Russian and Ukrainian delegates met in Istanbul on Monday for their second set of direct peace talks, a day after Kyiv launched a shock drone attack on Russia’s nuclear-capable bombers, in an operation that President Volodymyr Zelensky said was a year and a half in the making.

After the initial round of discussions in the Turkish city last month – the first between the warring countries since soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion in early 2022 – both sides agreed to share their conditions for a full ceasefire and a potentially lasting peace. Zelensky said Sunday that Ukraine had presented Moscow with its “logical and realistic” demands, but said Russia had not yet shared its memorandum.

“We don’t have it,” Zelensky said. “The Turkish side doesn’t have it, and the American side doesn’t have the Russian document either. Despite this, we will attempt to achieve at least some progress on the path toward peace.”

It is not yet clear if Ukraine’s daring Sunday air raid will streamline that path or make it more thorny. Kyiv has long sought to impress upon the Kremlin that there are costs to prolonging its campaign, but some analysts have warned that the operation – which struck Russian airfields thousands of miles from Ukraine’s borders – will only replenish Moscow’s resolve.

The mission, codenamed “Spiderweb,” was one of the most significant blows that Ukraine has landed against Russia in more than three years of full-scale war. Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, said it had smuggled the drones into Russia, hiding them in wooden mobile homes latched onto trucks. The roofs were then remotely opened, and the drones deployed to launch their strikes on four Russian airfields across the vast country.

Vasul Malyuk, the head of the SBU, said the attack caused an estimated $7 billion in damage and had struck 34% of Russia’s strategic cruise missile carriers – a total of 41 aircraft. These targets were “completely legitimate,” Malyuk said, stressing that Russia had used the planes throughout the conflict to pummel Ukraine’s “peaceful cities.”

The operation has provided a much-needed boost to morale in Ukraine, which has come under fierce Russian bombardment since peace talks began in mid-May, and is bracing for an expected summer offensive. Moscow launched a record 472 drones at Ukraine overnight into Sunday, only hours before the Ukrainian attack, according to Ukrainian officials.

At a summit in Lithuania on Monday, an upbeat Zelensky said the operation proved that Ukraine has “stronger tactical solutions” than Russia.

“This is a special moment – on the one hand, Russia has launched its summer offensive, but on the other hand, they are being forced to engage in diplomacy,” Zelensky said.

The talks in Istanbul are a test of how genuine that engagement is. Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed holding “direct talks” with Ukraine in Turkey, but didn’t show up, despite Zelensky agreeing to meet. In the end, Moscow sent a low-level delegation to negotiate instead.

In the latest sign of his frustration that the war he pledged to end in a day is showing little sign of stopping, US President Donald Trump said last week that Putin had gone “absolutely crazy,” after Moscow launched the largest aerial attack of the war.

Trump has repeatedly told Russia and Ukraine there will be consequences if they don’t engage in his peace process, although he has so far resisted growing calls from lawmakers in his Republican Party to use sanctions to pressure Putin into winding down his war.

Speaking in Lithuania, Zelensky said that if Monday’s meeting “brings nothing, that clearly means strong new sanctions are urgently, urgently needed.”

Britain will build new attack submarines, invest billions on nuclear warheads and move towards “war-fighting readiness,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday, as he braces for a landmark report into the state of the country’s military.

Starmer’s government said it would build “up to” 12 new attack submarines as part of its AUKUS partnership with the United States and Australia, replacing the country’s current class of seven subs from the late 2030s.

And he will launch a “historic renewal” of the UK’s nuclear deterrent backed by a £15 billion ($20.3 bn) investment, Starmer said in a speech in Scotland on Monday.

The announcements come as a long-awaited review into Britain’s armed services is published Monday. Experts have been calling for a modernization of Britain’s armed services for decades, cries that have grown in volume since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago.

“When we are being directly threatened by states with advanced military forces, the most effective way to deter them is to be ready, and frankly, to show them that we’re ready to deliver peace through strength,” Starmer said Monday.

