French training minister says as much as 500 colleges may stay closed on Monday after scholar protests – Europe stay | Europe
France to maintain as much as 500 colleges closed on Monday
The training minister says 400- 500 excessive colleges will stay partially or absolutely shut following every week the place riot police clashed with highschool college students as protests on classroom circumstances have unfold nationwide.
Lessons will probably be “completely or partly suspended” given the unrest, says Education Minister Edouard Geffray.
He stated 24 colleges had been “burned or ransacked” for the reason that begin of the motion.
At least 5,000 individuals, primarily youngsters, have been arrested whereas dozens of individuals, together with college students and academics, have been injured. Unions are calling on academics to strike.
The protests started final week within the Paris area, with college students staging sit-ins over circumstances like overcrowding in school rooms, instructor shortages and dilapidated buildings.
The rallies in some circumstances have change into extra violent with protesters sporting masks and setting off fires on the street and vidoes exhibiting law enforcement officials utilizing batons on college students.
More protests had been scheduled for Tuesday this week, prompting regulation enforcement this weekend to say the scenario had grown “uncontrolled”.
Paris police chief Patrice Faure instructed college students to desert their college blockades to return to peaceable types of protest and instructed to oldsters there was affect from “skilled rioters”.
Read extra on the protests here:
Key occasions
Incinerated novels and destroyed warehouses: Russia’s struggle on Ukrainian books
Charlotte Higgins
My colleague Charlotte Higgins has written immediately’s Sunday learn on Russia’s struggle on Ukrainian books:
On a Saturday morning in August, Viktor Kruglov, the co-founder and chief government of the writer Ranok, was at his headquarters in Kharkiv – the jap Ukrainian metropolis that, together with Kyiv, is the centre of the nation’s publishing and printing business. Built 15 years in the past on the location of a former bread manufacturing unit, the footprint of the premises is about 10,000 sq metres (107,640ft). Books have been stacked 12 metres excessive on rank after rank of cabinets.
Kruglov, together with 5 senior colleagues, have been on the warehouse flooring to debate the approaching college 12 months. The warehouse was holding 628,000 new schoolbooks. “It was the excessive season of distribution,” he stated, “so we have been checking all our processes: methods to do it extra efficiently, methods to do it in time.”
Read extra here:
Russia strikes Kyiv bridge as German chancellor visits Ukraine in present of assist
Pjotr Sauer
Russia has struck one other main bridge in Kyiv because the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, arrived within the capital in a present of assist for Ukraine.
A Russian drone hit Kyiv’s key Northern Bridge over the Dnipro River, marking the fourth consecutive day that Russia has focused bridges utilized by hundreds of residents commuting between the town’s two banks. Video footage confirmed vehicles driving throughout the bridge because the drone plunged into the roadway and exploded in a burst of fireside. Two individuals have been injured within the strike, stated Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko.
The assault got here shortly after Merz arrived within the metropolis on an unannounced go to meant to underline Germany’s backing of Ukraine because the nation enters one of the vital precarious intervals since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.
Germany has change into Ukraine’s greatest supplier of army support since Merz entered workplace in May 2025, surpassing the US as American assist has declined.
France to maintain as much as 500 colleges closed on Monday
The training minister says 400- 500 excessive colleges will stay partially or absolutely shut following every week the place riot police clashed with highschool college students as protests on classroom circumstances have unfold nationwide.
Lessons will probably be “completely or partly suspended” given the unrest, says Education Minister Edouard Geffray.
He stated 24 colleges had been “burned or ransacked” for the reason that begin of the motion.
At least 5,000 individuals, primarily youngsters, have been arrested whereas dozens of individuals, together with college students and academics, have been injured. Unions are calling on academics to strike.
The protests started final week within the Paris area, with college students staging sit-ins over circumstances like overcrowding in school rooms, instructor shortages and dilapidated buildings.
The rallies in some circumstances have change into extra violent with protesters sporting masks and setting off fires on the street and vidoes exhibiting law enforcement officials utilizing batons on college students.
