A group of school children in their smart uniforms skip past us, overseen by their mums and dads.

In front of us, the highway is empty of all cars except for two armoured police vehicles slowly making their way up a hill.

The children and their parents are on “Airport Road”, which leads into the centre of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. The airport is a few miles away to the north.

The parents are leading the children to an intersection where they will turn right towards their homes.

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Everything beyond that intersection is gang territory, and nobody ventures past it but the police, who appear to be probing the gangs’ defences.

This part of the Airport Road, beyond the intersection and stretching for miles, is an area controlled by the gangster Jimmy Cherizier, known here and abroad as “Barbecue”.

The security forces are desperate to capture Barbecue, himself a former policeman, and to dismantle his gang.

As the families near the intersection, automatic gunfire bursts from the turret of one of the armoured police vehicles. Instantly the children and their parents run for safety, hugging a wall – they know what is about to happen.

Within seconds the police are being attacked with volleys of machine gun fire. We watch, holding our breaths, and thankfully all the children make it round the corner to the relative safety of a side street.

They live on the edge of what’s called the “red zone” where the gangs control the streets.

Security forces want to take it back.

The first armoured police vehicle makes it into Barbecue’s territory unscathed, but the second vehicle is hit.

One of its tyres is punctured, so they have no choice but to turn back.

The firing intensifies as the police vehicle makes its way down the hill, and we can hear the crack of bullets as the gangs target the police.

My team and I are travelling in two separate armoured 4x4s. The police are the targets, and we are filming their exchanges with gang members hidden up the hill and in side streets, firing from multiple positions.

As the police vehicle nears the intersection once again, it comes under sustained fire.

At this point the streets and the intersection are completely empty of people and traffic, anyone in the vicinity has taken cover.

A stray round passes uncomfortably close by our team still outside the vehicles, so we decide it’s time to go, and reverse as the armoured police vehicle loses its tyre, rolling forward on its rim.

Getting out would be suicidal for the police. The vehicle limps towards another crossroads to get away from the firing.

This, I’m told, is just an ordinary day in Port-au-Prince.

Nobody can fully agree on a number, but by most estimates, the gangs control around 90% of Port-au-Prince now. People don’t venture into their areas, and cars turn away from the boundaries to avoid being hit by sniper fire from inside or being caught in the crossfire.

Hundreds of thousands of Haitians have lost their homes, and many now find themselves in heaving makeshift displacement camps. They huddle for protection, but in reality there really isn’t much on offer.

In a narrow alleyway in a camp set up in the grounds of a church, I meet Barbara Gashiwi, a new mum. She gave birth to her daughter Jenna a month ago, beneath the plastic sheets where she still sits.

Barbara was forced out of her home by the gangs days before she was due to give birth.

“They pulled guns on us and told us to give up the house, after that we ran outside on to the street and took off,” she told me.

She says she doesn’t think she will ever go back to her home again. Very few of the 10,500 people living in this one displacement camp believe they will ever go home.

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A year ago, we visited displaced Haitians living inside the government’s communication ministry.

At the time we walked in off the street, but this time we could barely move for the crowds – the forecourt is now a camp too, and the difference is stark.

The government has abandoned this and other ministries, moving higher up to safer ground, leaving whole communities on their own.

The gangs’ lawless, and often murderous, activity means that the roughly 10% of Port-au-Prince still free is packed with people and traffic.

Just a few districts in Port-au-Prince are left, and they’re completed surrounded, leaving the people who live in this city squeezed into the only places that haven’t fallen.

It’s hard to describe the claustrophobia and tension that pervades life here.

And with everything else happening in the world right now, the people of Haiti feel they’ve been abandoned, and are condemned to live their lives under the rule of the gun.

Stuart Ramsay reports from Haiti with camera operator Toby Nash, senior foreign producer Dominique Van Heerden, and producers Brunelie Joseph and David Montgomery.

Vladimir Putin has visited Kursk for the first time since his troops ejected Ukrainian forces from the Russian city.

The Russian president met with volunteer organisations and visited a nuclear power plant in the region yesterday, the Kremlin said on Wednesday.

Mr Putin said late last month that his forces had ejected Ukrainian troops from the Kursk region, which ended the largest incursion into Russian territory since World War Two.

Ukraine launched its attack in August last year, using swarms of drones and heavy Western weaponry to smash through the Russian border, controlling nearly 540 square miles (1,400 square kilometres) of Kursk at the height of the incursion.

