Leftwing parties call for government action after footage of incident in Lavapiés spread on social media

Leftwing parties in Spain are demanding explanations after a video appeared to show a pair of police officers using violent force on two unarmed black men in a central Madrid neighbourhood.

The video, shot on Friday in Lavapiés, appears to show one of the men on the ground and immobilised by a police officer who seemingly has him in a chokehold. A second police officer appears to then strike the immobilised man twice with a baton before grabbing and punching another man standing nearby.

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A biologist, a postal worker and a farmer are a charismatic trio at the heart of a documentary that builds an emotional connection between film-maker and subject

Bordering Poland and Slovakia, Stuzhytsya is a remote, sleepy village situated near the Carpathian mountains in Ukraine; it literally means “cold place”. Within the already tiny local population, there exists a gender imbalance: most of the men have left for better job opportunities in the EU and elsewhere. Centring on the women who have stayed behind, Maksym Melnyk’s documentary is an intimate exploration of the hopes, dreams and loneliness that swell in a place seemingly forgotten by the outside world.

Initially observational in style, the film introduces us to a charismatic trio of women. Nelya, a biologist, sweetly lights up whenever she comes across a pile of animal excrement, rich with valuable samples for her sadly underfunded research into the ecosystem of insects. The lack of government support also plagues Maria, Stuzhytsya’s only postal worker. In charge of distributing meagre pensions to the villagers, she is constantly anxious about the lack of stamps provided by the state. Such a shortage would mean a delay in welfare support, which would be catastrophic for the residents.

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‘We are convinced there will be no lasting peace if it is not negotiated with the Ukrainians,’ says France’s foreign minister Stéphane Séjourné

Welcome to our live coverage on Ukraine . It is just after 10am in Kyiv and in Moscow and I’m Donna Ferguson . Here are the headlines:

France’s top diplomat has said China must speak clearly to Russia over its war in Ukraine. “We expect China to send very clear messages to Russia,” said Emmanuel Macron’s foreign minister, Stephane Sejourne, after meeting his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, in Beijing. “We are convinced that there will be no lasting peace if it is not negotiated with the Ukrainians. “There will be no security for Europeans if there is no peace in accordance with international law.”

Ukraine’s air force shot down two out of three Russia-launched Shahed drones on Sunday night , the Ukrainian military said on Monday. The general staff did not provide additional details.

Russian attacks killed at least three people in different regions of eastern Ukraine, local officials said on Sunday, and two more in Lviv region , far from the frontlines. In the centre of the north-eastern city of Kharkiv , a frequent target of Russia’s attacks on energy and other infrastructure, a strike hit civilian targets in the evening, said the regional governor, Oleh Synehubov. Regional news outlets said bombs were dropped on different areas of the region. No injuries were reported. Earlier on Sunday, heavy shelling killed a man in the town of Borova, south-east of Kharkiv , local prosecutors said.

Police in the Donetsk region, in Ukraine’s south-east, said Russian shelling hit 14 towns and villages, with two dead reported in Krasnohorivka , west of the Russian-held regional centre of Donetsk.

Russian attacks on infrastructure extended well behind the frontlines. The Lviv regional governor, Maksym Kozitskyi, said two bodies were pulled from rubble after cruise missile strikes.

Russian forces bombed the border territories and settlements of the Sumy region 39 times on Sunday, the Ukrainian local regional military administration said. There were 157 explosions recorded from ordnance including artillery shells, mortars, exploding drones, drone-dropped mines and grenades, and rockets fired from helicopters. Sumy has been pounded by Russian attacks in recent weeks, forcing evacuations .

Over the border in Russia’s Belgorod region , the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said a woman was killed when a border village came under attack . The accounts of military action from either side were not independently confirmed.

“Our spirit does not give up,” Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in an Easter message. “There is no night or day when Russian terror does not try to break our lives,” Zelenskiy wrote to Ukrainians on social media, following Russian missile strikes.

Zelenskiy was in Bucha on Sunday alongside the prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, and several foreign ambassadors to mark two years since the city and surrounding areas’ were liberated from a brutal month-long occupation by Russia at the start of the war. The Ukrainian leader laid a lamp at the town’s wall of remembrance, which names the 509 civilians who have so far been identified of those killed during Bucha’s occupation.

France will deliver hundreds of old armoured vehicles and new surface-to-air missiles to Ukraine. The French defence minister, Sebastien Lecornu, told a French newspaper that the president, Emmanuel Macron, had asked him to prepare a new aid package, which will include old but still functional equipment, as well as new missiles.

Protesters in Kyiv have demonstrated for the release of Ukrainian prisoners of war from the Azov brigade. Relatives and friends of captured soldiers, some dressed in military clothing, waved placards at passing traffic.

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Torrential rain forced the cancellation of Good Friday processions through Seville and other holy week parades, from Cádiz in the south-west to Zaragoza in the north

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Over-18s can now to carry up to 25 grams of dried cannabis and cultivate up to three marijuana plants at home

Smoking cannabis is now legal for over-18s in Germany, after new laws for personal possession came into effect.

As of 1 April, adults in Germany are allowed to carry up to 25g of dried cannabis on them and cultivate up to three marijuana plants at home.

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Victims of Pegasus hacking will be notified and criminal proceedings could be brought against former officials

Poland has launched an investigation into its previous government’s use of the controversial spyware Pegasus, with a parliamentary inquiry under way and the possibility of criminal charges being brought against former government officials in future.

Adam Bodnar, Poland’s new justice minister , told the Guardian that in coming months the government would notify people who were targeted with Pegasus. Under Polish law, they would then have the possibility of seeking financial compensation, and becoming party to potential criminal proceedings.

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The affable father of three has the same roots as Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, but says ‘our ideas are largely opposite’

• Turkey’s opposition party sweeps local elections in snub to Erdoğan

Newly re-elected Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu has emerged as the main challenger to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s reign, after fending off the Turkish president’s AK party in local elections.

After clinching a comfortable victory and retaining his post in Sunday’s mayoral elections, based on the vast majority of votes counted, Imamoğlu, 53, is seen by many analysts as a potential future president.

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Bones were discovered near the hamlet of Le Vernet, close to where the little boy went missing in 2023

French investigators have found the remains of a toddler who went missing in 2023 , in a case that shocked the nation.

Investigators are now working to determine how the boy died, a prosecutor said on Sunday.

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Questions surround ownership of demo tapes reportedly left by soul artist as a thank-you to his Ostend hosts

A collection of cassette tapes containing a host of unreleased Marvin Gaye songs has been found in the Belgian city of Ostend.

The collection, thought to contain 66 demo songs, belonged to the musician Charles Dumolin, in whose home Gaye stayed in 1981 as he underwent detox to fight cocaine addiction. When Dumolin died in 2019, the recordings were handed down to his family, along with a cache of Gaye memorabilia.

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