From a woman waving a colonial-era flag in a shopping mall, to bakery staff selling cakes with protest symbols on them - dozens of Hongkongers have been reported to the police by one man for what he believes were national security violations.

"We're in every corner of society, watching, to see if there is anything suspicious which could infringe on the national security law," former banker Innes Tang tells the BBC World Service.

"If we find these things, we go and report it to the police."

When the UK returned Hong Kong to China 28 years ago, internationally binding treaties guaranteed the city's rights and freedoms for 50 years. But the national security law (NSL), imposed by Beijing a year after Hong Kong's 2019 mass pro-democracy protests, has been criticised for scuttling free speech and press, and for ushering in a new culture of informing.

The law criminalises activities considered to be calls for "secession" (breaking away from China), "subversion" (undermining the power or authority of the government), and collusion with foreign forces.

An additional security law called Article 23, voted in last year, has further tightened restrictions.

With new laws and arrests, there has been limited reporting on Hong Kong's pro-China "patriots" - the people who are now running and policing the city, as well as the ordinary citizens who openly support them. But the BBC has spent weeks interviewing Innes Tang, 60, a prominent self-described patriot.

He and his volunteers have taken screen grabs from social media of any activities or comments they believe could be in breach of the NSL.

He also established a hotline for tip-offs from the public and encouraged his online followers to share information on the people around them.

Nearly 100 individuals and organisations have been reported to the authorities by him and his followers, he says.

"Does reporting work? We wouldn't do it if it didn't," Mr Tang says. "Many had cases opened by the police… with some resulting in jail terms."

Mr Tang says he hasn't investigated alleged law breakers himself, but simply reported incidents he thinks warrant scrutiny - describing it as "proper community-police co-operation".

Mr Tang is not the only so-called patriot to engage in this kind of surveillance.

Hong Kong's authorities have set up their own national security hotline, receiving 890,000 tip-offs from November 2020 to February this year - the city's security bureau told the BBC.

For those who are reported to the authorities, pressure can be relentless.

Since the NSL was enacted in 2020, up until February this year, more than 300 people had been arrested for national security offences. And an estimated 300,000 or more Hongkongers have permanently left the city in recent years.

Pong Yat-ming, the owner of an independent bookshop that hosts public talks, says he often receives inspections from government departments which cite "anonymous complaints".

He received 10 visits in one 15-day period, he says.

Kenneth Chan, political scientist and university lecturer, who has been involved in the city's pro-democracy movement since the 1990s, jokes he has "become a bit radioactive these days".

Some friends, students and colleagues now keep their distance because of his outspoken views, he says. "But I would be the last person to blame the victims. It's the system."

In response, Hong Kong's government said it "attaches great importance to upholding academic freedom and institutional autonomy". But it adds that academic institutions "have the responsibility to ensure their operations are in compliance with the law and meet the interests of the community at large".

Innes Tang says he is motivated to report people by a love of Hong Kong, and that his views on China were cultivated when he was young, when the city was still a British colony.

"The colonial policies weren't really that great," he says. "The best opportunities were always given to the British and we [the locals] did not really have access."

Like many of his generation, he nursed a longing to be united with China and taken out of colonial governance. But he says many other Hongkongers at the time were more concerned with their livelihoods than their rights.

"Democracy or freedom. These were all very abstract ideas which we didn't really understand," he says.

An average citizen should not become too involved in politics, he says, explaining he only became politically active to restore what he calls "balance" to Hong Kong society following the turbulence of 2019.

He is giving a voice, he says, to what he calls "the silent majority" of Hongkongers who do not support independence from China, nor the disruption created by the protests.

Outside of the UK - watch on YouTube

But other Hongkongers consider rallies and demonstrations a longstanding tradition, and one of the only ways to voice public opinion in a city that now does not have a fully democratically elected leadership.

"We are no longer a city of protests," says Kenneth Chan, who specialises in Eastern European politics. "So what are we? I don't have the answer yet."

And patriotism isn't inherently a negative thing, he says.

It is "a value, maybe even a virtue", he argues, although it needs to allow citizens to keep "a critical distance" - something that is not happening in Hong Kong.

Electoral reform was pushed through in 2021 - stating that only "patriots" who "swore loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party" could hold important positions in government or the Legislative Council [LegCo] - Hong Kong's parliament.

