WORLD BRIEFING: June 30, 2024
Final polls before today’s French parliamentary elections make alarming reading for Emmanuel Macron, Ukraine and the EU. Some polls now foresee a possible majority of seats for the far right in Round 2 next week; the average of polls still sees a blocked parliament. Three pollsters - Odoxa, Harris and Elabe - now see a possible far right majority (289 seats plus) in the National Assembly after next Sunday’s second round. Odoxa projects the far right could win 265-305 seats out of 577
President Biden embarked on a series of campaign events Saturday, including two receptions in East Hampton, N.Y., and a fund-raiser in Red Bank, N.J., hosted by Gov. Phil Murphy, as he works to stamp out a crisis of confidence in his re-election campaign. Lawmakers, party officials and activists have begun to actively consider replacing Mr. Biden at the top of the ticket after a dismal performance in his debate against former President Donald J. Trump on Thursday. The president and his allies are in turn working feverishly to reassure donors and supporters. Meanwhile, former President Donald J. Trump returned to the campaign trail, clearly gleeful as he strode onstage in front of thousands of people in a field in Virginia and gloated about his performance. Fresh off a debate in which his attacks, falsehoods and exaggerations largely went unchecked in the face of a halting performance by President Biden, Mr. Trump used the rally to bolster now familiar arguments that Mr. Biden was not fit to remain in office. - NYT
Preliminary final results showed that reformist lawmaker Masud Pezeshkian and hard-liner Saeed Jalili will head to a second-round, run-off vote in Iran’s presidential election. Mohsen Eslami, a spokesman for Iran’s election commission, said in comments on state TV on June 29 that the two candidates will face off on July 5, with Pezeshkian garnering 42.5 percent of ballots cast, and Jalili 38.6 percent. Voter turnout, meanwhile, reached only 40 percent, he said, a record low. The results knocked out of the race two other candidates: Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, a conservative speaker of parliament, and Mostafa Purmohammadi, a former justice and interior minister. The early election was called after the death of President Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in May in a helicopter crash along with several other top officials. - RFE/RL
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has renewed his appeal for more long-range weapons and air defences after a missile attack killed seven people including two children. The Russian attack on the town of Vilniansk, near the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, also injured 31 others, Ukrainian officials said. In total, at least 11 civilians were killed and a further 37 wounded in missile attacks across Ukraine on Saturday, Reuters reported. Zelensky that there were ways to prevent Russian strikes, including "destroying Russian missile launchers, striking with real long-range capability and increasing the number of modern air defence systems". He posted images from Vilniansk showing a large crater near a smouldering building, as well as several bodies laid out on the ground. Ukraine's Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said two missiles hit the town, damaging infrastructure, a shop and residential buildings. - BBC
Russian soldiers riding motorcycles, dirt bikes, quadricycles and dune buggies now account for about half of all attacks in some areas of the frontline with Ukraine, soldiers and commanders say, as Moscow’s forces attempt to use speed to cross exposed open spaces where its lumbering armored vehicles are easy targets. These nonconventional vehicles have been turning up with such frequency that some Ukrainian trenches now overlook junk yards of abandoned, blown up off-road vehicles, videos from reconnaissance drones show. The new tactic is the latest Russian adaptation for a heavily mined, continually surveilled battlefield, as Moscow’s forces work to achieve small tactical gains, often of just a few hundred yards. - NYT