But Starmer refused to set out the timeline for his pledge that Britain’s overall defense spending would hit 3% of the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP). The uplift, announced earlier this year, is set to be reached by the end of the next parliament in 2034, but is dependent on economic conditions.

And the prime minister did not set out where the money to pay for the new weaponry will come from; he previously announced cuts to the UK’s aid budget to fund the uplift in defense spending, and he declined to rule out similar moves on Monday.

The fiscal promise from the UK falls short of defense spending promises from some NATO countries, whose spending has been closely scrutinized by US President Donald Trump.

NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutte said last month he “assumed” NATO members will agree on a defense spending target of 5% at June’s NATO summit, a significant increase from the 2% benchmark, which was agreed to in 2014.

Per 2024 NATO data, only Poland’s defense expenditure was above 4% of GDP, although Latvia and Estonia had promised increases to 5%, with Italy promising a hike to between 3.5 and 5% of GDP. The US’ defense expenditure sat at 3.38% of GDP in 2024, making up some 64% of total NATO expenditure.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and the subsequent pressure from Trump’s administration on European nations to boost their own military capabilities – has sparked a race among Europe’s key military powers to boost their readiness and counter the Russian threat should the White House pull its support for Kyiv.

The UK “cannot ignore the threat that Russia poses,” Starmer told the BBC on Monday. “Russia has shown in recent weeks that it’s not serious about peace, and we have to be ready.”

Starmer said Monday he intended to turn the UK into a “battle-ready, armour-clad nation with the strongest alliances, and the most advanced capabilities, equipped for the decades to come.”

Alongside the promised submarines, Starmer said that a “hybrid Royal Navy” will patrol the North Atlantic — a key transit route for Russian submarines to reach the eastern US seaboard — signalling a move to more drone-based naval capabilities.

The review, commissioned by his government and led by former NATO chief George Robertson, is expected to highlight a number of emerging threats, such as drone warfare, in which Britain is falling behind.

Given decades of shrinking investment in the British military, questions have been raised over the deterrence that Britain’s conventional and nuclear weapons offer, particularly given its reliance on a US supply chain.In the last eight years, the UK has publicly acknowledged two failed nuclear missile tests, one of them in the waters off Florida, when dummy missiles didn’t fire as intended.

After too many nights of pulling children from the rubble of Russian drone strikes, the weekend’s devastating attacks on Moscow’s military pride mark a moment of brief respite for Ukrainian morale, and yet another twist of the unexpected in the Kremlin’s war of choice.

It may be hard to fathom the precise impact of Ukraine’s wily drone assault on Russian air bases thousands of miles beyond the Ukrainian border. Kyiv said 41 long-range bomber jets were set aflame and that the attacks hit 34% of Russia’s strategic cruise missile carriers at its main bases.

We don’t know how many bombers Russia had that were fully functional – after years of taxing nightly missions over Ukraine – and how many others had been cannibalized for spare parts, but some reports suggest Russia only had about 20 of the propeller-driven Tu-95s and about 60 supersonic Tu-22M3s in service.

It will become clear in the months ahead to what extent this really dents the terror the air raid sirens bring across Ukraine. But if what Kyiv says is true – 117 relatively cheap drones taking out dozens of planes and causing what one security source estimated to be $7 billion in damage – then the economics of the war have shifted.

And it marks another point in which guile triumphs over the giant. Russia’s main card is its vastness – of military resources, frontline manpower, tolerance for pain and financial reserves. But repeatedly, Kyiv has shown targeted pin pricks can burst these bubbles.

In late 2022, the Ukrainians struck supply lines across occupied northern parts of Ukraine, causing a swift and embarrassing collapse of Russian positions. In 2023, they hit the Kerch Strait bridge linking Russia to occupied Crimea. And last year they invaded Kursk, Russia proper, exposing the vulnerability of the Russian war machine’s borders.

On each occasion, the narrative of the war swung back in Ukraine’s favor. But no time is it needed more than this week, after months in which the vital plank of US support has been in doubt, and as Russian and Ukrainian delegations met for a second round of peace talks in Turkey.

