Closing summary
The French prime minister has survived two votes of no-confidence that had sought to threaten to topple his fragile, minority government days after it was appointed. Sébastien Lecornu, a key ally of the centrist president, Emmanuel Macron, addressed parliament on Thursday, saying lawmakers must choose to take part in “parliamentary debate” on next year’s budget or sink the government and create “political chaos”.
A total of 271 lawmakers voted for the first no-confidence motion, put forward by the left’s La France Insoumise, only 18 votes short of the 289 votes needed to topple the government.
A second no-confidence vote, tabled by Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, won a total of 144 votes. It had been expected to win far fewer votes because it did not have the support of La France Insoumise.
Although the government survived, the fact that the first vote was closer than expected highlights the difficulties faced by Lecornu as he prepares for months of fierce debate over next year’s budget, which must be passed by the end of the year.
The government owes its survival to the Socialist party leadership, which held back from joining the LFI vote of no-confidence after Lecornu said he would suspend Macron’s landmark pension changes. The move to freeze the changes, which had begun to raise the pension age from 62 to 64 over several years, was a significant concession. Nonetheless, seven lawmakers from the Socialist parliament group broke ranks with the party leadership and voted to bring the government down.
The embattled Lecornu now faces an even greater challenge: getting a 2026 budget for the European Union’s second-largest economy through parliament’s bitterly divided lower house before 31 December.
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A massive Russian drone and missile strike has hit gas facilities in eastern Ukraine as the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, flew to Washington for a meeting with Donald Trump to discuss the US providing Kyiv with long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Russia launched hundreds of drones, dozens of missiles, as well as glide bombs early on Thursday, sparking outages in eight regions in another large-scale bombardment targeting Ukraine’s energy network.
“Russia launched more than 300 attack drones and 37 missiles, a significant number of them ballistic, against Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said on X. “This autumn, the Russians use every single day to strike at our energy infrastructure.”
Zelenskyy said strikes had hit the regions of Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Poltava, Sumy and Vinnytsia.
One of the facilities hit was the Shebelinka gas processing plant in Kharkiv region, where two large columns of black smoke could be seen in the aftermath of the attack and still fiercely burning fires.
Staff at the plant told the Guardian that it had been hit just after 5.30am by drones and missiles, setting off at least two blazes in different parts of the facility.