As a result, the council struggles to function, believes Hong Kong-based China commentator Lew Mon-hung, a former member of the Chinese government advisory body, the CPPCC.

"The public think a lot of these patriots are 'verbal revolutionaries' or political opportunists - they don't really represent the people," he says.

"That's why ridiculous policies still pass with a huge majority. There is no-one to constrain or oppose, no-one to scrutinise."

Even patriot Innes Tang says he wants to see the current system challenged.

"I don't want to see every policy passing with 90% of the vote," he tells the BBC.

There is a danger the National Security Law will be weaponised, he says, with people saying: "If you don't agree with me, I accuse you of infringement of the national security law."

"I don't agree with this type of stuff," says Mr Tang.

Hong Kong's government said: "The improved LegCo is now rid of extremists who wish to obstruct and even paralyse the operation of the government without any intention of entering into constructive dialogue to represent the interests of all Hong Kong people."

For now, says Mr Tang, he has stopped reporting on people. Balance and stability, he believes, has returned to Hong Kong.

The number of large-scale protests has dwindled to none at all.

In academia, fear of surveillance - and how life might change for someone who infringes the laws - means self-censorship and censorship have become the "order of the day", says Kenneth Chan.

Pro-democracy parties are no longer represented in the Legislative Council and many have disbanded - including the Democratic Party of Hong Kong, once the most powerful party.

Innes Tang has now set his sights overseas.

"There aren't any particular issues in Hong Kong now, so I asked myself - shouldn't I have a look at how I can continue to serve my community and my country?" he says.

"For a non-politician and civilian like me, this is an invaluable opportunity."

He now works as a representative for one of several pro-Beijing non-profit groups, regularly visiting the UN in Geneva to speak at conventions giving China's perspective on Hong Kong, human rights and other issues.

Mr Tang is also in the process of establishing a media company in Switzerland, and registering as a member of the press.

For Kenneth Chan in Hong Kong, his future hangs in the balance.

"One third of my friends and students are now in exile, another third of my friends and students are in jail, and I'm sort of… in limbo," he says.

"Today I'm speaking freely with you… no-one would promise me that I would continue doing it for the rest of my life."

In a written reply to the BBC, a Hong Kong government spokesperson said that national security is a top priority and inherent right for any country. It "only targets an extremely small minority of people and organisations that pose a threat to national security, while protecting the lives and property of the general public".

The first samples of Moon rock brought back to Earth in nearly 50 years have arrived in the UK - on loan from China.

The tiny grains of dust are now locked inside a safe in a high security facility in Milton Keynes - we were given the first look at them.

Professor Mahesh Anand is the only scientist in the UK to have been loaned this extremely rare material, which he describes as "more precious than gold dust".

"Nobody in the world had access to China's samples, so this is a great honour and a huge privilege," he says.

After grinding and zapping the dust with lasers, Prof Anand's team hope to answer fundamental questions about how the Moon formed and about the early years of planet Earth.

Inside the grains of dust could be evidence to back up scientists' theory that the Moon was made from the debris thrown out when Earth struck a Mars-sized planet 4.5 billion years ago.

China collected the rocks on its Chang'e 5 space mission in 2020 when it landed on a volcanic area called Mons Rümker.

A robotic arm drilled into the soil to collect 2kg of material, which was brought back to Earth in a capsule which landed in Inner Mongolia.

It was the first successful lunar sampling since a Soviet mission in 1976 and catapulted China into a leading position in the new space race.

Now, following a long tradition of global collaboration between space scientists, China has for the first time granted seven international researchers samples to make new discoveries.

The tiny vials were handed to Prof Anand at a glamorous ceremony in Beijing last week, where he met colleagues from Russia, Japan, Pakistan and Europe.

"It was almost like a parallel universe - and China is so far ahead of us in terms of their investment in space programmes," he said.

He returned to the UK with the precious cargo in the safest place he could think of - his hand luggage.

At his lab at the Open University in Milton Keynes, we step onto sticky mats to clean our shoes and put on plastic gloves, gowns, hair nets and hoods.

The environment inside this high security room must be spotless to prevent contamination.

If Earthly material mixes with these extra-terrestrial specs, it could permanently ruin the analysis Prof Anand's team will do.

We crouch down on the floor in front of a row of safes. Prof Anand unlocks one and carefully pulls out a ziplock bag with three containers the size of boxes that could keep a necklace.

Wedged firmly in each one is a see-through vial with a dusting of dark grey at the bottom.

