LONDON (AP) — The drama that seems to surround Prince Harry returns to the U.K. this week, and the previews already have the British press buzzing with anticipation.
King Charles III’s estranged son is traveling to the land of his birth for a series of charity engagements that begin Tuesday. But for most royal watchers that’s just background noise.
For the past 10 days, British tabloids and news broadcasts have been filled with speculation about whether Harry’s wife, Meghan, will accompany him and, more importantly, whether they will bring their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, so they can finally get to know Grandpa Charles. But everything is up in the air as Harry seeks to arrange protection for his family after a government committee refused to authorize taxpayer-funded security.
“With just days to go until Harry’s first public engagement in the UK on Tuesday … very little is guaranteed at all,” the Times of London reported on Saturday. “For Archie and Lilibet to meet the king, it’s now or never,’’ wrote the Telegraph.
Harry, a British army veteran who served in Afghanistan, is visiting to mark one year to go before for the Invictus Games, the Paralympic-style competition he founded to motivate and inspire military veterans around the world as they work to overcome battlefield injuries
Not on the official schedule but very much in the media spotlight, however, is a decision Tuesday at the High Court in London, where the judge will reveal his verdict in Harry’s invasion of privacy lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mail.
The decision about whether to bring the children, according to reports based on off-the-record briefings and unidentified people close to the royals, hinges on whether the U.K. government agrees to provide security for Harry and his family. It is an issue that has hung over every trip the prince has made to Britain since he and Meghan decamped to North America six years ago.
British authorities say Harry isn’t entitled to blanket protection because he is no longer a working member of the royal family and they will assess his security on a case-by-case basis, just like any other celebrity. Harry says it is unsafe for his children to travel to Britain without protection because his family remains a target simply by virtue of their royal status.
The decision rests with a government committee known as Ravec, that rules on who should get state-funded protection.
The outcome could be problematic for the royal family, which is trying to show that it provides value for money after months of embarrassing headlines about the links between the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the former Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
“In the paranoid atmosphere of waiting for more Andrew shoes to drop, Ravec and the royals themselves are terrified of public blowback if taxpayers are asked to fund protection for the House of Sussex,’’ royal commentator Tina Brown wrote on X. “The issue is not a hill that either the king or the government wants to die on, and who can blame them?’’
After initial reports that Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5, would visit the U.K., plans began to wobble after the Daily Telegraph reported that Ravec had again rejected Harry’s request for protection.
The Times of London reported that Harry was “distraught” after the decision and told friends he wouldn’t let his children be “chased by paparazzi” through the streets of London.
By Sunday, it was clear the family wouldn’t accompany Harry when he arrives in the capital, though there was still a chance they would join him later in the trip.
Then on Monday, plans for the prince's accommodation fell into disarray. First there were reports that Harry would stay at Buckingham Palace while he is in London, but within an hour it became clear that the palace was not an option. At least for now.
Nonetheless, Harry has said that he wants to reconcile with his 77-year-old father, who is being treated for an undisclosed form of cancer. And he really wants his children, who first met the monarch during celebrations for the late Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022, to spend time with their grandfather now that they are old enough to remember the experience.
Tension within the House of Windsor have been strained ever since Harry and Meghan gave up royal duties and moved to California to pursue lucrative media deals free from the pressures of royal life in London.
They reached a new low after Harry published an explosive memoir that included unflattering depictions of the royal family and damning allegations of a toxic relationship between the monarchy and the press.
Harry’s description of royals leaking information about other members of the family in exchange for positive coverage of themselves is just one of the tawdry allegations in his book, “Spare.” The prince was especially scathing about Queen Camilla, accusing her of feeding private conversations to the media as she sought to rehabilitate her image, after her longtime affair with Charles when he was heir to the throne.
After losing a court battle over the security issue last year, Harry said he hoped to rebuild relations with his family, even as he suggested that the royals had sought to prevent him from receiving police protection to punish him for walking away from royal duties.
“I would love reconciliation with my family. There’s no point in continuing to fight anymore,” Harry told the BBC. “I don’t know how much longer my father has.”
FILE - Prince Harry, left, and his wife Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, arrive at a dock after sailing on the harbor in Sydney, Friday, April 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched waves of missiles and drones at Ukraine early Monday, killing at least 18 people in an attack that exposed widening gaps in country’s air defenses, authorities said.
All of the ballistic missiles launched by Russia struck their targets, underscoring Kyiv’s need for more Patriot interceptor missiles — a point Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will likely reiterate at a NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, this week.
Twelve people were killed in the capital, Kyiv, which was Russia's main target, according to local officials. Another six people were killed in the wider Kyiv region, said its head Mykola Kalashnyk.