More than 159 Ukrainian drones were shot down over Russian territory, Russia’s defence ministry said on Wednesday.

The majority were over Russia’s western regions, but at least six drones were shot down over the densely populated Moscow region, the ministry added.

The visit in the Kursk region comes as a Russian missile attack killed six soldiers and injured 10 more during training in the Sumy region of Ukraine, according to the country’s national guard.

The commander of the unit has been suspended and an internal investigation has been launched.

Russia’s defence ministry claimed the attack on the training camp in northeastern Ukraine killed up to 70 Ukrainian servicemen, including 20 instructors.

The attack comes after US President Donald Trump spoke to both Mr Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, urging them to restart ceasefire talks.

Read more from Sky News:
Fresh UK and EU sanctions on Russia announced
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But German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on Wednesday that Mr Trump misjudged his influence on Mr Putin after the call between the American and Russian leaders yielded no progress in Ukraine peace talks.

Europe has since announced new sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine. Mr Pistorius said it remained to be seen whether the US would join those measures.

A top team of former government ministers and military and security chiefs have taken part in a wargame that simulates a Russian attack on the UK for a new podcast series by Sky News and Tortoise Media.

Among the line-up, Sir Ben Wallace, a former Conservative defence secretary, plays the prime minister; Jack Straw, a former senior Labour politician, resumes his old job as foreign secretary; Amber Rudd steps back into her former role as home secretary and Jim Murphy, a secretary of state for Scotland under Gordon Brown, takes the position of chancellor.

The defence secretary is played by James Heappey, a former armed forces minister.

Lord Mark Sedwill is the national security adviser – a position he held for real under both Theresa May and Boris Johnson, while General Sir Richard Barrons, one of the leaders of a major defence review that is due to be published in the coming weeks, plays the role of chief of the defence staff, the UK’s top military officer.

Baroness Helena Kennedy, a barrister and expert on human rights law, appears as attorney general, while Lieutenant General Sir David Capewell resumes his former role as chief of joint operations, the UK’s warfighting commander.

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The scenario is designed to test Britain’s defences and national resilience at a time of mounting tensions with Russia.

It also explores the reliability – or otherwise – of key allies like the United States in a crisis.

Asked why he wanted to take part in the project, Sir Ben said: “I think it’s really important that we demonstrate to the public how government makes decisions in real crises and emergencies and let them understand and hopefully be reassured that actually there is a process and it’s at that moment in time that no matter what people’s party politics are, people pull together for the right reasons.”

Launching on 10 June, the five-part podcast series will give listeners the chance to experience the kind of wargame that is genuinely tested inside government.

The only difference with this version is that nothing discussed is classified.

The tagline for the series is: “Russia knows our weaknesses – but do you?”

Written and presented by me, The Wargame pitches a fictional British government, led by Sir Ben, against an imagined Kremlin in a high-stakes contest that draws on the real-life knowledge and experience of the cast.

The series begins a few months in the future, with the prime minister and his top team assembling for a COBRA emergency meeting as tensions escalate with Moscow.

Keir Giles, a Russia expert, author and senior consulting fellow at the Chatham House think tank, is playing the part of the Russian president.

He leads the Russia team, made up of fellow experts.

The British side has little idea about what is about to unfold, but they are about to find out.

“Ordinarily when this red team gets together, and we have done this before, we run rings around the opposition, partly because Russia has the initiative, partly because Russia has the tools, partly because Russia has the will and the determination to cause damage sometimes in ways that the opposition – whether it’s the UK, NATO, another victim – doesn’t imagine before the game actually starts,” Mr Giles said.

The scenario was devised and overseen by Rob Johnson, director of the Changing Character of War Centre at Oxford University and a former director of net assessment and challenge at the Ministry of Defence.

“We are trying to raise awareness through this war game to say, look, let’s have a look at what might happen,” he said.

“Unlikely and low probability though it is, so that we can start to put some measures in place and remind ourselves about how we used to do it – use history as our weapon, if you like, in that regard.”

He describes the events in his game as very low likelihood but high impact. That means a low chance of it happening but catastrophic consequences if it did.

The Wargame is an exclusive collaboration between Sky News and Tortoise Media, now the new owners of The Observer.

The first two episodes will premiere at 00.01 on 10 June across all Sky News platforms. Episodes three and four will follow on Tuesday 17 June, with the final episode airing Tuesday 24 June.

The release comes as the UK government prepares to publish its Strategic Defence Review and as Britain and its allies prepare to meet for a major NATO summit next month.