There’s an eerie sense of foreboding in the villages, towns, and cities of eastern Ukraine – especially those within firing distance of Russian artillery, and the fighting in the nearby city of Bakhmut.
At breakfast time we were startled by the sound of an explosion near where we are staying in Kramatorsk.
A residential neighbourhood had been hit by a Russian missile, at least one person died.
Whole apartments had been destroyed and as the emergency services started rescuing the injured, survivors picked through the ruins looking for belongings.
The contents of their home were strewn across the road, along with glass and debris from the explosion.
The elderly and most vulnerable were slowly helped from the battered buildings as medics moved in to dress their wounds and inspect injuries.
We watched on as a medic dressed an elderly resident’s nastily burnt hands.
Even as we filmed the air raid sirens started again.
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Kramatorsk has been hit many times, but it’s no less of a shock each time for those still living here.
“I was sitting on the couch at home talking to my daughter on the phone, when suddenly dust and debris flew into me. I didn’t hear anything else, and I don’t want to hear anything more. B******s!”, one woman shouted at our camera.
Image: Footage from fighting inside Bakhmut shows a Ukrainian soldier with an RPG
About 12kms (7.5 miles) back from the Bakhmut frontline is Konstantinovka.
People still live here among the many ruined apartment blocks, schools, and government buildings, but there is no quiet.
The Ukrainians resupply their troops from here.
The main route back to Bakhmut has been lost to the Russians, so enormous tanks, trucks, armoured personnel carriers and ambulances rumble through residential backstreets to obscure single lane roads that allow them some safety on their way further east.
The boom of outgoing Ukrainian artillery is a constant, sometimes the equally distinctive sound of incoming rounds makes visitors like me look up and readjust my body armour and helmet.
Groups of soldiers, some going in, and some coming out of Bakhmut stop at a few petrol stations that are still open to drink coffee, and chat to comrades.
A team of soldiers pull up in a battered pickup and are greeted with hugs by a group of volunteer medics who have brought them some supplies.
The soldiers have just left the fighting in Bakhmut, and they busily start transferring boxes of food and medicine into their vehicle.
I ask what it is like inside, and the answer is simple: it’s hard and they need more of everything.
“It is really difficult, we need more of everything we can get, because it’s really hard now there, but we are holding on,” a soldier named Ivan told me.
“That’s it, what more can I say?”
Image: Ivan says Ukrainian forces are ‘holding on’ in Bakhmut
More of everything includes modern Western weapons of course.
More is coming but the sense I got from what I could see of the equipment on show just a few miles from the front is that it can’t come soon enough.
I asked another soldier, Oleksandr, whose battalion has just arrived from a distant part of the country, if he was confident of a victory.
His answer was revealingly honest. “I think it’s 30 to 70 in our favour that we will win this fight for Bakhmut.”
He confirmed Russia has many soldiers on the battlefield, too.
“Russia has a lot of soldiers there, but they are taking a lot more losses than we are, much more.”
Image: Oleksandr, pictured, is confident of victory
President Zelenskyy has said the defence of the east and the relief of Bakhmut is a priority for Ukraine.
Some military analysts disagree, but he has said in no uncertain terms that the fight for Ukraine will be won or lost in the east.
Rightly or wrongly, he says now is one of the most important periods of the war so far.
Stuart Ramsay reports from eastern Ukraine with camera operator Toby Nash, and producers Dominique Van Heerden, Artem Lysak, and Nick Davenport.
At least five people have been killed in a shooting in Jerusalem, authorities have confirmed.
Footage showed dozens of people fleeing from a bus stop during the morning rush hour.
Paramedics who responded to the scene said the area was chaotic and covered in broken glass, with people wounded and lying unconscious on the road and a pavement near the bus stop.
Police said two attackers were “neutralised” soon after.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now holding an assessment with his heads of security.
Image: A motive for the shooting has not yet been confirmed. Pic: Reuters
Around 15 people were injured – with six in a serious condition – after it appeared two attackers boarded a bus and opened fire as it reached a major intersection at the northern entrance to Jerusalem, on a road that leads to Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem.
Israeli Defense Force soldiers were dispatched and are searching the area for any other suspects. They are also searching several areas on the outskirts of Ramallah.
Image: The bus with bullet holes in the windscreen. Pic: Reuters
A spokesperson for Israeli emergency services, MDA, confirmed four deaths – a man about 50 years old and three men aged around 30.
The fifth victim, a woman about 50 years old, was confirmed at hospital.
Paramedics have evacuated from the scene other casualties in serious conditions with gunshot wounds, to hospitals in Jerusalem.
Several people with minor injuries from glass shards are being treated at the roadside.
The motive for the shooting and who carried it out, was not immediately clear.
The war in Gaza has sparked a surge of violence in both the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Israel.
An Australian mother who murdered her estranged husband’s parents and aunt by feeding them a beef wellington laced with poisonous mushrooms has been jailed for life with a minimum of 33 years.
Erin Patterson, 50, lured her former parents-in-law Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and Gail Patterson’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66, to lunch at her home in Leongatha, Victoria, on 29 July 2023.
Mrs Wilkinson’s husband, Reverend Ian Wilkinson, also ate the meal, which was served alongside mashed potatoes and green beans, but survived after receiving a liver transplant and spending months in hospital.
Patterson, a mother-of-two, had made the pastry dish with deadly death cap mushrooms, also known as amanita phalloides.