That is the Moon dust.

It looks underwhelming, but it is humbling to think of its cosmic journey.

And Prof Anand says they don't need any more than this 60mg in total.

"Here, the small is mighty. Believe me, it is enough to keep us busy for years to come because we specialise in working on the micro," he adds.

In a lab down the corridor, technician Kay Knight will be the first person to actually work on the grains when the vials are opened.

She's been cutting and grindings pieces of rocks for 36 years, but this will be the first time she's worked on something straight from the lunar surface.

"I'm extremely excited," she says, after showing us how she cuts meteorites using a diamond blade.

"But I'm nervous - there's not much of the samples and they can't really go and get more very easily. This is high stakes," she adds.

After she prepares the samples, they will go into two more labs.

In one, we see a machine with an intricate network of countless tubes, valves and wires.

Technician Sasha Verchovskyhas been building it since the early 1990s. He shows us the small cylinder where the specs of dust can be heated to 1400 Celsius. That will help them extract carbon, nitrogen and nobel gases.

This is completely unique, and is one of the reasons Prof Anand believes his lab was chosen to receive the rare samples.

James Malley, a research technician, operates a machine that can work out how much oxygen is contained within the specs of dust.

He shows us a test run of what he will do.

"I'm going to hit that grain on the tray with a laser," he says, showing the scene magnified on a computer screen.

"It's going to start to glow, and you will see it melt inwards," he says.

The team has a year to finish their research. By the end, their search for answers will probably end up destroying the samples.

But China has gone further since the Chang'e 5 mission.

In 2024 its Chang'e 6 launch brought back the first samples from the far side of the Moon. It's a deeply mysterious place that might have evidence of long-quiet volcanic lava flows.

"I very much hope that this is the beginning of a long-term collaboration between China and international scientists," says Prof Anand.

"A lot of us built our careers working on samples returned by Apollo missions, and I think this is a fantastic tradition to follow. I hope that other countries will follow suit," he adds.

After the sorrow of death, the joy of a new beginning.

The warm May sun was still high in the sky when a roar echoed out in the streets surrounding St Peter's Square.

One street over, startled people looked at each other, then at their phones. Then, they began to run down the narrow alleyways leading to the Vatican. "White smoke, they're saying white smoke!", they called out.

By the time they reached the square, a white haze was still hovering over the left hand side of the Apostolic Palace where 133 cardinals had been locked away since the day before, voting to elect the new head of the Catholic Church.

As the evening sunshine streamed through the statues of the apostles on the ledge of St Peter's Basilica and bells tolled joyously over the square, young and older people zig-zagged through the crowd, and a group of nuns held hands as they swerved journalists and cameras.

• LIVE UPDATES: Robert Prevost becomes first American pope

It was less than three weeks ago that Pope Francis blessed the crowds from the balcony at St Peter's, and his memory hung over the square on Thursday; almost everyone asked to share their impressions mentioned Francis and the need for the new Pope to follow in his footsteps.

"We just arrived today from America," one woman named Amanda told the BBC. "It feels like a blessing. We came here for this and here it is."

"Divine timing!" she joked. Two stylish women in their 20s said they were "about to cry". "It's a historic moment, it's crazy," one said, adding she hoped the next Pope would be "at least as good as the last one".

This was a sentiment echoed by many in those last minutes before Pope Leo XIV was announced.

"It doesn't matter to us where he's from as long as he follows in on Francis' footsteps and creates unity for all of us Catholics," said a French woman as she herded her five children to get closer to the front of the square.

By the time Dominique Mamberti - the proto-deacon tasked with delivering the iconic "Habemus Papam" address to the square - appeared on the balcony, St Peter's was full to the brim. It fell silent, though, once Robert Francis Prevost's name was read out.

Those in the know may have identified the Chicago-born 69-year-old cardinal - who worked for many years as a missionary in Peru before being made a bishop there – as a potential pontiff early on.

But many people in the square looked puzzled at first, and the complete lack of phone coverage meant that most couldn't look him up on the internet - so the first impression most got of Pope Leo XIV came down to the way he introduced himself from the ornate balcony.

Visibly moved at first, and dressed in white and red vestments and speaking in confident - if lightly accented - Italian, he read out a much lengthier speech than the remarks made by his predecessor Francis in 2013.