More protests had been scheduled for Tuesday this week, prompting regulation enforcement this weekend to say the scenario had grown “uncontrolled”.
Paris police chief Patrice Faure instructed college students to desert their college blockades to return to peaceable types of protest and instructed to oldsters there was affect from “skilled rioters”.
Read extra on the protests here:
In the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, Ismar Garasljevic, a 51-year-old highschool instructor tells Reuters:
“More than 30 years after the struggle, the scenario continues to be the identical; we’re speaking about nationalism … The similar faces, the identical story, consistently.“
There is this sense of extra of the identical within the bitter ethno-nationalist politics in Bosnia.
There are multi-ethnic opposition coalitions led by the Social Democratic Party but in addition the most important ethnically-based political events within the Bosniak SDA, Serb SNSD and Croat HDZ BiH.
They have been those in authorities up to now however their variations in central authorities have blocked progress on measures like transparency legal guidelines that are wanted for Bosnia to achieve EU membership. It secured candidate standing in 2022 however has progressed little since then.
Young Bosnians are leaving in droves
Reporter Guy de Launey in Sarajevo additionally has this report from Bosnia on why so many younger individuals have left the nation previously decade:
One native organisation that tracks emigration estimated that greater than 600,000 individuals had left the nation within the decade after the 2013 census, when the official inhabitants was 3.5 million.
“If I weren’t optimistic, perhaps I might additionally transfer out,” stated Timur Vilić, a 28-year-old municipal councillor in Sarajevo, who’s standing on Sunday for election to the cantonal authorities. He represents Our Party – a multi-ethnic, non-nationalist, liberal motion that he admits faces a wrestle to attraction to voters in a rustic dominated by ethnonationalist events.
The drawback for Our Party – and different non-nationalist actions – is that the younger individuals who make up their assist base are voting with their toes, relatively than making their mark on poll papers.
In principle, Sunday’s vote must be one of many nice European festivals of democracy, with the election of no fewer than 14 prime ministers and 5 presidents. But the plethora of posts on supply displays a fiendishly difficult system of governance.
The Dayton settlement’s creation of two highly effective regional “entities” – with a weaker central authorities – was meant as a stopgap to make sure peace after the ruinous unrest of the Nineties. Instead, it has perpetuated the divisions within the nation. Most Serbs stay within the Republika Srpska (RS), whereas the Federation is residence to most of Bosnia’s Croats and Bosniak Muslims. There isn’t any incentive for the ethnonationalist leaders to vary that scenario – or to attraction to younger individuals who see a brighter future outdoors the nation.
“They don’t need younger individuals to have an interest, and younger individuals are not excited by politics,” stated Sarah Ćato. The 19-year-old scholar of political science and overseas relations is eligible to vote on Sunday for the primary time – however she says that her age group feels unseen by the political mainstream.
“Young individuals don’t know methods to vote or who to vote for as a result of no person’s standing for us,” she stated, including that the reluctance to have interaction in politics displays its standing as a “taboo topic” after the top of the unrest in 1995. “I believe educating youth from center college on methods to be an excellent citizen must be necessary.”
Bosnia basic election underway
In Bosnia, ethno-nationalist politics are on the fore of immediately’s elections.
Voters are casting ballots immediately for the nation’s three-person multi-ethnic presidency, lawmakers within the nationwide parliament in addition to the heads of establishments of Bosnia’s two highly effective regional “entities”.
It’s a sophisticated governance construction – arrange within the 1995 peace settlement that ended the previous three-year civil struggle.
While Bosnia is among the poorest international locations in Europe after that devasating struggle, it has remained peaceable.
Still its politics stay divided alongside ethnic traces between the nation’s Bosniaks, who’re primarily Muslims, and its Serbs and Croats.
The entities – that are stronger than the central authorities – was set as much as keep that peace however have largely perpetuated the divison. Most Serbs stay within the Republika Srpska (RS), whereas the Muslim-majority Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina is residence to most of Bosnia’s Croats and Bosniak Muslims.
