For the first time since a ceasefire went into effect last week, Hezbollah has fired two projectiles toward Israeli-occupied territory, responding to repeated Israeli strikes since the agreement.

Israel has carried out daily strikes in Lebanon since Thursday, the day after a ceasefire went into effect. One person was killed in a strike in southern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health.

Hezbollah had fired two projectiles, which landed in an open area on Monday, according to the Israeli military, which said no one was injured. The military did not specify the type of projectile fired.

Hours later, Israel’s military said it began striking “terror targets” in Lebanon after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to retaliate in a statement, calling Hezbollah’s attack “a serious violation of the ceasefire.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said earlier on Monday that its own cross-border strikes, despite the ceasefire, had been “in response to several acts by Hezbollah in Lebanon that posed a threat to Israeli civilians, in violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.” It said it had struck military vehicles at a Hezbollah missile manufacturing site in the Beqaa Valley and tunnels near the Syrian border in northern Lebanon.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar told his French counterpart in a phone call that his country is, in fact, enforcing the ceasefire – which stipulates Hezbollah’s withdrawal from the Israel-Lebanon border area – rather than violating it, Sa’ar said on X on Monday.

“The presence of Hezbollah operatives south of (Lebanon’s) Litani is a fundamental violation of the agreement and they must move north,” Sa’ar said, adding that Israel is “committed to the successful implementation of the ceasefire understandings.”

Hezbollah, in a statement, said that it targeted Israeli military positions “in light of the repeated violations initiated by the Israeli enemy of the ceasefire agreement.” Hezbollah accused Israel of breaking the ceasefire by “firing on civilians and airstrikes in different parts of Lebanon, resulting in the martyrdom of citizens and injuries to others, in addition to the continued violation of Lebanese airspace by hostile Israeli aircraft reaching the capital, Beirut.”

The IDF said the two Hezbollah projectiles were fired toward Shebaa Farms, known in Israel as Har Dov (Mount Dov), which under international law is considered occupied Syrian territory. Israel seized Shebaa Farms, along with the Golan Heights, from Syria after it was attacked in 1967. The U.S. recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights in 2019.

A shaky start

Both sides have, since the early hours of last week’s ceasefire, accused each other of violations, and the escalating tensions risk endangering the agreement altogether.

A senior Israeli official said Friday that the military intends to aggressively and unilaterally act against any ceasefire violations by Hezbollah.

US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Monday that the ceasefire has not broken down. “Broadly speaking,” the ceasefire “has been successful,” he said.

“Obviously, when you have any ceasefire, you can see violations of it,” Miller acknowledged. He noted that the US and France had set up a mechanism “to look at all of these reports of violations of the ceasefire and deal with them through the channels that the mechanisms set up, and that’s what we’ll do over the coming days.”

The State Department official would not say whether the US had determined that any of the alleged violations were violations, saying that the work was ongoing. He also would not comment on reports that US envoy Amos Hochstein had raised violations in a letter to the Israeli government.

The ceasefire deal stipulates a 60-day cessation of hostilities, which negotiators have described as the foundation of a lasting truce. During that time, Hezbollah fighters are expected to retreat some 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Israel-Lebanon border, while Israeli ground forces withdraw from Lebanese territory.

UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the last all-out war between the two countries in 2006, has been the basis of the deal and the negotiations have mainly revolved around the treaty’s enforcement.

Under the agreement, Lebanon would implement a more rigorous supervision of Hezbollah’s movements south of the country’s Litani river, to prevent militants from regrouping there.

United Nations peacekeeping troops, the Lebanese military, and a multinational committee will be tasked with supervising the Iran-backed group’s movements.

A court in Vietnam on Tuesday upheld a death sentence for real estate tycoon Truong My Lan after rejecting her appeal against a conviction for embezzlement and bribery in a high-profile $12 billion fraud case, state media reported.

Lan, the chairwoman of real estate developer Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group, was sentenced to death in April for her role in Vietnam’s biggest financial fraud case on record.

The High People’s Court in southern Ho Chi Minh City determined there was no basis to reduce Lan’s death sentence, reported online newspaper VnExpress.

If Lan is able to return three-quarters of the money embezzled while on death row, it is possible the sentence could be commuted to life imprisonment, the report said.

She is one of the most famous business executives and state officials jailed in the communist country’s lengthy anti-graft campaign known as “Blazing Furnace.”

“The consequences Lan caused are unprecedented in the history of litigation and the amount of money embezzled is unprecedentedly large and unrecoverable,” the prosecution was quoted as saying at the appeal hearing by state-run online newspaper VietnamNet.

“The defendant’s actions have affected many aspects of society, the financial market, the economy,” it said.

State media cited Lan’s lawyer as saying she had many mitigating circumstances, including “having admitted guilt, showing remorse and paying back part of the amount of money embezzled,” but prosecutors said that was insufficient.

Reuters could not immediately reach Lan’s lawyers for comment.

Lan still has the right to request a review under Vietnam’s cassation or retrial procedures.

Lan’s arrest in 2022 sparked a run on one of the country’s largest private banks by deposits, Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB), which was at the center of the fraud and largely owned by Lan through her proxies.

