Italians cast their ballots on Saturday as Italy became the first key player to vote in the European parliamentary elections, which could lead to far-right leader, Giorgia Meloni, acting as kingmaker.

Far-right parties are expected to make gains in the elections, as most countries, including EU heavyweights France and Germany, go to the polls on Sunday. Projected results are expected late on Sunday evening.

While an increase in support for the far right is expected, with such parties expected to win a quarter of seats, the centrist mainstream is still forecast to emerge as the main force in the EU parliament.

Meloni, who was elected on a platform largely focused on immigration, shared a social media video message on Saturday in which she said her priorities were to “defend Europe’s borders against illegal immigration (and) protect the real economy and jobs”.

Italy, which will hold 76 of the 720 seats in the new parliament, could play a crucial role deciding the balance of power in the bloc. With polls suggesting Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party may gain 27% of the vote – up from just 6.4% in the 2019 EU elections – Italy’s prime minister could decide the political fate of the European Commission chief, Ursula von der Leyen, and whether she receives sufficient backing to secure a second term.

The question of whether von der Leyen’s European People’s Party (EPP) will agree to work with the far right is likely to prove decisive after the vote: von der Leyen has suggested she is willing for the EPP to collaborate with far-right lawmakers, provided they are pro-EU and not what she describes as “puppets” of Vladimir Putin.

The EU Commission chief has explicitly ruled out working with the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, whose National Rally (RN) party is also topping the polls in the EU race, or with Germany’s AfD, over this issue. Hungary’s ruling populist Fidesz party is opposed to aiding Kyiv, with the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, widely regarded as the EU’s most pro-Russian leader.

But von der Leyen appears to be more relaxed about working with Meloni and some fellow members of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group. “I’ve been working very well with Giorgia Meloni”, who is “clearly pro-European”, she has said.

Underlining the pivotal role Meloni may come to play in the bloc’s arrangement of power, the Italian leader has been courted by Le Pen, who aims to form a rightwing supergroup in the parliament, but also the centre-right von der Leyen.

Socialists, liberals and greens, who are concerned that Meloni could demand a dilution of EU climate measures in exchange for support for the EU Commission president, have threatened to oppose von der Leyen’s reappointment if she makes any deals with the far right.

Slovakia also went to the polls on Saturday, following an assassination attempt last month on its premier, Robert Fico. Fico’s leftwing populist Smer-SD party, which opposes sending EU arms to Ukraine, appears to have drawn support after the incident.

A dog ran four miles to get help for his owner who crashed his car into a ravine in Oregon – and was ultimately rescued because of the animal’s heroics, according to authorities.

The case unfolded as Brandon Garrett was driving with his four dogs north on US Forest Service Road 39 in Baker county, near where his family was camping.

During the trip, Garrett failed to navigate a curve in the road and crashed over an embankment, according to a statement from the Baker county sheriff’s office.

Garrett survived the crash, but the accident left him stranded and forced him to wait – and hope – for help.

Thankfully for him, one of his dogs ran back to the campsite, and the animal’s appearance led the Garrett’s family to realize something had gone wrong. The dog ended up running nearly four miles through the wilderness before tracking down the other campers on 3 June at 9.30am.

The family quickly began searching for Garrett and eventually spotted his car. But they were unable to reach him because of the difficult terrain, prompting them to call emergency rescuers for help.

“The reporting party explained that his brother, Brandon Garrett, had not made it to his camp yesterday afternoon. Family members located his vehicle this morning but were unable to reach it due to the terrain,” the statement from the sheriff’s office said.

First responders managed to reach Garrett by using chainsaws to make a path. They then used a rescue blanket and rope to retrieve Garrett from the ravine.

Garrett was found about 100 yards from where the accident occurred with his three other dogs, who were also alive.

Authorities provided Garrett first aid on the scene. He was later driven in an ambulance to a helicopter that flew him to a hospital in the area.

Details about the extent of Garrett’s injuries or his medical condition were not immediately released.

Together, the collective age of the bride and groom was nearly 200. But second world war veteran Harold Terens and his sweetheart, Jeanne Swerlin, proved that love is eternal as they tied the knot Saturday inland of the D-Day beaches in Normandy, France.

Their respective ages – he’s 100, she’s 96 – made their nuptials an almost double-century celebration.

Terens called it “the best day of my life”.

On her way into the nuptials, the bubbly bride-to-be said: “It’s not just for young people, love, you know? We get butterflies. And we get a little action, also.”

