In June 2026, the junta continued to seek recognition from foreign governments as it simultaneously carried out airstrikes on villages, displacement camps, and other civilian areas across the country. Min Aung Hlaing followed his late-May visit to India with a state visit to China, where China issued a joint statement endorsing Min Aung Hlaing and welcoming the military’s fraudulent elections, and the month closed with BIMSTEC moving to hand the junta a regional leadership role while Laos and Belarus deepened ties with the junta. Human rights organisations and parliamentarians pressed governments to reject the junta and pursue accountability for its crimes, as Fortify Rights urged the United Kingdom to lead an International Criminal Court referral under Article 14 of the Rome Statute and civil society lodged a complaint with Thailand’s national human rights commission over gas revenue reaching the military.
Foreign governments’ engagement with the junta did not deter its attacks on civilians. Throughout June, the military bombed, shelled, and strafed villages, displacement sites, markets, and homes across Sagaing, Rakhine, Chin, Bago, Mandalay, Magway, Mon, Kachin, and Tanintharyi, killing and wounding civilians, including many children, in the days after Min Aung Hlaing renewed an offer of peace talks. The military also established a committee to monitor online activity around the clock, widened its forced-conscription campaign, and continued to persecute Rohingya and other Muslim communities, including through arbitrary detention, extortion, and the confiscation of property by both the military and the Arakan Army.
Resistance forces continued to seize military and police positions in rural areas of Magway, Bago, and Ayeyarwady, taking prisoners and downing a military helicopter, even as tensions within the resistance surfaced, with NUG-aligned forces detaining a Sagaing PDF commander and raiding Communist Party of Burma positions in Mandalay Region. The Myanmar military is the primary perpetrator of atrocity crimes in Myanmar and the principal driver of the country's displacement crisis. Governments that recognise or engage the junta are enabling those crimes.