into law.
Now, eight months into the fiscal year, Trump officials are failing to follow many of those orders, ProPublica has found. Officials have delayed spending on global health, have not issued funds for some projects and have labeled money destined for humanitarian aid as “unallocated” to control how it can be spent, according to a ProPublica review of government records and interviews with legal experts, current and former government employees, and members of Congress. And when lawmakers have asked about their actions, officials often have not responded.