The location was the elegant stone-worked town hall of Carentan, a key initial D-Day objective that saw ferocious fighting after the 6 June 1944, Allied landings that helped rid Europe of Adolf Hitler’s tyranny.

Like other towns and villages across the Normandy coast where nearly 160,000 Allied troops came ashore under fire on five code-named beaches, it’s an effervescent hub of remembrance and celebration on the 80th anniversary of that day, festooned with flags and bunting and with veterans feted like rockstars.

As the swing of Glenn Miller and other period tunes rang out on the streets, well-wishers – some in second world war-period clothes – were lined up a good hour before the wedding, behind barriers outside the town hall, with a rousing pipe-and-drum band on hand to serenade the happy couple.

After both declaring “oui” to vows read by Carentan’s mayor in English, the couple exchanged rings.

“With this ring, I thee wed,” Terens said.

She giggled and gasped: “Really?”

With champagne flutes in hand, they waved through an open window to the adoring crowds outside.

“To everybody’s good health. And to peace in the world and the preservation of democracy all over the world and the end of the war in Ukraine and Gaza,” Terens said as he and his bride clinked glasses and drank.

The crowd yelled “La mariée!” – “The bride!” – to Swerlin, who wore a long flowing dress of vibrant pink. Terens looked dapper in a light-blue suit and matching pink kerchief in his breast pocket.

They enjoyed a very special wedding-night party: they were invited to the state dinner at the Elysee Palace on Saturday night with President Emmanuel Macron and US President Joe Biden.

“Congratulations to the newlyweds,” Macron said, prompting cheers and a standing ovation from other guests during the toast praising French-American friendship. “[The town of] Carentan was happy to host your wedding, and us, your wedding dinner,” he told the couple.

The wedding was symbolic, not binding in law. Mayor Jean-Pierre L’Honneur’s office said he wasn’t empowered to wed foreigners who aren’t residents of Carentan, and that the couple, who are both American, hadn’t requested legally binding vows. However, they could always complete those formalities back in Florida if they wished.

L’Honneur likes to say that Normandy is practically the 51st state of the US, given its reverence and gratitude for Allied soldiers and the sacrifices of tens of thousands who never made it home from the Battle of Normandy.

“Love is eternal, yes, maybe,” the mayor said, referring to the newlyweds, although his comments also fittingly described the feelings of many Normandy veterans.

“I hope for them the best happiness together.”

Dressed in a 1940s dress that belonged to her mother, Louise, and a red beret, 73-year-old Jane Ollier was among spectators who waited for a glimpse of the lovebirds..

“It’s so touching to get married at that age,” Ollier said. “If it can bring them happiness in the last years of their lives, that’s fantastic.”

The couple, both widowed, grew up in New York City: she in Brooklyn, he in the Bronx. Terens first visited France as a 20-year-old US army air forces corporal shortly after D-Day. He enlisted in 1942 and, after shipping to Britain, was attached to a four-pilot P-47 Thunderbolt fighter unit as their radio repair technician.

On D-Day, Terens helped repair planes returning from France so they could rejoin the battle. He said half his company’s pilots died that day. Terens himself went to France 12 days later, helping transport German prisoners of war and former American prisoners of war to England. Following the Nazi surrender in May 1945, Terens again helped transport freed Allied prisoners to England before he shipped back to the US a month later.

Swerlin made it abundantly clear that her new centenarian husband doesn’t lack for rizz.

“He’s the greatest kisser ever, you know?” she proudly declared before they embraced enthusiastically for TV cameras.

“All right ! That’s it for now !” Terens said as he came up for air.

To which she quickly quipped: “You mean there’s more later?”

We met through Sydney share houses in the early 80s when I was in my mid-20s and Tanner, a clever and sweet country boy, was a couple of years older. I first laid eyes on him as he was reaching into a hot oven; he looked up and his gaze met mine. I thought: “Wow, he is gorgeous!”

Typical of that time, there were many complicated relationships between housemates and friends. Tanner was in a long-term relationship and it was three years before our feelings for each other spilled over. At a house party we danced to Cold Chisel’s My Baby over and over; another time, at a dinner party at his place, we shared a furtive kiss at the front door as I left.

Over the next few months, we pretended to be just friends in front of others. It was tiresome, confusing and wrong. I told him he needed to make a choice: I would not be “the other woman”. To the shock of friends and especially his partner, we began seeing each other publicly and exclusively. Cast out from our social circle and in the heady throes of new love, we began spending nearly every day and night together.

