CNN
 — 

After an unfortunate first foray into the spotlight in April (yes, that infamous Harriet Dart deodorant moment), Lois Boisson is finally in the headlines for all the right reasons.

The Frenchwoman entered Roland Garros as a wild card. She’s currently ranked No. 361 in the world. And on Monday, Boisson came back from a set down to beat world No. 3 Jessica Pegula to reach the quarterfinals of the French Open.

The 22-year-old was the lowest-ranked player to reach the fourth found at Roland Garros since Serena Williams sat at world No. 451 when she made her grand slam return in 2018 after giving birth to her first daughter, according to the WTA.

Now, Boisson’s the lowest-ranked player to reach the quarterfinals at any of tennis’s four major tournaments since 418th-ranked Kaia Kanepi at the 2017 US Open.

With her victory over Pegula, Boisson is the first women’s singles player in 17 years to reach the quarterfinals in her grand slam main draw debut since Carla Suarez Navarro at Roland Garros.

Talk about announcing yourself to the world – and in your home nation.

The Dijon-born player made her WTA Tour debut in 2021 and won her first WTA 125 title in May 2024 in Saint-Malo.

In addition to the title, she was on an 18-match win streak in the ITF series and reached a ranking of 152. Her run of performances meant she was expected to make her Roland Garros main draw debut, but an ACL injury a week before the start of the tournament took her out of action for nine months.

After her ACL and meniscus surgery, Boisson posted about her rollercoaster month on Instagram: “I was going to play the tournaments that I have dreamed of since I started playing tennis. In the space of a week I went from ‘collapsed’ to the ground, the joy of winning my first WTA title, to ‘collapsed’ to the ground because my knee gave out and the pain was immense. The shock is violent, I didn’t imagined the rest of the season this way…But this is the path that life has decided to give me, now it’s time for discipline to get back to the top !”

Since her return at the end of February, she achieved her first career win against a player in the top 25 in Elise Mertens – and now her first win against a player in the top five against Pegula – both feats coming in her first attempts. That’s two wins in two matches against opponents with 17 career WTA singles titles between them.

Boisson is the last French representative remaining in the men’s and women’s singles draws – and has been since making it into the round of 16.

Boisson will face world No. 6 teenage phenom Mirra Andreeva in the quarters.

CNN
 — 

So, Russia and Ukraine are still as far apart as ever, with the two warring countries unable to make a significant breakthrough in direct talks in Istanbul.

While there was agreement to exchange more prisoners, Moscow and Kyiv remain deeply divided over how to bring the costly and bitter Ukraine war to an end.

Russia has shown itself to be particularly uncompromising, handing Ukrainian negotiators a memorandum re-stating its maximalist, hardline terms which would essentially amount to a Ukrainian surrender.

Expectations were always low for a Kremlin compromise. But Moscow appears to have eliminated any hint of a readiness to soften its demands.

The Russian memorandum again calls on Ukraine to withdraw from four partially occupied regions that Russia has annexed but not captured: a territorial concession that Kyiv has repeatedly rejected.

It says Ukraine must accept strict limits on its armed forces, never join a military alliance, host foreign troops or aquire nuclear weapons. It would be Ukrainian demilitarization in its most hardline form, unpalatable to Ukraine and much of Europe, which sees the country as a barrier against further Russian expansion.

Other Russian demands include the restoration of full diplomatic and economic ties, specifically that no reparations will be demanded by either side and that all Western sanctions on Russia be lifted.

It is a Kremlin wish-list that, while familiar, speaks volumes about how Moscow continues to imagine the future of Ukraine as a subjugated state in the thrall of Russia, with no significant military of its own nor real independence.

This uncompromising position comes despite two important factors which may have given the Kremlin pause.

Firstly, Ukraine has developed the technical capability to strike deep inside Russia, despite its staggering disparity of territory and resources. The stunning drone strikes recently targeting Russian strategic bombers at bases thousands of miles from Ukraine is a powerful illustration of that. Ukraine, it seems, has some cards after all, and is using them effectively.

Secondly – and arguably more dangerously for Moscow – the Kremlin’s latest hardline demands come despite US President Donald Trump’s increasing frustrations with his own Ukraine peace efforts.

Trump has already expressed annoyance with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, who he said had gone “absolutely MAD” after massive Russian strikes on Ukraine last week.

But now, Trump himself is under pressure as a cornerstone of his second term foreign policy – bringing a rapid end the Ukraine war – looks decidedly shaky.

There are powerful levers to pull if Trump chooses, like increasing US military aid or imposing tough new sanctions, such as those overwhelmingly supported in the US Senate. One of the key backers of a cross-party senate bill that aims to impose “crippling” new measures on Moscow, Senator Richard Blumenthal, accused Russia of “mocking peace efforts” at the Istanbul talks and in a carefully worded post on X accused the Kremlin of “playing Trump and America for fools.”

It is unclear at the moment how the mercurial US president will react, or what – if anything – he will do.

But the outcome of the Ukraine war, specifically the brokering of peace deal to end it, has become inextricably linked with the current administration in the White House.

The fact that Putin has once again dug in his heels and presented an uncompromising response to calls for peace, may now force Trump to act.

London
CNN
 — 

Britain will build new attack submarines, invest billions on nuclear warheads and move toward “war-fighting readiness,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday, shortly before the publication of a landmark review of the future of the country’s military.

Starmer’s government said it would build “up to” 12 new attack submarines as part of its AUKUS partnership with the United States and Australia, replacing the country’s current class of seven subs from the late 2030s.