"I would like this greeting of peace to reach all your hearts and families… and people around the world. May peace be with you," the new Pope began as the square fell silent.

At other moments, his address was met with frequent warm applause, especially when he mentioned "peace" - which he did on nine occasions - and the late Francis.

A section of the speech delivered in Spanish in which Pope Leo XIV remembered his time in Peru was met with cheers from various pockets of South Americans dotted across the square.

He also insisted on the need for unity, and at the end asked everyone to join together in prayer. When he began reciting Ave Maria, a deep hum rose as the square followed suit, with some praying in their own languages.

The crowd began to slowly amble out of the square shortly after. As people streamed past them, a young couple held each other close, beaming. "I still have goosebumps," said Carla, from Barcelona.

"The energy is contagious, it's amazing - it's our first time here, and for me it's 100% surreal," said Juan, who is from Ecuador and had never been to the Vatican before. Asked what his hope for Pope Leo XIV was, he said: "That the Holy Spirit guides him. I hope that means we can all be united together going forward."

Gemma, a Rome resident, said she hadn't even heard the name Robert Prevost until she came across it on Instagram this morning. "The reaction of the square wasn't that warm," her friend Marco added.

"If he'd been Italian everyone would have kicked off." "But it was a beautiful evening, a beautiful occasion," said Gemma. "It was my first conclave. And this new Pope is only 69, so who knows when the next one will be?"

The square emptied. The restaurants around the Vatican filled up with pilgrims, clergy, and tourists. Couples snapped the last selfies outside the basilica.

Over in the Apostolic Palace - now unsealed - Robert Prevost held a moment of private prayer.

Then, for the first time, he re-entered the Sistine Chapel as Leo XIV, the 267th Pope.

The fact that the conclave was over quickly suggests that from the outset, a significant number of the voting cardinals felt Robert Prevost was the one amongst them best equipped to take on the challenges a pope faces.

In the lead up to the election - during the formal meetings of cardinals, and the informal dinners and coffees they had to discuss the type of person they were looking for - it was apparent that two words kept coming up, "continuity" and "unity".

There was a recognition among many that Pope Francis had started something hugely impactful, through reaching out to the those living on the margins of society, to those on the peripheries of the Catholic world and also to those outside the faith.

There was appreciation for his endeavour to become a voice for the voiceless and focus on the poor and those whose destinies were not in their own hands.

But there was also a sense that work had to be done to resolve the (sometimes very public) splits between those of different schools of thought within the Church hierarchy, often characterised as traditionalist and progressive.

It was in that context that Robert Prevost's name started to be talked of as a serious contender. As someone who supported Pope Francis behind the scenes, but who different factions could still think of as one of their own.

But the voting cardinals had been tasked by the Church with considering not just what the institution and Catholic believers needed, but also what humanity needed at a difficult juncture, with war and division the backdrop.

Again, Cardinal Prevost - the US-Peruvian dual national, who was talked of as feeling as at home with his North American peers as he was with Latin American colleagues - was seen as someone who, as pope, could connect different worlds.

Pope Francis was sometimes criticised for lacking an ability to win more allies in the US on the big issues of migration and climate change and inequality, because of a disconnect in understanding the most effective ways of communicating his arguments to them.

For those who had in their minds that the primary requirement being sought of a new pope was an ability to bring "continuity" and "unity", during his speech on St Peter's balcony, Leo XIV gave strong clues as to why the cardinals chose him.

In his talk of "building bridges" and people globally being "one people" he evoked echoes of Pope Francis and also talked of unity at its fullest.

In these early days, his past will be heavily scrutinised. His political views examined, his track record on dealing with abuse dissected, and his comments over the years on social issues charted.

Much of this is already in the public domain so it can only be assumed that the cardinal electors felt there was nothing of enough consequence to impair his ability to lead the Catholic Church and be the global moral voice they were looking for.

Huge challenges lie ahead. But with resolution after just four conclave votes, he starts out with a strong mandate from the men he will need the most through his papacy.

• Conclave live: Follow the latest updates
• The cardinals who will choose the next pope
• The divides behind the scenes in the Vatican
• Who will be the new pope - the key candidates

US President Donald Trump has hinted that US tariffs on goods from China may come down as top trade officials from the world's two biggest economies are set to hold talks.

"You can't get any higher. It's at 145, so we know it's coming down," he said, referring to the new import taxes of up to 145% imposed on China since he returned to the White House.