It also brings to the forefront one of the key lessons of this war: the capacity for advances in technology, solid intelligence and bold execution to reverse military trajectories many observers felt were settled. Ukraine’s first use of attack drones in 2023 has evolved to a widescale tactic, enabling it to survive the onslaught of overwhelming Russian infantry attacks across wide, imperiled frontlines. It has sent sea-drones to hit Russia’s prized Black Sea Fleet.

And most extraordinarily, this weekend, Ukraine says its air defenses repelled, with unparalleled success, a record Russian drone attack of 472 Shaheds. Ukraine shot down or used electronic warfare to block 382 of them, according to the air force, a feat that again suggests a technological advance, and the possibility that dwindling air defense interceptor supplies from the United States may not be the immediate horrific threat thought a month ago.

But what of the wider impact of the bold drone attack inside Russia – one so deep, in Belaya, Irkutsk, that it was almost halfway across Siberia? What does it change in a war where Russia is slowly advancing, and showing little genuine interest in a ceasefire and the peace that might come with it? This is an unknowable, but not a zero. Losing these aircraft has a practical effect, and impacts upon Russian military pride and anxiety. Even airfields deep in Siberia are not safe.

Russia’s lumbering bulk of a military machine projects invulnerability and fearlessness towards the longest of wars as a tactic. It uses the idea of time being on its side as a key asset. But strikes like the weekend’s show its hardware is vulnerable, limited and probably not easy to replace.

Moscow may brush off this latest setback, its rigidly subservient state media able to sustain any narrative the Kremlin chooses. But that does not alter the reality of its troubles. It did not stop the short-lived Wagner rebellion of 2023, or the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk last year.

The damage is twofold: to the internal narrative that Moscow can do this indefinitely – it clearly cannot, if surprises like these keep coming. And secondly, to its ability to visit the sort of bulk destruction it has relied upon to grind forwards in the war. The latter can slow its progress, but former is more dangerous. Tiny cracks can spread. For now, they are all Ukraine is able to inflict, but their longer-term impact, like so much in this war, is utterly unpredictable.

Police investigating the disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann will carry out fresh searches near the Portuguese holiday resort she was last seen 18 years ago, authorities said on Monday.

The 3-year-old disappeared from her bed while on vacation with her family in the Praia da Luz resort, in southern Portugal, on May 3, 2007. She has not been seen since.

Detectives acting on a request from a German public prosecutor will carry out “a broad range” of searches this week in the area of Lagos, in southern Portugal, a Portuguese police statement said.

The main suspect in the case is a German national identified by media as Christian Brueckner, who is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for raping a 72-year-old woman in Portugal in 2005.

He is under investigation on suspicion of murder in the McCann case but hasn’t been charged. He spent many years in Portugal, including in Praia da Luz, around the time of the child’s disappearance. Brueckner has denied any involvement in her disappearance.

Prosecutors in Braunschweig, Germany, who are responsible for the investigation, didn’t give details of the “judicial measures” taking place in Portugal, according to Germany’s dpa news agency. They said the measures are being carried out by Portuguese authorities with support from officers from Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office.

Britain’s Metropolitan Police said it was “aware of the searches being carried by the BKA (German federal police) in Portugal as part of their investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.”

“The Metropolitan Police Service is not present at the search, we will support our international colleagues where necessary,” the force added, without giving more details.

The McCann case received worldwide interest for several years, with reports of sightings of her stretching as far away as Australia as well as books and television documentaries about her disappearance.

Almost two decades on, investigators in the UK, Portugal and Germany are still piecing together what happened on the night she disappeared. She was in the same room as her brother and sister — 2-year-old twins — while their parents, Kate and Gerry, had dinner with friends at a nearby restaurant.

The last time police resumed searches in the case was in 2023, when detectives from the three countries took part in an operation searching near a dam and a reservoir about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the Praia da Luz resort.

Madeleine’s family marked the 18th anniversary of her disappearance last month, and expressed their determination to keep searching.