内容摘要："I have always asked 'why her? why my sister?'" her brother Colyn says.

"I have always asked 'why her? why my sister?'" her brother Colyn says.

The strategic missile-carrying bombers in question, the Tu-95, Tu-22, and Tu-160 are, he said, no longer in production. Repairing them will be difficult, replacing them impossible.The loss of the supersonic Tu-160, he said, would be especially keenly felt.

"Today, the Russian Aerospace Forces lost not just two of their rarest aircraft, but truly two unicorns in the herd," he wrote.Beyond the physical damage, which may or may not be as great as analysts here are assessing, Operation Spider's Web sends another critical message, not just to Russia but also to Ukraine's western allies.My colleague Svyatoslav Khomenko, writing for the BBC Ukrainian Service website, recalls a recent encounter with a government official in Kyiv.

The official was frustrated."The biggest problem," the official told Svyatoslav, "is that the Americans have convinced themselves we've already lost the war. And from that assumption everything else follows."

Ukrainian defence journalist Illia Ponomarenko, posting on X, puts it another way, with a pointed reference to President Volodymyr Zelensky's infamous Oval office encounter with Donald Trump.

"This is what happens when a proud nation under attack doesn't listen to all those: 'Ukraine has only six months left'. 'You have no cards'. 'Just surrender for peace, Russia cannot lose'."At a baseball game in the capital Seoul last week – arguably the only place where Koreans are as tribal as they are about politics – both sides were united, acutely aware of this election's importance.

"I'm really concerned about our democracy," said Dylan, a data engineer. "I hope we have the power to save it and make it greater than before. My vote is a piece of power.""The next president needs to show people clearly and transparently what he is doing," said one man in his mid-20s. "We need to watch him carefully."

If Lee is to win, and by the margin the polls suggest, he would have a solid mandate, as well as control of parliament, giving him three years to implement major political reforms.That could be good for rebuilding South Korea's stability but would come with its own challenges, said the political analyst Ms Kim.