And he will launch a “historic renewal” of the UK’s nuclear deterrent backed by a £15 billion ($20.3 bn) investment, Starmer said in a speech in Scotland on Monday.

The announcements came on the same day as the publication of the long-awaited UK Strategic Defense Review into Britain’s armed services, which outlined how the British military would pursue an “immediate” shift toward greater use of autonomy and AI in the wake of Ukraine’s experiences in its war with Russia.

“When we are being directly threatened by states with advanced military forces, the most effective way to deter them is to be ready, and frankly, to show them that we’re ready to deliver peace through strength,” Starmer said Monday.

But Starmer refused to set out the timeline for his pledge that Britain’s overall defense spending would hit 3% of the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP). The uplift, announced earlier this year, is set to be reached by the end of the next parliament in 2034, but is dependent on economic conditions.

And the prime minister did not set out where the money to pay for the new weaponry will come from; he previously announced cuts to the UK’s aid budget to fund the uplift in defense spending, and he declined to rule out similar moves on Monday.

According to the 144-page review, units in future will be made up of only 20% crewed vehicles, with the remainder of capabilities split between “reusable” platforms, like drones that survive repeated missions, and 40% single-use weapons, like rockets or attack drones.

The Royal Navy is to “move toward a more powerful but cheaper and simpler fleet,” and the UK’s two aircraft carriers (the largest in Europe) will shift to being used as a base for European – rather than only British – aircraft and drones.

Meanwhile, under the waves, unmanned subs and sensors will police the North Atlantic against Russian military movements.

However, some such capabilities will require a decade of investment and development, Dr Marion Messmer, a senior research fellow at thinktank Chatham House told CNN.

That stretches far beyond the forecast of certain European countries that Russia could be ready to threaten European borders militarily six months to a few years after ending fighting with Ukraine.

Even so, the boosted investment in the UK’s nuclear capabilities as well as potential integration with European deterrence outlined in the document will strike a nerve with Moscow, she said.

The fiscal promise from the UK falls short of defense spending promises from some NATO countries, whose spending has been closely scrutinized by US President Donald Trump.

NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutte said last month he “assumed” NATO members will agree on a defense spending target of 5% at June’s NATO summit, a significant increase from the 2% benchmark, which was agreed to in 2014.

Per 2024 NATO data, only Poland’s defense expenditure was above 4% of GDP, although Latvia and Estonia had promised increases to 5%, with Italy promising a hike to between 3.5 and 5% of GDP. The US’ defense expenditure sat at 3.38% of GDP in 2024, making up some 64% of total NATO expenditure.

Just weeks before NATO allies could agree on a significantly higher spending target, “it seems a little risky for the UK government to essentially have boxed itself in” to a 2.5%-of-GDP spending cap, analyst Messmer told CNN.

The UK’s ambition to lead in NATO, doesn’t fit with spending in the middle of the pack among NATO allies, she said.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and the subsequent pressure from Trump’s administration on European nations to boost their own military capabilities – has sparked a race among Europe’s key military powers to boost their readiness and counter the Russian threat should the White House pull its support for Kyiv.

The UK “cannot ignore the threat that Russia poses,” Starmer told the BBC on Monday. “Russia has shown in recent weeks that it’s not serious about peace, and we have to be ready.”

Starmer said Monday he intended to turn the UK into a “battle-ready, armor-clad nation with the strongest alliances, and the most advanced capabilities, equipped for the decades to come.”

Government MP and member of the British Parliament’s Defence Select Committee, Fred Thomas, told CNN that the review was a “bold plan,” and the first since the 1980s that argued for doing more, not less, with the UK’s military.

However, the British military of today is a long way from its Cold War ancestor. At under half the strength of the regular military in 1989, the British army is a shadow of its former self. In 1989, defense spending accounted for 4.1% of GDP.

“If you want to prepare for tomorrow’s war, you need to make sure you’re at least ready for today’s war. And we’re not ready for today’s war,” MP Thomas said.

The planners hope machines will make up for manpower.

As part of the UK military “fundamentally transforming how it works,” the review recommended enabling any sensor and weapon across the armed forces’ arsenal to work in tandem, using AI to predict threats and speed up decision-making.

Combining conventional armored forces with AI and “land drone swarms,” the review boasted of creating a military 10 times more lethal than the British military’s currently is.

Writing in the Financial Times MP Thomas on May 31, the lawmaker criticised the UK’s ministry of defence’s, “deep cultural and structural resistance to change,” but he said he saw reason to hope in the recommendations laid out in today’s review.

At times frank – the review highlighted how a focus on focus on ‘exquisite’ capabilities has masked the ‘hollowing out’ of the Armed Forces’ warfighting capability – the document still offered a somewhat rosy vision of the British armed forces.

This is at odds with much commentary in the British press, which has slammed the dwindling size, troubled and inefficient equipment procurement and failures of conduct plaguing the British military through its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Analyst Messmer advised caution around some of the review’s promises.

“Ten times more lethal is something that sounds good, but I would really want to see more evidence,” she said, “I think it’s more marketing than anything else.”

Given decades of shrinking investment in the British military, questions have been raised over the deterrence that Britain’s conventional and nuclear weapons offer, particularly given its reliance on a US supply chain. In the past eight years, the UK has publicly acknowledged two failed nuclear missile tests, one of them in the waters off Florida, when dummy missiles didn’t fire as intended.