Trump made the comments during an event to unveil a tariffs deal with the UK - the first such agreement since he hit countries around the world with steep levies in April.

The meeting in Switzerland this weekend is the strongest signal yet that the two sides are ready do deescalate a trade war that has sent shockwaves through financial markets.

"I think it's a very friendly meeting. They look forward to doing it in an elegant way," Trump said of the talks with China.

China also struck a confident note about the talks.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister, Hua Chunying, said Beijing has "full confidence" in its ability to manage trade issues with the US.

The announcement earlier this week of the talks was welcomed as an important first step towards easing tensions but analysts have warned that this marks the start of what are likely to be lengthy negotiations.

"The systemic frictions between the US and China will not be resolved any time soon," said former US trade negotiator, Stephen Olson.

Any cuts to tariffs as a result of this meeting are likely to be "minor", he added.

The initial negotiations will be led by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and China's Vice Premier and economic tsar He Lifeng.

But "I think everyone recognises that any final deal will require the active engagement of both presidents," Mr Olson said.

Another trade expert said that even if the new tariffs imposed by Trump were lifted, the two countries would still have major issues to overcome.

"A realistic goal is probably at best a pullback from the sky-high bilateral tariffs but that would still leave in place high tariff barriers and various other restrictions", the former head of the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) China division, Eswar Prasad told BBC News.

The talks between China and the US are set to take place just two days after the UK became the first country to strike a tariffs deal with the Trump administration.

The US has agreed to reduce import taxes on a set number of British cars and allow some steel and aluminium into the country tariff-free, as part of a new agreement.

It also offers relief for other key UK industries from some of the new tariffs announced by Trump since his inauguration in January.

Countries around the world are scrambling to make similar deals before steep US import taxes are due to take effect next month.

Trump announced what he called "reciprocal tariffs" on dozens of countries in April but paused them shortly afterwards for 90 days to give their governments time to negotiate with his administration.

The church where Pope Leo XIV attended mass as a child and served as an altar boy is now an empty shell.

Only the stained glass windows remain intact inside the sturdy facade of St Mary's of the Assumption on the far edge of Chicago's South Side.

The disrepair is one indication of how the Catholic Church's power and influence has been ebbing away in America's big cities.

And yet, around this city there's palpable excitement, particularly among Catholics, that the new pontiff is not only American - he's a South Side Chicagoan.

"When they said the new Pope was an American, I flipped out, I said 'no way'!" said Mary Simons, a French teacher and nearby resident who brought her mother to see St Mary's.

"The Church seems like it's getting smaller and smaller in this country," said Ms Simons. "I'm hoping that this will rejuvenate the church and make it bigger and better."

A small trickle of Catholics, along with a few non-Catholics, made their way to St Mary's on Thursday afternoon as the news spread that Pope Leo XIV – until recently, Cardinal Robert Prevost – had been elected by his fellow cardinals in Rome.

While some lamented over the poor state of the neighbourhood church – "It's shocking to see this" remarked one visitor - several were close to tears as they considered the humble roots of their new leader.

Natalie Payne attended the church and the school associated with it. She hadn't heard the news but just happened to be driving by when she saw the small crowd outside and stopped to take in the moment.

"We loved this school. It was a very family oriented place and very accepting of difference," she said. "I was one of the very few black people who attended this school, but I always felt part of the community. It was just a beautiful place."

Catholics make up about 20% of the US population, according to Pew Research, a number that dropped from 24% at the start of the century. Attendance has fallen and the decline is noticeable in the big industrial cities of the Midwest, in closed schools and shuttered houses of worship like St Mary's.

Leo XIV grew up in a modest home just a few streets away from here. The Chicago Sun-Times reported his parents – his father was a school administrator and his mother a librarian - bought their home in 1949, paying a mortgage of $42 a month.

His father was of French and Italian decent and his mother had Spanish heritage, according to a Vatican news release.

• Who is Robert Prevost, the new Pope?
• Watch Pope Leo XIV being unveiled as new pontiff
• Pope Leo's first public address from the Vatican balcony - watch in full
• US President Donald Trump calls election of first American pope a 'great honour'

Charleen Burnette, one of the Pope's former classmates, told the BBC she remembers him as a "quiet, kind, gentle, wicked-smart kid".

"He was always the top of our class, all the time," she said, recalling how he always knew he wanted to be a priest and would stay late to sweep and dust St Mary's as a boy.