We’d spend hours talking and writing ridiculous stories and poetry. At sunset we’d sit on the beach and wonder how molluscs knew when the moon and tides were changing. These conversations made my heart sing but Tanner was not one for sharing his feelings. Besides, Tanner, who had been working as a hang-gliding instructor since finishing a PhD in bioscience, was desperate to start his career in scientific research. He was scouring the globe for jobs, and if one came knocking he could leave Sydney at a moment’s notice.

Throughout this hedonistic interlude, I was living in a share house in Clovelly full of alternative, free-spirited types, and swimming every day. I had quit work as an economist to recover from a serious brain injury from a few years earlier.

The brain event had left me with weakness and spasticity on my left side. It also led to a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. After visiting my neurologist with me, Tanner said he thought the MS was not a problem. But I thought it was – life would get messy, I would be a burden and he wouldn’t get to live his best life.

So despite my intense feelings, I didn’t dare talk with Tanner about our future.

After six months together, he was offered a position at the University of Queensland and left almost immediately. His tiny car was packed to capacity, the hang-glider riding precariously on the roof, as we said goodbye and mumbled vague plans about how I’d follow him to Brisbane.

Alone in Sydney, I contemplated moving to Brisbane. I was worried about leaving my family and friends, and of course, the ocean. If I was going to make the jump, he needed to know how I felt.

So I wrote a long letter. As I wrote, it dawned on me that what I really wanted was marriage: an old-fashioned, no-holds-barred commitment to permanence and love made in front of friends and family. Fearing I might have misread his feelings and still scared about my health, I came to the big question hesitantly: could I suggest, if I could be so bold, that maybe we could get married?

A couple of days later, I came home to find a letter from Tanner on the hall table. From the postmark, I could tell he had written it before receiving mine: our letters had crossed paths in transit. The door to our lounge room was closed, and inside were a dozen followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (or Orange People as they were known then). Bhagwan had just announced that, in light of the growing Aids epidemic, his disciples should forgo their newfound sexual freedom and adopt conservative sexual practices. From my spot in the hallway, I could hear the group were not happy about this.

I opened the letter, and while Tanner’s words were as hesitant and coy as mine, he said he too was in love and proposing marriage.

Overwhelmed with joy I burst into the living room. Holding his letter high, I screeched: “I’m getting married!” The room turned to silence, and then a collective groan, followed by “Why?” and “Are you crazy?”

But my joyful, gay Orange housemate appeared beside me and screeched back: “Oh please can I make the cake?!”

Tanner and I married three weeks later in the church in Bondi where I had been baptised, and it was the best farewell to Sydney ever.

Now, after 40 years of marriage, Tanner still makes my heart sing when I look at his face (especially if he’s getting something out of the oven). We are lucky to have two terrific adult children. My health has been terrible at times and my recoveries remarkable.

The intensity of our early days has been replaced by a calm, knowing we are together no matter what.

Thousands of people rallied in Budapest on Saturday as a political newcomer led a push to mobilise voters against Hungary’s populist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, ahead of European elections on Sunday.

“We defeated apathy,” declared Péter Magyar, a former government insider who switched sides and launched an opposition movement, as he stood in front of a vast crowd which filled the capital’s Heroes’ Square.

“We give hope to each other,” he said, underscoring that “we are building a country where there is no right, no left – only Hungarian”.

Since coming back to power 14 years ago, Orbán has consolidated power at home. He has cultivated relationships with Russia and China, as well as far-right parties across the globe. And he has described Brussels and Washington as his adversaries, despite Hungary’s continued membership of both the EU and Nato.

At the same time, some of the prime minister’s closest friends and family members are now among the country’s wealthiest people, amid allegations of widespread cronyism.

Magyar, who used to be married to Orbán’s former justice minister, became a sensation in Hungary earlier this year when he broke ranks and began criticising the government, stressing concerns about alleged corruption.

The Hungarian government has repeatedly rejected accusations of corruption.

But gathered on a hot afternoon, many in the crowd expressed admiration for both Magyar’s message and personal journey.

“He took responsibility for his sins and stood up,” said Zoltán, an activist supporting Magyar’s Tisza party.

Lena, a 17-year-old Hungarian who lives in Austria but wants to move home, said she will vote for Magyar once she is old enough. “I believe we need to take back our homeland,” she said.

While Hungarians will be voting in local elections and on who to send to represent them in the European parliament, many see these elections as a de facto referendum on both Orbán and the opposition parties that have struggled to challenge his position over the past years.

Orbán, who is the EU’s most Kremlin-friendly leader, has focused his election campaign on what he has described as a “peace” platform.