And tensions are rising between the 2. Bosnian Serb leaders have pushed for the separation of their entity from the remainder of Bosnia, and populist get together figures like Russia sympathiser Milorad Dodik, stated at a last rally on Friday night time that trendy Bosnia “is useless” and “doesn’t make any sense”.
Earlier, whereas visiting the science academy in Kyiv focused by Russian drones on Monday, Merz decried the “struggle crime”.
“These barbaric assaults on the civilian inhabitants of Ukraine should cease. These are every day struggle crimes,” the German chancellor stated.
The National Academy of Science in Kyiv is just some hundred meters from the German Embassy.
The German chief additionally issued a remark to Putin, telling him to “finish this mindless struggle” and that “we’re prepared to speak”.
Zelensky famous that the strikes on Kyiv had continued even amid the chancellor’s go to.
Pro-Ukraine and EU Latvian PM wins parliamentary vote
In Latvia, the small republic proper on Nato’s jap flank, Prime Minister Andris Kulberg’s centre-right get together has gained probably the most assist within the nation’s parliamentary election.
The vote on Saturday had been dominated by considerations over neighbouring Russia in addition to cost-of-living and financial issues- and noticed about 51% turnout.
Kulberg’s United List get together – which gained 42 of the 100 seats in parliament, an unprecedented result- will now go about forming a coalition to control.
Kulberg turned prime minister in May after a political disaster over the dealing with of stray drones suspected to have come from Ukraine, introduced down the governing coalition that was in place.
Kulberg, then in opposition, then secured parliamentary approval to steer a brand new coalition.
He has vowed to push on along with his pro-Ukraine and EU route. Latvia, a small nation with a 1.8 million inhabitants, which borders each Russia and Moscow-allied Belarus has all the time supported Ukraine in opposition to Russia’s invasion.
Germany is Ukraine’s largest donor and has despatched Kyiv greater than €43.3 billion ($48.8 billion) for the reason that struggle started, together with tools and weapons.
Zelenskyy thanked Merz for visiting the Ukrainian capital describing him as “A frontrunner of a rustic that persistently demonstrates management in defending the lives of Ukrainians from Russian strikes.
We are grateful for all of the assist, and immediately we’re getting ready choices to offer us in Ukraine, and all of Europe, larger capabilities to defend ourselves. There will probably be vital agreements between Ukraine and Germany. Russia should be stopped collectively.”
At least one killed in strikes on Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy, Dnipro, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia
Zelenskyy previously hour has been tweeting concerning the strikes and the German chancellor’s go to, thanking Merz for his assist.
On the Kyiv strike this morning he confirmed it had been a drone on the Northern Bridge (Pivnichnyi Bridge).
He famous too a drone assault on a pharmaceutical warehouse in Sumy which killed one individual and a strike on a communications facility in Dnipro.
“Overnight, the Russians launched 135 assault drones in opposition to Ukraine, greater than 50 of them jet-powered. Kyiv, the Dnipro, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Sumy, and Zaporizhzhia areas got here underneath assault.
“And among the many essential targets of those terrorists, as all the time, are abnormal residential buildings, essential transport systems – all the pieces that makes up regular on a regular basis life.
“This week alone, the Russians have used greater than 1,900 assault drones, 1,700 aerial bombs, and 25 missiles in opposition to Ukraine. More than 800 of the drones have been jet-powered, and Russia should be held accountable for this escalation.”
Merz travelling to Kyiv this weekend is a vital show of assist, particularly because the bombardments intensify.
As Pjotr Sauer additionally famous in his report:
Western diplomats say publicly that they intend to stay in Kyiv, aware that leaving would hand Moscow a propaganda victory and threat creating the impression that Ukraine was being deserted.
However, privately two senior diplomats stated contingency plans have been being drawn as much as relocate embassies to Lviv or jap Poland if Russia started intentionally focusing on overseas missions.