Documents reviewed by Reuters showed Vietnam’s central bank had as of April pumped $24 billion in “special loans” into SCB in an “unprecedented” rescue.

Apart from the death sentence, Lan was handed a life sentence at a separate trial in October after being found guilty of obtaining property by fraud, money laundering and illegal cross-border money transfers.

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has recalled her impression of Donald Trump during his first term in the White House, saying the new American president-elect showed a “fascination with the sheer power” of strongmen like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

In the wide-ranging interview, Merkel discussed her new memoir, “Freedom,” which reflects on her 16 years as the first woman to lead Europe’s largest economy. Over her premiership, the continent weathered multiple crises – from the economy to migration, from climate to a pandemic. Shortly after she left office, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine that has raised questions about the extent to which Germany relied on cheap Russian gas and cast some of her decisions in a harsher light.

In the book, Merkel writes how her life splits neatly into halves. She spent the first 35 years of her life studying and working as a chemist in communist East Germany. But since the crumbling of the Berlin Wall, the second 35 years of her life have been spent in a free, liberal democracy – a system she now fears is under threat.

She recalled first meeting Trump at the White House in 2017. Sitting by the famous fireside in the Oval Office, the two leaders were asked by reporters to shake hands for a photo. Trump appeared to snub the request, although they shook hands at other times during Merkel’s visit.

Merkel said Trump “lives off acting unconventionally” and often tries to “put down a marker.”

In the book, Merkel writes that Trump was “clearly fascinated” by Putin and “captivated” by politicians with an autocratic bent.

Merkel’s comment echoed those made by several US officials who worked closely with Trump during his first administration. John Kelly, who was Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff, said before November’s election that Trump fit “the general definition of fascist” and that he spoke positively of the loyalty of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi generals. Trump’s campaign denied the exchange.

“I wouldn’t want to make any comment on this,” Merkel said of Kelly’s remarks.

A resurgent Russia

Putin, with whom Merkel enjoyed closer ties than many other European leaders, also loomed large over her premiership. Merkel recalled how Putin, knowing that she had once been wounded by a dog and was uneasy around them, had infamously brought his large Labrador to a meeting between them in 2007.

“It’s a little, small attempt to test the waters – you know, how resilient a person is, how strong,” Merkel said. “It’s a power play.”

Despite relatively cordial relations between Moscow and Europe, Merkel said things began to sour after the 2008 North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in the Romanian capital, Bucharest. NATO declared that both Ukraine and Georgia would eventually join the defense alliance, without giving them a plan for how to get there.

“I was firmly convinced that Putin would not allow this to happen without taking action, so I thought it was wrong to actually put this on the agenda at the time,” Merkel said, particularly when Ukraine’s government and people “were split right down the middle.”

During Merkel’s premiership, Russia won a five-day war against Georgia in 2008 and launched its first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, annexing Crimea and occupying territory in the east of the country. Since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, European leaders have been criticized for not being sufficiently alert to the threat from Moscow and allowing its territorial aggression to go unchecked.

With the war in Ukraine approaching its fourth year, and both militaries having huge and hard-to-sustain losses, talk is turning to whether the war can end with a lasting peace. Trump, who takes office next month, has said he would end the war within a day, without specifying how.

Merkel warned that negotiating with Putin is a fraught task. She recalled confronting Putin about Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 – an operation the Kremlin initially sought to obfuscate, claiming the soldiers fighting in Ukraine were not part of Moscow’s army, giving rise to the myth of “little green men” who were fighting independently.

Merkel said Putin later conceded to her that “he had lied” about this.

“There was a turning point in our relationship quite clearly that I had to be extremely cautious in my approach toward him. So you cannot only trust in an agreement with him – that’s absolutely correct,” she said. Negotiations to end the war in Ukraine must provide Kyiv with “security guarantees,” she added.

Despite presiding over a period of relative calm in Europe, Merkel’s critics say that events in recent years have clouded her legacy. In particular, they argue that Germany’s extreme reliance on cheap Russian gas helped bolster Moscow’s economy and its influence within Europe.

Asked whether she had made errors of judgment during her premiership, Merkel said: “We always have to look at matters under the conditions we were in then. I don’t think it makes a whole lot of sense to say from today’s vantage point in hindsight.”

The dawn assault inside Russia’s Kursk region never even got to a gunfight, yet betrayed the intensity of the battle in Kremlin territory. Five Russians edged forward in the grey Sunday dawn but, as thermal drone imagery shows, were killed or wounded by a drone as they tried to hide in the treeline.

“I have this impression that (the Russians) have unlimited people,” said Oleksandr, a unit commander with the 225th assault battalion, describing the clash from a cafe in the Ukrainian city of Sumy, 11 hours later.

“They send groups, and almost no one remains alive. And the next day, the groups go again. The next Russians, it seems, do not know what happened to the previous Russians. They go there, into the unknown. No one tells them anything about it, and no one comes back.”

Oleksandr and two colleagues with whom he is sitting are hard of hearing from the constant shelling. They provide a rare insight into the nearly four-month-long Ukrainian occupation of Kursk.

