Putin expands the war to Ukraine’s auto repair, Pyongyang continues its siege against sea life and Beijing throws Australia a mid-air ticker-tape parade.

(Originally published June 6 in “What in the World“) Russia said it had started attacking Western military supplies to Ukraine with a missile attack on European-supplied T-72 tanks in Kyiv, and warned it would hit newer targets if Ukraine gets long-range missiles from the West. The United Kingdom has promised to send American-made M270 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, with a 100km range, while the United States has approved sending the even more advanced M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, which can fire missiles as far as 300 kilometers.

Ukrainian officials said the Russian attack, the first in the capital in over a month, had only blown up a car-repair shop. Whether or not laying siege to the nation’s body shops will succeed, Russia now controls a fifth of Ukraine, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has acknowledged. Moscow, meanwhile, appears to recognize that invading Ukraine was bound to result in a long and painful battle of attrition, one Russian President Vladimir Putin believes the West will tire of and withdraw.

China, meanwhile, is close to launching its third and most advanced aircraft carrier from a shipyard in Shanghai, boosting its ability to project naval power internationally. Australia has protested what it says was a Chinese fighter jet intercepting one of its maritime surveillance aircraft over the South China Sea and releasing anti-radar chaff that flew into the Australian plane’s engines.

And North Korea, not to be ignored, continued waging its relentless war against the Sea of Japan, firing eight short-range missiles into it on Sunday.