“The scenario is clearly deteriorating quick,” the diplomat stated.
Kyiv struggling sharp escalation in strikes
Pjotr Sauer
My colleague Pjotr Sauer, the Guardian’s Russian affairs reporter in Kyiv this week, has described the onslaught of around-the-clock assaults we’re seeing on the Ukrainian capital:
Kyiv is coming into its most tough interval for the reason that early days of the invasion, as intensifying Russian attacks reshape on a regular basis life in a capital that Moscow is in search of to plunge into darkness.
For weeks, the principle fear within the capital had been the approaching winter, when Russia is predicted as soon as once more to attempt to plunge Ukraine into darkness and chilly. But a pointy escalation in Russian assaults has left many residents feeling that among the hardship that they had been bracing for is already right here.
“The capital is in a really dramatic scenario. And it’s not potential to faux that we will stay now as we do in peacetime,” the Kyiv mayor, Vitali Klitschko, stated on Friday. “The enemy is tearing Kyiv aside.”
This week alone, Russian missiles and drones have struck workplaces, datacentres, a college and hospital and one in every of Kyiv’s essential bridges. Moscow has additionally began its assaults on Ukraine’s power, focusing on a thermal energy plant and different power amenities, leaving a number of neighbourhoods with out energy and water by morning.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy underlined the obvious shift in Russian techniques in an interview with the Financial Times this week, saying Vladimir Putin had not too long ago ordered his commanders to desert the principles of struggle.
“They need Ukrainians to go away the capital … and present that in case you don’t have the capital you don’t have the nation,” Zelenskyy stated in separate feedback to reporters.
Until not too long ago, Kyiv had retained a deceptively regular rhythm, whereas cities nearer to the entrance, together with Kharkiv and Dnipro, absorbed the brunt of every day missile and drone assaults. Now, residents joke grimly that the steadiness is starting to shift, with these cities at occasions feeling safer than the capital.
The metropolis is confronting a very harmful mixture of an acute scarcity of Patriot interceptors for ballistic missiles and a brand new era of quicker, jet-powered Russian drones which can be more durable to shoot down.
Kyiv is racing to fast-track a brand new era of interceptor drones able to taking down the jet-powered fashions. Several are already in use, in line with three defence business sources, although they stated it may nonetheless take weeks or months to deploy them at a scale ample to offer significant safety for the capital.
Merz excursions science academy focused in Monday daytime strike
Some extra footage via because the go to unfolds – the leaders have additionally toured the location of the National Academy of Science which was struck in a daytime assault simply on Monday. Two individuals have been killed.
The Nineteenth-century constructing, within the coronary heart of Kyiv, stands near the German embassy, the National Opera, St Volodymyr’s Cathedral and a number of other authorities buildings.
The Russians attacked the constructing, a civilian science establishment, on Monday whereas workers have been working inside. My colleague Pjotr Sauer in Kyiv reported from the scene earlier this week.
You can see Merz and his delegation assessing the injury and detritus outdoors the constructing.
Ukraine’s overseas minister, Andrii Sybiha, who greeted Merz on the station this morning, had this week accused Russia of cynicism for focusing on a scientific establishment throughout the working day.
“Russia is intentionally increasing the boundaries of what it believes the global community will tolerate. Every assault left and not using a sturdy response solely encourages the subsequent one,” he stated.
On Saturday, Russia’s overseas ministry had issued the message saying it was finishing up “mass retaliatory strikes” on Kyiv and different Ukrainian cities, urging overseas nationals and diplomats to go away the nation. It final issued an analogous warning in May.
The Russians have more and more been utilizing ballistic missiles on Ukrainian cities in latest months – that are close to unattainable to defend in opposition to with out Patriot interceptor missles. The US continues to disregard Ukraine’s determined please for brand new shares.
Meanwhile Ukraine for the reason that summer time has additionally escalated its drone strike marketing campaign focusing on Russian oil refineries and power websites in addition to Wildberries warehouses– the Russian equal of Amazon – bringing the struggle residence to shoppers.