"He vocalised it. He lived it. He exemplified it," she said.

In recent years, the Catholic Church has not only weathered declining attendance but also child abuse scandals that continue to resonate today.

The Midwest Augustinians, a religious order in Chicago which Pope Leo once led, only published a list of priests credibly accused of sexual abuse in 2024, after years of public pressure.

As a cardinal, Prevost was criticised after being accused of allowing a priest facing sex abuse allegations to live in an Augustinian building near an elementary school. The priest was later moved and the religious order says it has tried to be transparent.

There is a common feeling here that the church has not fully reckoned with the past but despite that, many Catholics here expressed hope for the new Pope's reign.

Outside Holy Name Cathedral, the centre of the Catholic Church in downtown Chicago, workers were hanging bunting to prepare for a special mass on Friday morning.

Father Gregory Sakowicz, rector of Holy Name, said he was just about to preside over mass at the cathedral when the news broke.

"When I saw the white smoke on TV, I looked out the window and the sun came out here in Chicago," he said.

"Later, during holy communion someone told me, 'Father, the new Pope is Father Robert Prevost from Chicago.' I was shocked."

Fr Sakowicz said Pope Leo XIV "will be his own man" but added that he was confident that he would follow in the footsteps of his predecessor and be "a voice for human rights, a voice for the voiceless, concerned with the poor, and concerned for our mother Earth".

And in this sport-mad city, there's one question that might nearly match the importance of the new Pope's theological direction – which of the city's baseball teams does he root for?

Although there were some reports that he backs the Chicago Cubs, in interviews the new pope's brother has said he cheers for the White Sox – the team with a passionate South Side fan base. Both teams on X, however, have claimed the new Pope's support.

"Go White Sox - and go Cubs," said Fr Sakowicz. "There's just a lot of enthusiasm and joy around here.

"He might be from Chicago, but he will be a pope for the whole world, not just Chicago, not just the US, not just North America - but the entire world."

With reporting from Nadine Yousif

Hours into the ceasefire Russia had called for, we drove into the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine to see what, if any, impact it was having.

The Ukrainian military escorted us to an artillery position, south-west of the fiercely contested city of Pokrovsk.

Overcast skies made the drive through mud tracks running past wide open fields slightly less vulnerable to attacks from drones.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had proposed a three-day ceasefire starting at midnight local time on 8 May, to coincide with the anniversary of the end of World War Two in Europe – a public holiday in Russia on Friday known as Victory Day.

But from the artillery position we heard the sounds of continuous explosions – incoming and outgoing mortar fire - evidence that there was no ceasefire in the trenches and on the frontlines.

I asked Serhii, one of the soldiers of the 3rd Operational Brigade of the National Guard if there had been any attacks from Russia overnight.

"Yes, they have been attacking overnight. We have had glide bombs and drones here. Russia can't be trusted. In the evening they call a truce and in the morning they attack. There is no truce. We are always prepared for anything," he said.

Some minutes later, he was sent the co-ordinates of a target over the radio. A few soldiers ran through deep muddy trenches, to a clearing where a howitzer was hidden from sight, covered by branches and leaves. They uncovered it, pointed it in the right direction and fired. It let out a deafening sound, and the recoil blew up leaves and dust from the ground.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky had rejected Russia's unilateral three-day ceasefire. Instead, he has called for a longer 30-day truce, as proposed by the US, a proposal that has once again been reiterated by its President Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform on Thursday night.

Trump has even threatened that Washington and its partners would impose further sanctions if the ceasefire is not respected.

As the war of attrition grinds on, each side trying to wear the other down, I asked, Max, a 26-year-old soldier how he felt about global diplomatic efforts pushing for a ceasefire.

"You don't think about things like that when you are here. You have to have 'tunnel vision'. You can't let emotions dictate your actions. You wait for a command and act, and if there is no command you find a way to spend your time. But you don't let thoughts like this enter your mind," he said.

We drive north from the artillery position, to the city of Dobropillya, which is roughly 12 miles (19km) from Russian positions. Thousands of people still live in the city, among them are many of those who've been forced to move here because their home towns have become too dangerous to live in.

We meet Svitlana who is from Pokrovsk but has now relocated to Dobropillya. I asked her if she thought Russia's ceasefire call had made any difference on the ground. "You can hear the sounds here," she said, referring to the continuous sounds of explosion, like rolling thunder, that we could hear from the outskirts of the city. "That is the sound of Russia's ceasefire. That's why I say we should never trust them."