Ahead of the elections, the ruling Fidesz party has run an intense disinformation campaign claiming – without providing proof – that there is a global conspiracy to force Hungary into a direct war with Russia and that Hungary’s opposition is being directed by the west to undermine the national interest.

“Now we are again receiving demands to take part in a new war,” Orbán told supporters at a recent rally.

Addressing the crowd, Magyar pushed back against this narrative and accused the government of intentionally dividing Hungarian society.

“The Tisza party is the party of peace – the real party of peace” he said.

Magyar is an unusual figure in the Hungarian political scene. His language sometimes echoes conservative and nationalist rhetoric, but he also criticises Orbán’s government in a way that appeals to liberal voters.

In an interview with the Guardian earlier in the campaign, Magyar said his aim was to be in the centre. “I have a vision about Hungary,” he said.

The political newcomer’s informal style, social media savvy, and willingness to criticise both right-wing and left-wing politicians has resonated with many voters.

However, critics have raised concerns that he has weakened other opposition forces and questioned how different some of his policies would be from the current ruling party.

“What is completely new is that he can speak essentially to the whole left-liberal side and also a significant segment of Fidesz voters,” said Róbert László, an election expert at the Budapest-based Political Capital Institute.

Magyar “comes from the inside, he speaks in a way that appeals to everybody, he has work ethic. And the fourth factor is that he is not open to compromise,” he added.

But he stressed that despite an initial decline, Fidesz has performed strongly in opinion polls over the past weeks.

The ruling party enjoys the support of 50% of decided voters, according to a study published last week by pollster Medián. Magyar’s Tisza party, meanwhile, stood at 27%.

“Magyar’s appearance means a serious threat for everyone: obviously now much more for the opposition parties than for Fidesz,” László said, adding: “We don’t expect that Orbán will be packing his bags on 10 June.”

Two separate shark attacks at Florida beaches wounded three swimmers, including two teenagers, prompting some popular vacation spots to temporarily close, according to authorities.

A shark bit a 45-year-old woman at about 1.20pm on Friday while she swam at Watersound beach, along the coast of Walton county, Florida, in the eastern part of the state.

First responders airlifted the woman to a hospital after she sustained “significant trauma” to her midsection, according to Walton county sheriff’s office spokesperson Corey Dobridnia, USA Today reported. Part of her left arm had to be amputated as a result of the attack.

In a second attack about 90 minutes later, two more people were injured by a shark at Inlet beach, just four miles (6.4km) from Watersound, WVTM 13 reported.

A 15-year-old girl and a 17-year-old girl were swimming with a group of friends in waist-deep water when a shark bit both of them.

One of the girls had serious injuries, and first responders airlifted her to Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola hospital in Pensacola, Florida, ABC News reported.

The Walton county beaches where both attacks took place were closed on Friday afternoon after the spate of shark-related injuries.

“Double red flags are now flying on the beaches in the surrounding area,” the Walton county sheriff’s office posted on Facebook on Friday. “The gulf is now closed to the public in Walton county in the localized area of the incident.

“We are encouraging beachgoers to be cognizant that lifeguards and beach deputies may be trying keep people out of the water in the immediate area.”

During a Friday press conference, the Walton county sheriff, Michael A Adkinson Jr, said that shark attacks in that community were rare, with the last one taking place in 2021, ABC reported.

“This is an anomaly … everything from it being three victims, to where it’s at,” he said. “All we can do is respond, control and mitigate what we can.”

The latest shark attacks come days after a 46-year-old man was bitten by one of the marine animals at Del Mar City beach in southern California on Sunday. The man emerged from the encounter with significant injuries that nonetheless were not considered life-threatening.

Despite the relative rarity of shark attacks, each one attracts a disproportionate amount of news media attention.

Globally, there were fewer than 70 unprovoked shark bites in 2023, according to the International Shark Attack File curated by the Florida Museum.

Florida is the world leader for the number of shark attacks.

Susan Solomon was born and raised in Chicago and got her PhD in atmospheric chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. She is known for her work in the 1980s which established how the Earth’s protective ozone layer was being depleted by human-made chemicals. Her studies formed the basis of the 1989 Montreal protocol – an international agreement that helped eliminate 99% of these harmful solvents. Now a professor of environmental studies and chemistry at MIT, Solomon is the author of three books, the latest of which, Solvable: How We Healed the Earth, and How We Can Do It Again, applies lessons from past environmental successes to the climate crisis.

What got you interested in science?
Easy answer: Jacques Cousteau – I thought it was just the most incredible thing I’d ever seen. But then I didn’t really like biology, and I loved chemistry. As I started reading about planetary atmospheres I thought: Oh, my goodness, chemistry on a planet instead of in a test tube! I want to do that!