Merz in Ukraine to finalise drone deal, increase support
This is the German chancellor’s second go to to Ukraine throughout his 18 months in workplace up to now.
Merz is going through important home stress again residence with record-low rankings and main losses in opposition to his get together in three latest regional elections.
But together with the leaders of France, the UK and Poland, with whom he final travelled to Ukraine in May 2025, he has been among the many most staunch of Ukraine supporters and has pushed to extend support in addition to work on defence co-operation with Zelenskyy’s authorities.
He is predicted to announce in his go to immediately the discharge of €1 billion in army support and €350 million for repairs in Ukraine’s power sector – the websites of which have been closely focused by Russian strikes and must be restored going into winter.
He can also be anticipated to finalise a deal for drone manufacturing between German and Ukrainian producers. He’s been accompanied by a number of German CEOs together with from Siemens Energy, Hensoldt, Diehl Defence, Quantum Systems and different corporations in addition to his Economic Affairs Minister Katherina Reiche.
In his X submit this morning he’d repeated the pledge “You can rely on us” including: “Germany’s safety additionally depends upon the result of this struggle. That is why we’re serving to out of our personal self-interest as nicely.”
Earlier this week, Zelenskyy had additionally stated that Ukraine would shut a deal quickly on the joint manufacturing of drones, missiles and their software program with Germany.
Merz has met Ukraine’s President Voldymyr Zelenskyy on the essential struggle memorial on the Maidan in Kyiv.
Both males lay tributes on the central website, which options hundreds of Ukrainian flags and framed portraits of the troopers who’ve been killed within the struggle that’s gone on for greater than four-and-a-half years.
Some footage from the scene simply now:
Attack on Kyiv as Merz arrives exhibits upsurge in Russian assaults on capital
The North Bridge – one in every of a number of connecting central historic Kyiv to the residential suburbs throughout the Dnipro river -was struck not lengthy after the German chancellor’s arrival within the Ukrainian capital.
The incident has been confirmed by Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko this morning who wrote on Telegram: “Impact on the highway floor of the Northern Bridge. Emergency providers are heading to the scene.”
There’s no phrase of casualties but. Pictures and photographs being shared on-line seems to indicate a missile slamming into the cable bridge and the ensuing fireball explosion.
It follows strikes by the Russians on the South Bridge on Friday and Saturday, and a number of other earlier this week that had shut three of the town’s six highway bridges over the Dnipro.
Merz has arrived within the thick of it, as Kyiv, which was largely spared direct aerial strikes within the first years of the struggle has more and more come underneath assault since April.
The Russians have launched strikes day and night time, hitting colleges, petrol strations, authorities buildings and church buildings in addition to rails and communication transport systems.
Opening abstract
Good morning and welcome to our Europe stay weblog, I’m Frances Mao.
We start in Kyiv the place one in every of Ukraine’s strongest European backers, the German chancellor Friedrich Merz, has arrived this morning in an unannounced go to.
Soon after his arrival, the Russians struck the town’s North Bridge, only a 20-minutes drive from the central railway station the place Merz had pulled into.
Sirens have rung out throughout the town and smoke can nonetheless be seen rising from the Dnieper River bridge. Yesterday, Russian drones additionally struck one other bridge, inflicting accidents; the Kremlin has stepped up assaults on the capital this 12 months and Ukrainians say they’re steeling for one more autumn blitz forward of a troublesome winter.
“Ukraine is facing decisive weeks. That is why I travelled to Kyiv today with the message: you can rely on us,” Merz has written on X. He’s introduced a number of German defence producers with him and is predicted to fulfill with Zelenskyy.
Elsewhere throughout the continent immediately, Bosnians are voting in a nationwide election more likely to decide the course of their strained EU accension path up to now.
And I’ll additionally deliver you an replace on the lease protests we noticed throughout Spain’s largest cities yesterday.