At least 60 people were wounded, according to Zelenskyy, as emergency workers combed through rubble looking for survivors at residential high-rises in two locations that suffered direct hits in the capital.
Days earlier, on Thursday, a Russian strike killed 31 people in Kyiv, the deadliest for the capital this year. Russia’s Defense Ministry said the bombardment was retaliation for Ukraine’s recent long-range strikes, which have caused severe fuel shortages and pressured President Vladimir Putin.
More than four years after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbor, Ukraine’s advances in drone technology have given it an edge in recent months, analysts and Western officials say. Strikes on supply routes behind the front line have stripped the Russian army of momentum on the battlefield, they say, slowing its advance and driving up the cost.
But Russia is now exploiting a different kind of momentum: vulnerabilities in Ukraine’s air defenses, which remain heavily reliant on the U.S. Patriot systems to intercept ballistic missiles it can rarely shoot down any other way. The war in the Middle East has strained the global supply of Patriot interceptors, already produced in limited numbers — a shortage now most of all being felt in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired 351 drones and 68 missiles overnight, targeting mainly Kyiv, and all 29 ballistic missiles struck their targets.
“To intercept ballistics, we need the means for interception,” air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said on national television. “Russians are certainly using the fact that there is a serious deficit of interceptor missiles now, in Ukraine and the world.”
Ahead of the NATO summit in Ankara, Zelenskyy said on X that Ukrainian forces had performed well against drones and cruise missiles but not against Russian ballistic missiles — a shortfall he blamed on insufficient interceptor supplies. He urged U.S. and European partners to leave the summit with strong decisions to bolster Ukraine’s air defense and protect civilian lives.
“As long as Patriot missiles remain in our allies’ stockpiles, Russia is only encouraged to keep ‘vanquishing’ residential buildings. The United States and Europe have enough strength to stop this terror,” he said in a statement following the attack.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said Russia is deliberately ramping up ballistic missile attacks on a scale not seen before, exploiting the acute shortage of Patriot interceptors. “Fewer such missiles are produced worldwide each month than the enemy fires at Ukraine in that same period,” he said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said the attack targeted weapons factories in Kyiv, including sites it said produce drones, sea drones, armored vehicles and missiles, as well as facilities repairing air defense systems and fuel and energy infrastructure in the city and surrounding region. The claims could not be independently verified.
Russia’s aerial attacks on Ukraine have repeatedly hit civilian areas. More than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the war, according to the United Nations.
“These are residential buildings. Places where people slept and lived their ordinary lives,” said Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s Military Administration, in a post on Telegram.
A residential building in the Podilskyi district partially collapsed, he said. In the Darnytsia district, several multistory buildings were damaged and people were believed to be trapped under the rubble.
In Kyiv's suburb of Vyshneve, about 600 residents were evacuated due to the risk of unexploded munitions, Ukraine's Emergency Service said.
Khrystyna Piatetska, 20, a resident of Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district, said she began screaming after the first strike, which was followed by a second blast that blew out the windows in her apartment building.
The lights went out, the smell of burning filled the air and the stairwell was thick with smoke, she said.
“When we were leaving the building, bodies were lying there,” Piatetska said. “When we got downstairs, cars started exploding, and we came out from under the rubble straight into the fire.”
Halina Ivanivna, 61, said she woke to the sound of the first strike at around 2 a.m. Moments later, her apartment building began to collapse around her. “Everything was falling down,” she said. Water poured through the building as smoke filled the air while emergency crews rushed to evacuate residents.
About five minutes after the initial impact, a second strike hit, she said.
Meanwhile, an energy provider in Russia-occupied Crimea reported a blackout across the peninsula due to “external impact.” The Moscow-appointed head of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said Ukrainian attacks cut power supplies to the city early Monday, but it was later restored using backup equipment.
Russia's Yaroslavl region Gov. Mikhail Yavrayev said two people were wounded in a Ukrainian drone attack on the city of the same name. He said over 70 Ukrainian drones were downed. Yavrayev didn’t say if any facilities were damaged, but Astra online news outlet said the attack targeted an oil refinery, causing a fire.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said that air defenses downed 519 Ukrainian drones overnight.
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
A woman carries her cat out of a damaged multistory apartment building following a Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Local residents walk amid debris following a Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Local residents look out of the balcony at a building damaged by Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Emergency workers carry an injured person following Russian missile attacks in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Danylo Antoniuk)
Emergency services personnel work to extinguish a fire following Russian missile attacks in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Danylo Antoniuk)
Rescuers work the scene of a building damaged by Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Rescuers work the scene of a building damaged by Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
The damaged apartment interior in the ruined building following Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Rescuers work the scene of a building damaged by Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Rescuers work the scene of a building damaged by Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