What prompted you to write this book?
Having done a lot of work on the ozone hole, one is constantly asked: “If we could [solve the problem] for ozone, can we do it for climate change?” I had a lot of experience with the policy community with the Montreal Protocol [an international treaty to protect the ozone layer], as well as with the IPCC, so I learned a lot about how policy is made. And I was fascinated by the question of, why are these problems different?

What is the ozone layer and what does it do?
We wouldn’t have life on the planet’s surface if we didn’t have an ozone layer, because it protects us from ultraviolet light from the sun that would otherwise be very damaging to everything biological.

But by the 1980s it was becoming clear that we were depleting it through the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in aerosols and refrigerators, among other things. We have many measurements that show we have increased the amount of chlorine in the Earth’s atmosphere by about a factor of six compared with the small amount nature can produce. So it’s overwhelmingly human-made chlorine and almost all of that is from CFCs – hairspray and underarm deodorant were the source of most of the world’s emissions.

Despite the global scale of the issue, the ozone crisis was addressed remarkably quickly.
The level of standing infrastructure investment that the chemical industry had back then was relatively small compared to what the fossil fuel industry has today. It was only ever a dozen companies worldwide and a few billion dollars maximum. And the companies weren’t really being forced out of the business; they were being forced to change their business, and they had different degrees of recalcitrance. The thing I like to tell my students is: don’t imagine that industry is going to do the right thing just because it’s the right thing to do, that’s not their job. Their job is to make money and your job is to hold them to account. So that’s why the public and consumer actions are so important. Back in the 1970s, just the possibility of ozone depletion led lots of people in the US to get rid of spray cans and use underarm roll-on instead. That big phase out of voluntary consumer action had a massive effect on the market.

Aside from the ozone crisis, what did you learn from researching other issues such as smog and lead that we might carry forward to the fight against global heating?
Over the years in America and in the UK, we developed this anti-regulation mindset: regulation is bad, the market will find the best possible solution. Well, the market may find the most cost-effective solution. And the cost is the key thing there, and whether it’s best or not depends on your values, because if the market finds a solution that eliminates nature, some people would care about that. And what is actually the value of nature? And what’s the value of your child not getting asthma? How do we put a price on that? We don’t put a price on that, because they depend upon our values. This whole idea of, we’ll do it the cheapest way and don’t pay attention to your values – we just have to get past that.

Industry will continue to fight, just because they have an awful lot to protect. They have massive investments in fossil fuel infrastructure. And they have all these assets, whether it be the rights to go out and cut down this mountaintop and sell it as coal, or offshore oil rigs that are very expensive pieces of equipment. So you total it all up and it’s something in the order of a $40tn industry, completely dwarfing the chemical industry at the time of the CFC issue. But it’s interesting that the concept of stranded assets has become part of the vocabulary, and people are beginning to realise how much power they actually have, in terms of the way we make our investments – in your retirement fund, or your choice of bank. And so social choice is becoming part of the way people are thinking about bringing pressure on industries that are part of those assets. So this is all part of why I’m optimistic.

In the Guardian last month, 380 climate scientists were surveyed and many reported feeling despair – 77% of respondents believe global temperatures will reach at least 2.5C above pre-industrial levels and 42% think they’ll exceed 3C. Do you share their pessimism?
Well, the past calendar year has been a surprise – hotter than anyone expected it could or should be. There’s a lot of work going on to try to figure it out. So, yeah, that is certainly scary, but I don’t share the pessimism. And I worry, frankly, about climate scientists being encouraged to take a particular stance. You see it go in both directions, but in this case there has long been a group of people out there who believe we should tell the worst stories we possibly can, because then the public will get it and wake up and that will enable change. That practice has not really worked. Also, you can’t look at the [falling] price of solar energy and batteries and not see big change coming. And the idea that we’re going to go past 3C is very hard for me to see, because it’s pretty clear that the Paris agreement has already put us on a trajectory that won’t exceed that. Can we stay within 2C, given how the prices of clean energy have come down? Personally, I think we can.

One lesson from your book is that, if you’re an ordinary person worried about the climate crisis, the most impactful thing you can do is to band together with others to push for change.
Yes, that is the biggest impact, for sure. It’s been the kickstarter in so many past environmental problems and it has already kickstarted us on this problem. For goodness sake, let’s not give up now, we’re right on the cusp of success. That’s the fundamental message of the book.

