Israeli campaign leaves Lebanese border towns in ruins, satellite images show Israel's military campaign in southern Lebanon has caused vast destruction in more than a dozen border towns and villages, reducing many of them to clusters of grey craters, according to satellite imagery provided to Reuters by Planet Labs Inc. Many of the towns, emptied of their residents by the bombing, had been inhabited for at least two centuries. The imagery reviewed includes towns between Kfarkela in southeastern Lebanon, south past Meiss al-Jabal, and then west past a base used by U.N. peacekeepers to the small village of Labbouneh. "There…

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE Russian glide bomb obliterates Ukrainian headquarters – MOD Russian warplanes have obliterated a Ukrainian-held building in the border Kharkov Region where a number of officers were posted, the Defense Ministry in Moscow announced on Monday, releasing video footage of the strike. The ministry said in a statement that its forces had destroyed a Ukrainian temporary deployment point near the town of Volchansk, which is about six miles from the Russian border. The area around the town has been the scene of fierce fighting since Russia launched its offensive in Kharkov Region to establish a ‘cordon sanitaire’ to protect…

Netanyahu says Israel hit Iran hard; Khamenei says damage should not be exaggerated Israel's airstrikes "hit hard" Iran's defences and missile production, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, as Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the country was considering its response. With warfare raging in Gaza and Lebanon, direct confrontation between Israel and Iran risks spiralling into a regional conflagration. But a day after the airstrikes, there was no sign they would spark another round of escalation. However, heavy fighting in Lebanon between Israeli forces and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which sharply intensified over recent weeks, continued on Sunday with…

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE Putin hopes NATO heard warning on long-range strikes President Vladimir Putin has expressed hope that NATO has “heard” his warning about the consequences of allowing Ukraine to use Western-supplied long-range missiles to strike deep inside Russia. Putin said last month that Moscow would treat any such attacks as a direct attack by the countries that supplied the weapons. Amid growing Western involvement in the Ukraine conflict, the Russian president has also proposed updating the national nuclear doctrine. When asked whether Kiev’s backers had listened to his warning, Putin told Rossiya-1 correspondent Pavel Zarubin “They didn’t tell me anything…