Twenty-six-year-old Serhiy chimes in: "The ceasefire is announced just to confuse people and deceive them, and so they (Russia) can say to the world 'we are so good, we are trying to get Ukraine through peaceful means' but in reality, everything they do is the opposite of it."

In Dobropillya's main market, we meet 65-year-old Oleksandr. "It was quieter last night. Before that we used to hear Shahed drones flying regularly," he said. "But now we are hearing alarms again, and I'm not sure I can see any truce."

As he talks, his face crumples into a sob. "I'm afraid. I have my wife and son here. I'm very scared for my family. I'm scared we might be forced to flee our homes," he said, breaking down.

Additional reporting by Imogen Anderson, Volodymyr Lozhko, Sanjay Ganguly and Anastasiia Levchenko.

The US has agreed to reduce import taxes on a set number of British cars and allow some steel and aluminium into the country tariff-free, as part of a new agreement between the US and UK.

The announcement offers relief for key UK industries from some of the new tariffs announced by President Donald Trump since entering office in January.

But it will leave a 10% duty in place on most goods from the UK.

Though hailed by leaders in the two countries as significant, analysts said it did not appear to meaningfully alter the terms of trade between the countries, as they stood before the changes introduced by Trump this year.

No formal deal was signed on Thursday and the governments were light on details.

Speaking from a Jaguar Land Rover factory in the West Midlands, Sir Keir Starmer described the deal as a "fantastic platform".

At the White House, Trump called it a "great deal" and pushed back against criticism that he was overstating its importance.

"This is a maxed out deal that we're going to make bigger," he said.

What's in the deal?

The two sides said the US had agreed to reduce the import tax on cars - which Trump had raised by 25% last month - to 10% for 100,000 cars a year.

That will help luxury carmakers such as Jaguar Land Rover and Rolls Royce, but could limit growth in the years ahead, as it amounts to roughly what the UK exported last year.

Tariffs on steel and aluminium, which Trump had also raised earlier this year to 25%, have also been slashed, according to the Prime Minister's Office.

The office also said the two sides had agreed to "reciprocal access" for beef exports, with a quota of 13,000 metric tonnes for UK farmers.

Those figures were not confirmed by the White House, though it said it expected to expand its sales of beef and ethanol to the UK, a longstanding demand on the part of the US.

The US said the deal would create a $5bn "opportunity" for exports, including $700m in ethanol and $250m in other agricultural products.

"It can't be understated how important this deal is," US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said.

UK Steel Director General Gareth Stace welcomed the agreement saying it would offer "major relief" to the steel sector.

"The UK Government's cool-headed approach and perseverance in negotiating with the US clearly paid off," he said.

Other business groups expressed more uncertainty.

"It's better than yesterday but it's definitely not better than five weeks ago," said Duncan Edwards, chief executive of BritishAmerican Business, which represents firms in the two countries and supports free trade.

"I'm trying to be excited but I'm struggling a bit."

In the House of Commons, Conservative Shadow Trade Secretary Andrew Griffith dismissed the announcement as "a Diet Coke deal, not the real thing".

Trade Minister Douglas Alexander stressed that the deal was "jobs saved, not job done".

Win for US ranchers?

The US and UK have been discussing a trade deal since Trump's first term. They came close to signing a mini-agreement at that time.

But the US has long pushed for changes to benefit its farmers and pharmaceutical issues, which had been non-starters politically for the UK.

It was not clear how much those issues had advanced.

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association said the agreement in-principle had delivered a "tremendous win" for American ranchers but the US Meat Export Federation, which tracks trade barriers for farmers in the US, said it was still trying to pin down information about the changes.

The UK said there would be no weakening in food standards for imports.

While the UK appears to have made some commitments, "the devil will be in the details," said Michael Pearce, deputy chief economist at Oxford Economics, which said it was making no change to its economic forecasts as a result of the announcement.

Other issues loom.

Trump has said repeatedly that he wants to tax imports of pharmaceuticals, in a bid to ensure the US has a strong manufacturing base for critical medicines.

The UK said the US had agreed to give British firms "preferential treatment".

But Ewan Townsend, a lawyer at Arnold & Porter, who works with health care firms, said the industry was now "left waiting to see exactly what this preferential treatment will mean".