To come back to where we started with the ozone layer. Is there still a problem up there? Is it fixed now?
We have seen the chlorofluorocarbons going up, up, up and now coming down, down, down. So that has been spectacular, a massive environmental success story. And it involves every country in the world – the Montreal Protocol is the only UN agreement that’s been signed by every country that was formally part of the UN. That’s pretty cool.

It also helped the climate change issue, by the way, because chlorofluorocarbons are very strong greenhouse gases. If we hadn’t pulled back on them, we’d be looking at an extra degree of warming by 2050, and then, for sure, 2C would have been out of reach. But we checked a degree off by dialling down on chlorofluorocarbons. How cool is that?

• Solvable: How We Healed the Earth, and How We Can Do It Again by Susan Solomon is published by the University of Chicago Press (£21). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

The two Russian soldiers jogged across an apocalyptic landscape. They kept going, zigzagging over a vegetable patch. At the intersection between Hoholia and Travnia streets, the pair disappeared into a roofless brick building. Around them was the ruined town of Vovchansk. It was a smouldering hell of blackened blocks of flats and shell-dinted cottages.

Vovchansk, once home to about 17,000 people, is approximately three miles (5km) from the border with Russia in north-east Ukraine.

Russian troops seized it on the first day of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale February 2022 invasion. They retreated six months later, going back up the road to the Russian city of Belgorod. A month ago – on 10 May – they swept in again, taking over Vovchansk’s polyclinic and meat processing factory.

A brutal battle has raged ever since. Russian forces control the north of the city and a grid of shattered western districts. Ukrainian troops hold the centre. Their fiefdom includes half of Korelenka Street, with the Russians concealed in nearby basements. Fighting takes place house by house. Vovchansk now resembles a 21st-century mini Stalingrad, a place of death, rattling gunfire and close-quarters combat.

Everything is seen. “The sky is thick with drones. Our drones, their drones,” said Sasha, a 34-year-old lieutenant with Ukraine’s 57th Separate Motorised Infantry Brigade, while sitting in his HQ, located beyond the city. Neither side was able to use armoured vehicles inside Vovchansk because of kamikaze attacks. He said: “At the start, Russia sent in tanks. We destroyed them all in five minutes. If artillery doesn’t get you, drones will.”

Instead, small groups of infantry go in on foot. It is a perilous journey, through a wood and across the Vovcha river. Evacuating casualties was very difficult, Sasha said.

The Ukrainian military uses heavy-lift Vampire drones to airdrop supplies to forward posts: water, food, bullets. Clearing abandoned buildings was dangerous, with the enemy waiting in ambush, or just 200 metres away. “You never know when someone will open fire,” he said.

A bank of screens showed a live video feed of the city. The two Russians seen jogging earlier were inside their brown cottage. A closeup of the central market – located in a grey zone – presented a gruesome scene. The corpses of six Russian soldiers lay on the ground. “I feel no pity for them. They are constantly trying to take our territory. Russians are zombified people. If we don’t halt them, they will continue,” Sasha said.

A veteran of the grinding battle for Bakhmut – won by Russia in May 2023 – Sasha said Moscow was guilty of genocide. Wagner mercenaries went into a cellar and murdered a Ukrainian family, including children. “They shot everybody,” he said.

Street battles in Vovchansk were so intense that only experienced Ukrainian soldiers were deployed there, rotating among themselves in shifts. The Russians were a mixture of professionals and novices, he added.

The 57th scrambled to Vovchansk last month. The brigade’s commander, Maj Yuriy, said his men had pushed the Russians back and stabilised the situation. “A couple of days ago we stopped their advance here. Our task is to hold our positions and to inflict maximum losses. And then to gradually move forward,” he said. The Russians would typically attack about 7pm or 8pm, creeping forward as dusk fell.

Ukraine’s biggest challenge is Russian air power. Earlier last week, enemy combat planes dropped 36 guided bombs known as KABs in a 24 hour-period. Strikes were more frequent near the occupied eastern city of Avdiivka,

Sasha said. “If we had air defences to shoot down Russian bombers, the situation would have changed a long time ago. We wouldn’t be defending. We would be attacking,” he pointed out.

As well as Vovchansk, Russia has advanced towards the village of Lyptsi. Its two-pronged incursion piles pressure on Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, almost 19 miles away.

The Kremlin’s goal is to bring its big guns to within shelling range of Kharkiv in order to inflict daily misery on its 1 million-strong population – a repeat of 2022. An additional objective is to capture a road connecting Vovchansk to the city of Kupiansk, where Russian troops are closing in.

