There is a whirr, a flurry of dust, a pause as the grainy image recalibrates, and then a devastating blast. Underground, dozens of miles away, veterans of the most brutal urban battles in Ukraine, of Avdiivka and Bakhmut, are commanders in a new kind of killing - one they cannot feel, smell or see up close. An entire mission directing six blasts against three Russian frontline targets in eastern Ukraine will involve no Ukrainian troops on the ground, the battle instead directed from gamer chairs, observed from reconnaissance drones above, run over dedicated livestreams. Ukraine, suffering for months from manpower crises and uncertain backing from the United States, has undergone a remarkable evolution. Large parts of its war effort are now unmanned, the robots, drones, and remotely piloted tanks giving it a sudden, albeit fragile, edge over a lumbering and strained Russian invader. In April, President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed the first capture of a Russian position purely by robots and drones and added that since January unmanned machines had conducted 22,000 missions.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/05/30/europe/ukraine-robots-drones-russia-war-intl
It took four men to heave the 200-pound painting on the wall. Once mounted, the voluptuous nude body stands tall like a mountain against the pale wash of Sotheby’s London gallery. There are five or six people in the room, including the hangers and the auction house press team, who coo and aw over the sleeping woman on the canvas, her blue-tinged flesh erupting in folds. Suddenly, a jolly voice with an east London twang cuts through the mesmerized whispers: “Hello,” says a much smaller woman at the back of the room: “I’m here in real life!” Sue Tilley, the 60-something retired benefits supervisor and subject of British artist Lucian Freud’s monumental painting “Sleeping by the Lion Carpet” (1996), has travelled from her home in St Leonards-on-sea on the south coast of England for an uncanny meeting with the oil-on-canvas work before it heads to auction next month. The portrait, which Sotheby’s Europe chairman Olivier Barker says is “the magnum opus of Lucian’s work,” is estimated to fetch between £25-35 million ($33-45 million) at the Lewis Collection sale on 24 June. Tilley is well aware of these lofty price tags, of course, though that’s about as far as it goes. “It feels very weird, because I never really got any money,” she said while sitting across from her imposing portrait. “I think sometimes I’m probably worth about £100 million,” she laughed. “How shocking is that!”
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/05/30/style/sue-tilley-lucian-freud-sothebys-auction
In a season where Arsenal thought it had brushed off the bridesmaid tag, Mikel Arteta’s side still found itself suffering from another heartbreaking nearly moment. The Gunners had held the lead for almost an hour at the Puskás Aréna on Saturday as they hunted the first Champions League title in the club’s storied history. But a clumsy tackle and a penalty shootout later, and Arsenal left Budapest with nothing. At their expense, it was Paris Saint-Germain celebrating in the Hungarian capital. Another impressive campaign, another trophy held aloft and perhaps the start of a dynasty that threatens to rule over European soccer for many more years to come.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/05/30/sport/psg-arsenal-champions-league-final-analysis
For a relatively short “memorandum of understanding” (MoU), the draft agreement between the United States and Iran is taking a very long time to finalize. That’s because language and sequencing is everything; every last word will be parsed and debated; every connection between one element and another scrutinized. For example, will the 60-day process envisaged in the MoU be defined as an extension of the weeks-long ceasefire or a definitive end to hostilities?
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/05/30/world/what-to-watch-iran-memo-intl