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Ukraine has dismissed Iran's threats of retaliation after striking an Iranian cargo vessel in the Caspian Sea, in the first incident to directly link the wars in Iran and Ukraine.

This comes as a Russian missile crossed into Polish airspace and detonated in a village, and as Saudi Arabia prepared a possible land offensive against the Houthis in central Yemen.

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1️⃣ 🇵🇱🇷🇺 NATO scrambles jets as Russian missile hits Poland: Alliance members launched F-16s alongside a refuelling aircraft and an early warning plane after a missile crossed into Polish airspace and detonated at Tarnawa-Kolonia, leaving a wide crater but no injuries. Secretary-General Mark Rutte called it "yet another reckless act by Russia," while Prime Minister Donald Tusk rushed to the site and Ukraine identified the weapon as a Kh-101 cruise missile.

2️⃣ 🌏 Asia scrambles for oil as Red Sea blockade bites: Japan, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines are racing to secure supplies after the Houthi blockade of Saudi shipping through Bab al-Mandeb compounded Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz in March. War risk premiums for tankers have doubled in a week, and Chinese refiners have stepped up purchases of sanctioned Russian crude to cover the shortfall.

3️⃣ 🇷🇴🇷🇺 Romania downs third drone in three days: A Romanian F-16 shot down a drone over the Black Sea five minutes after it entered the NATO member's airspace, the third such shootdown in as many days. Bucharest summoned Russia's ambassador over "repeated violations," after President Nicusor Dan cited an investigation identifying an earlier drone as a Shahed model used by Russia in Ukraine.

4️⃣ 🇸🇦🇾🇪 Saudi Arabia prepares offensive against the Houthis: Yemeni sources say Riyadh is concentrating forces for a naval and possibly land offensive in central Yemen to break the Houthi chokehold on its Red Sea oil exports. The Saudi defence ministry said 14 states including Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt and Sudan had backed a multinational maritime coalition, with Riyadh also asking the US and European countries to join.

5️⃣ 🇺🇸🇮🇷 Trump calls off strikes if a deal comes quickly: President Donald Trump said he had cancelled strikes against Iran provided a deal is struck "rapidly," writing that Tehran and other Middle East countries had asked him to hold off because the "perimeters" of an agreement had been reached. Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency denied asking for any pause, calling the claim "nothing but a new lie," while acting Defence Minister Majid Ibn al-Reza said Iran would "neither be caught off guard nor remain passive."

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🇺🇦🇮🇷 Caspian strike draws a line between two wars

Ukraine dismissed Iranian threats of retaliation after targeting an Iranian cargo vessel in the Caspian Sea, in what the BBC described as the first direct link between the wars in Iran and Ukraine.

Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called Iran's threats "unjustified and groundless," writing that "the regime in Tehran is a direct accomplice to Russian aggression against Ukraine, fuelling Moscow's criminal war with weapons that have killed Ukrainians since 2022."

The Security Service of Ukraine said its drones hit an oil platform in the northern Caspian along with a Russian missile boat and cargo ships under international sanctions, while Kyiv's ambassador to Israel said the vessel carried components for drones and missiles rather than civilian cargo.

Iran said the attack killed one sailor and injured several others, and its foreign ministry insisted Iran "has never intervened in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine."

Former intelligence official Ivan Stupak told the BBC it was "not a good idea for Ukraine to have another battlefront with Iran," while Acled's Olha Polishchuk said the strike was "less about opening a new front against Tehran" than an extension of Kyiv's targeting of networks supporting the Russian war effort.

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1️⃣ 🇺🇸🇨🇳 US ramps up anti-China spending worldwide: The Trump administration notified Congress it will spend $175.8 million replacing undersea telecommunications cables in the Caribbean and Central America to keep China out, according to a copy obtained by the Associated Press. An internal State Department document proposes more than $340 million for over 50 further projects, reviving initiatives halted last year when DOGE dismantled USAID.

2️⃣ 🇮🇹🇹🇭 Italian students fined over Bangkok train row: Five Italian students and their supervisor apologised to a Thai woman after video of their confrontation on a Bangkok metro train went viral, with police fining five of the six 1,000 baht each for insulting another person. The Italian embassy issued a public apology condemning the behaviour of the underage tourists on a school trip.

3️⃣ 🇺🇸🇨🇳 Tech giants launch open AI security alliance: Nvidia, Microsoft, SpaceX and Palantir formed the Open Secure AI Alliance after startup Hugging Face was forced to turn to a self-hosted Chinese open-weight model to defend against a cyberattack by rogue OpenAI models. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has threatened sanctions on Chinese companies accused of extracting knowledge from US systems.

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