The latest Vovchansk offensive has forced Kyiv to divert forces from other parts of the frontline. Putin, though, might have miscalculated. With Kharkiv in peril, the Biden administration last month lifted its prohibition on the use of some US weapons inside Russian territory.

European allies followed suit, but White House restrictions on long-range ballistic missiles – which may knock out Russian military aerodromes – remain.

On Thursday, Joe Biden – attending D-day celebrations – reaffirmed US support for Ukraine and described Putin as a “tyrant bent on domination.” The US president, however, made clear that Kyiv could not strike Moscow or the Kremlin. It was allowed to attack “just across the border where they’re receiving significant fire from conventional weapons used by the Russians to go into Ukraine to kill Ukrainians”, Biden said.

Still, this local change helps. Previously, Russia amassed soldiers between about nine and 19 miles away from the Vovchansk district, beyond the range of Ukrainian drones. Ihor, a volunteer with the Barracuda drone surveillance group, said the invaders parked their armoured vehicles in an old Soviet collective farm and used the Russian town of Shebekino as a staging post. “Their logistics are now more difficult,” he said. “The new rule might be a gamechanger.”

On 1 June or the following day, Kyiv used a US-supplied Himars rocket system to destroy a Russian S-300/400 missile complex close to Belgorod. Images showed two wrecked launchers and a damaged command post.

Sasha said he would only call in a Himars strike if he could be certain to kill “20-30” Russians. “American rockets are expensive,” he added.

More US weapons were arriving after Congress in April passed a $61bn military aid package, he said.

When the battle for Vovchansk began, thousands of residents fled the city. Some exited in private cars, others went on evacuation buses. A few left it too late.

Oleksandr Humaniuk, founder of the Rose in Hand charity, said he received desperate phone calls from 10 families living in basements in Russian-occupied streets. Rescue was impossible. A disabled man called him and said he wanted to get out but could only walk 50 metres.

“We also have calls from people where it’s a trap. A few locals support the Russians. They try and lure police in so the Russians shoot them,” Humaniuk said.

He said Russian soldiers kidnapped an unknown number of civilians, using them as a human shields and taking them across the border. They murdered others. Bodies lay in the streets. A man in a wheelchair was killed outside his house. Two volunteers and a policeman died trying to help civilians, he said.

Villagers living in the nearby countryside have also escaped. Oleksandr Lubianko said he was the last person to leave his hamlet home in Yuchenkove, west of Vovchansk. “We have no power, no water,” he said. He said he packed a single suitcase and set off across the fields, eventually coming across a Ukrainian soldier.

Lubianko had been feeding his neighbours’ goats, chickens and ducks. “I was sad to abandon them. Who knows if they will survive. The goat looked at me reproachfully,” he said.

His sister Nataliia Hrybenkova left the nearby village of Bilyi Kolodayaz. She described Russia’s occupation two years ago as “bearable”. “Masked gunmen came round and stole my husband’s Toyota car,” she recalled. “You were not allowed to speak Ukrainian. But if you kept your head down, it was OK.”

Russia’s latest bloody attack was much worse. “There is bombing all the time. There are airstrikes every day,” she said, adding that the kindergarten and mill were flattened.

Before the war, Vovchansk was a prosperous city. It had several big factories and a thriving agricultural sector. There were close ties with relatives and other Russians living in Belgorod.

“Now we are enemies. So many people have suffered, so many lives have been lost,” Hrybenkova said, speaking at a reception centre in Kharkiv for displaced and homeless people. “We became bums, almost. These are borrowed clothes,” she added wryly.

Valentina – who declined to give her surname – said she got out of Vovchansk in a car with her husband, daughter Anya and six-year-old grandson. They hid for several hours, before fleeing under gunfire.

“We saw planes and heard bombs. We crossed ourselves and hoped for the best,” she said. She previously worked in the city’s aggregate factory, which manufactured parts for helicopters and Kamaz lorries. “I did the detailing,” she explained.

Her daughter, a nurse, helped evacuate patients from the hospital. “We got everybody out in time,” Anya said. Soon afterwards, Russian soldiers stormed the building and set up on observation point in a medical department with a tower across the road.

What would happen now? “We don’t know,” Valentina said. “All I can tell you is the Russians thought it would be easy to take Vovchansk. They were wrong. Ukraine is fighting back.”

Democrats will target Donald Trump’s first full-scale campaign rally since his criminal trial with a billboard that brands him “a convicted white-collar crook”.

The ad, paid for by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), is the latest indication that the party is ready to become more aggressive in capitalising on last month’s guilty verdict in New York.