The August invasion marked a rare tactical success and strategic gain for Kyiv, although the use of significant manpower and armor in the assault has led to criticism that shortages created by the invasion contributed to Russia’s advance across the Donbas eastern front.

Advocates of the Kursk operation suggest it provided Kyiv with vital leverage for any future peace talks – perhaps initiated by US President-elect Donald Trump – which means Ukraine needs to retain a foothold in the area into spring at the least.

Oleksandr expressed confidence his unit could hold on, but less certainty as to why. “I don’t know what the goal really is,” he said. “Maybe we should walk around here for four months and turn around and leave, for example… If the goal is to hold on to it until a certain point, we will.”

Asked what his message for Trump would be, Oleksandr demanded the West uphold the security guarantees it gave Ukraine in return for Kyiv giving up its nuclear weapons, in a 1994 treaty known as the Budapest Memorandum, in which Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States gave Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan assurances for giving up their Soviet-era nuclear weapons.

“You took away our nuclear weapons? You promised us your roof,” Oleksandr said, using a slang word for protection. “Keep your word. We’re being slaughtered, and you’re still trying to play games, to defend your interests. You had to give everything you could to end this war in two days. Who will believe the words of the US or England, who are pissing themselves in front of Russia? Pardon my English,” he said laughing, in explanation of his profanity.

Recent Russian assaults in his area of Kursk have proven as ineffective as costly, he said. Separately, Ukrainian officials have admitted that 40% of the territory they took in the late summer has since been reclaimed by the Russians. Oleksandr’s unit has not slept for three days, he said, or left the frontline for eight months, and has been involved in ferocious combat in the Ukrainian cities of Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Chasiv Yar.

He said the Russian troops Ukrainians faced in Kursk were a mixture of well-trained paratroopers from the 76th Brigade, but also less organised Chechens, and African mercenaries. But he has seen no sign of the 12,000 North Korean troops that, according to the Pentagon, have been sent to Kursk. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky also told the Japanese Kyodo news agency Sunday that some North Koreans had been killed by Ukrainian forces and that they would ultimately be used as “cannon fodder” by the Kremlin.

“When we catch them or see a body,” Oleksandr said, “then I’ll know for sure that they’re here.”

Three weeks earlier, his unit had faced an assault from 40 armored vehicles and about 300 infantry, he said. His drone commander, callsign “JS” for Java Script, said the unit killed 50 Russians that day. “The vehicles that managed to get through unloaded the infantry,” JS recounted, “then we finished off the infantry. And it went like this for nearly 24 hours, no sleep, and the next day we finished off those who managed to hide from the drone-bombing on the first day.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved a record-breaking defense budget, setting aside a staggering third of the government’s total spending as the war in Ukraine drains resources from both sides nearly three years on.

The budget for 2025, which was published Sunday, allocates about $126 billion (13.5 trillion rubles) to national defense – amounting to 32.5% of government spending.

The defense budget is about $28 billion (three trillion rubles) higher than the previous record set this year.

The new three-year budget forecasts a slight reduction in military spending for 2026 and 2027. Lawmakers in both houses of the Russian parliament approved the budget.

Russia’s war in Ukraine is the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II. Moscow is currently making gains at key spots along the front lines and fighting a counteroffensive in Kursk region – the site of Kyiv’s only major military success this year.

But the slow, grinding war – often called a war of attrition, where both sides are trying to wear down the other – has drained both countries’ resources.

Ukraine has always been on the back foot when it comes to both material and manpower, though it has received billions of dollars in help from its Western allies, including more than half a billion in new military equipment pledged by Germany on Monday.

How much aid will continue to come from the United States once President-elect Donald Trump takes office remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, Russia has more weapons, more ammunition and more personnel – but the strain on its economy and population is growing.

Russia has massively increased its military spending over the past two years and its economy is showing signs of overheating: inflation is running high, and companies are facing labor shortages. Trying to control the situation, the Russian Central Bank raised interest rates to 21% in October, the highest in decades.

Meanwhile, Ukraine continues to receive significant military assistance from its allies.

On Monday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz arrived in Kyiv for the first time in more than two years, where he pledged more than 650 million euros ($684 million) in military equipment for Ukraine.

Scholz announced that Germany would deliver additional air defenses – including the US-made Patriot system – to Ukraine next year.

Scholz’s visit came after he rankled Ukrainian officials last month by calling Vladimir Putin, ending a years-long European effort to isolate the Russian president following his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Speaking alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at a press conference in Kyiv, Scholz said he had used the call to stress to Putin that “Ukraine should be an independent sovereign nation” and that “Russia has to stop the war and withdraw its troops.”

Meanwhile, although Russia has many more people than Ukraine, it is suffering significant battlefield losses and recruitment of new troops is already a problem – the last time the Russian military introduced a partial mobilization, hundreds of thousands of men fled the country.

North Korea recently sent an influx of soldiers to help Russia fight on the front lines – Zelensky said in November that about 11,000 North Korean soldiers were in Kursk.

The North Korean troops may help Russia’s efforts for some time – but the material losses could be harder to make up for.