At the sentencing hearing at the Supreme Court of Victoria in Melbourne, Justice Christopher Beale said the substantial planning of the murders and Patterson’s lack of remorse meant her sentence should be lengthy.
“The devastating impact of your crimes is not limited to your direct victims. Your crimes have harmed a great many people,” he said.
“Not only did you cut short three lives and cause lasting damage to Ian Wilkinson’s health, thereby devastating the extended Patterson and Wilkinson families, you inflicted untold suffering on your own children, whom you robbed of their beloved grandparents.”
Image: Pic: AP
Patterson’s trial in Morwell, southern Australia, heard that she fabricated a cancer diagnosis to use as an excuse not to invite her children, pretending to want to discuss how to break the news to them after the meal.
The four guests fell ill immediately after eating her food. Mrs Wilkinson and Mrs Patterson died on 4 August, and Mr Patterson a day later.
Reverend Wilkinson spent seven weeks in hospital but survived.
Image: Reverend Ian Wilkinson arrives at court. Pic: Reuters
In his victim impact statement, he said the poisoned food meant he had to have a liver transplant and was left feeling “half alive”.
Patterson, who maintains her innocence and that she poisoned her victims by accident, also invited the father of her children, Simon Patterson, to the fatal meal.
Image: Simon Patterson outside of court in May. Pic: AP
He declined the invitation.
In his victim impact statement, Mr Patterson said of the couple’s children: “The grim reality is they live in an irreparably broken home with only a solo parent, when almost everyone else knows their mother murdered their grandparents.”
In July, Patterson was found guilty of murdering Don and Gail Patterson, and Heather Wilkinson, and attempting to murder Ian Wilkinson.
What makes death cap mushrooms so lethal?
The death cap is one of the most toxic mushrooms on the planet and is involved in the majority of fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide.
The species contains three main groups of toxins: amatoxins, phallotoxins, and virotoxins.
From these, amatoxins are primarily responsible for the toxic effects in humans.
The alpha-amanitin amatoxin has been found to cause protein deficit and ultimately cell death, although other mechanisms are thought to be involved.
The liver is the main organ that fails due to the poison, but other organs are also affected, most notably the kidneys.
The effects usually begin after a short latent period and can include gastrointestinal disorders followed by jaundice, seizures, coma, and eventually, death.
Previous poisoning attempts left husband ill
Following the guilty verdicts, more details of the case were revealed.
Mr Patterson said he had rejected the lunch invite “out of fear” as he believed his former partner had tried to poison him three times before.
After they separated in 2015, he stopped eating any food she had prepared, having become seriously ill after meals cooked by her.
Image: Death cap mushrooms. Pic: iStock
Reverend Wilkinson also revealed he and the other three guests were served their food on large grey dinner plates, while Patterson served her portion on a smaller, tan-coloured plate.
The nine-week trial attracted intense interest in Australia – with podcasters, journalists and documentary-makers descending on the town of Morwell, around two hours east of Melbourne, where the court hearings took place.
Donald Trump has said he is ready to move to a second stage of sanctioning Russia, just hours after Moscow launched the largest arial attack of the war so far.
At least four people have been killed, including a mother and a three-month-old baby, with more than 40 others injured, after Russia launched a bombardment of drones overnight.
While on his way to the final of the US Open tennis tournament, the president was asked if he was ready to move to the second stage of punishment for Moscow, to which he replied, “Yes”.
It echoes US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who said additional economic pressure by the United States and Europe could prompt Putin to enter peace talks with Ukraine.
“We are prepared to increase pressure on Russia, but we need our European partners to follow us,” Treasury Secretary Scott told NBC News’ Meet the Press.
Sir Keir Starmer said the latest attack shows Vladimir Putin is “not serious about peace” as he joined other allies in condemning Russia’s actions.
The prime minister said the “brutal” and “cowardly” assault on Kyiv – which resulted in a government building catching fire – proved the Russian leader feels he can “act with impunity”.
Russia attacked Kyiv with 805 drones and decoys, officials said, and Ukraine shot down and neutralised 747 drones and four missiles, the country’s air force has said.
The attack caused a fire to break out at a key government building, with the sky above Kyiv covered in smoke.
Appeasement makes ‘no sense’
Polish premier Donald Tusk said the latest military onslaught showed any “attempts to appease” Putin make “no sense”.
“The US and Europe must together force Russia to accept an immediate ceasefire. We have all the instruments,” Mr Tusk said on Saturday.
Meanwhile the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the Kremlin was “mocking diplomacy”.
Vladimir Putin reportedly wants control of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine – known as the Donbas – as a condition for ending the war.
Russia occupies around 19% of Ukraine, including Crimea and the parts of the Donbas region it seized before the full-scale invasion in February 2022.
But this attack comes after European nations pressed the Russian leader to work to end the war at a virtual meeting of the “coalition of the willing” – a group of countries led by France and Britain seeking to help protect Kyiv in the event of a ceasefire.
Some 26 of Ukraine’s allies pledged to provide security guarantees as part of a “reassurance force” for the war-torn country once the fighting ends, Mr Macron has said.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he is ready to meet Mr Putin to negotiate a peace agreement, and has urged US president Donald Trump to put punishing sanctions on Russia to push it to end the war.
Image: Pic: State Emergency Service of Ukraine
“The world can force the Kremlin criminals to stop the killings – all that is needed is political will,” he said on Sunday.