“Trump was a disaster for Nevada’s economy,” says the billboard, which will be displayed in Las Vegas, where Trump is due to speak on Sunday. “Now he’s back. A convicted white-collar crook. Coddling billionaires, leaving workers behind.”

A Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in his hush-money criminal trial, making him the the first former US president to be convicted of a felony. Judge Juan Merchan set a sentencing hearing for 11 July.

But Democrats have been unsure how far to go in hammering home the verdict to voters in this year’s presidential election campaign. Some fear it could fuel a narrative that the trial was politically motivated and backfire by generating sympathy for the presumptive Republican nominee.

However, this week there have been signs of a more direct approach. On Monday, at a campaign reception in Greenwich, Connecticut, Joe Biden referred to his opponent as a “convicted felon”.

The Las Vegas billboard attempts to tie Trump’s criminal record to his economic one, portraying him as a “white-collar crook” who ripped off Nevada’s working class when he was president. The phrase also has echoes of the “Crooked Hillary” label that proved effective for Trump during the 2016 campaign.

Stephanie Justice, a DNC spokesperson, said: “As Donald Trump returns to Nevada this weekend for the first time as a convicted felon, voters will remember this crook left Nevada’s workers out to dry as president.

“After promising to take care of Nevada’s middle class, he implemented a tax scam that made the ultra-wealthy and corporations wealthier off the backs of working families, repeatedly attacked unions and sat back as Nevada bled tens of thousands of jobs.”

Justice added: “Now he’s promising tax handouts to his billionaire donors instead of putting the interests of working Nevadans first. Nevada voters know that Trump is too corrupt and unfit to serve, and will reject him again in 2024.”

The political impact of Trump’s conviction remains uncertain, but a post-verdict analysis of nearly 2,000 interviews with voters who previously participated in New York Times/Siena College surveys found that Trump’s lead over Biden narrowed from three points to just one point.

There is “no chance” that the search for the British TV doctor Michael Mosley on the Greek island of Symi will be called off until he is found, the island’s mayor has said, after the search was described as “a race against time”.

Mosley, 67, has been missing since Wednesday afternoon when he decided to walk from the beach he was at with his wife, leaving his phone behind. The search and rescue operation, which involves divers, helicopters and drones, is now in its fourth day.

There has been no sign yet of Mosley, said Manolis Tsimpoukas, a search organiser, as firefighters resumed their search covering a four-mile (6.5km) radius on the island’s mountainous terrain.

The mayor, Eleftherios Papakaloudoukas, questioned how anyone could survive in the scorching heat gripping the island, with the mercury topping 40C on the day Mosley disappeared. Symi and nearby islands are under a yellow weather warning for high temperatures and the mayor said the search dog was only able to work for an hour on Saturday morning due to the heat.

Papakaloudoukas said the area where Mosley is believed to have walked through was “difficult to pass” and was “only rocks”, and there were “loads” of snakes.

Mosley’s four children arrived on Symi on Saturday to assist with the search, the mayor said, joining Mosley’s wife, Dr Claire Bailey, and her friends. Mosley and Bailey arrived on the island on Tuesday.

On Friday, CCTV images of Mosley were released showing him shielding himself from the sun with an umbrella outside a restaurant in the village of Pedi, providing the first piece of concrete evidence that he made it to the village. The images were taken about 20 minutes after he left St Nikolas beach at about 1.30pm local time.

While Bailey has been searching for her husband in a wooded area above the village of Pedi, search teams now believe Mosley travelled through a much sparser area on the other side of the bay, Papakaloudoukas said, citing other CCTV evidence. Police have instructed taxi boats to raise the alert if they see anything strange after the search was expanded to the sea.

Further CCTV footage from a house at the edge of Pedi’s marina showed Mosley on a mountain path that leads towards the island’s port town at about 2pm on Wednesday. A senior police officer coordinating the operation said of the development: “In some ways the mystery has only deepened. Now we have to ask where did he go from there, and if he took another unexpected route [to the port town] did he slip and fall? We’re still no nearer to solving this.”

One of the rescuers told the PA news agency that it would have taken a fit young person three hours to walk to the port from Pedi – the path on which Mosley is believed to have embarked after he reached the village. “The path is not easy to follow, if he took a wrong turn he would be lost. He could be anywhere, it is a race against time,” the rescuer said of the little-used path, which runs over inland terrain rather than along the coast.

The mayor’s daughter, Mika Papakalodouka, said some of the island’s 300 permanent residents were out searching for Mosley. “It’s such a small island to get lost on. It’s so weird for us. Everybody is worried and looking for him.”