Pope Francis left a written statement in his final wishes that he wanted an austere burial. But the ceremony was no less solemn. The funeral left impressive and historic images, such as the meeting between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who met in a room in St. Peter's Basilica.

Kharkiv (Kharkov in Russian) is Ukraine's second largest city, with a metropolitan area of more than 2.3 million inhabitants. An industrial and grey city, located only 45 kilometres from the Russian border, with a Russian-speaking population with Russian cultural roots and close family ties to the other side. It could be one of the first targets should Vladimir Putin finally order an invasion and at the same time the Kremlin's pretext to legitimise the attack: Moscow considers all Russian speakers living in former USSR countries as "fellow countrymen" and says it has to "protect" them, if necessary, militarily. But after eight years of war in the Donbass region, with the front 350 kilometres south of Kharkiv, people have had enough.

"I don't think there will be a war, everything is calm here: people are not even hoarding food. But if Putin decides to invade us, we Ukrainians will resist: we are not ready to give up," says Natalia Volova, a 69-year-old pensioner who sets up a pickled vegetable stall at the market in the Livoberezhnyi neighbourhood in western Kiev. She explains that with her 5,000-hrivnia pension (€156), she barely has enough to buy food and that she grows the courgettes, aubergines and cabbage which she pickles and sells herself. As a young woman, when Ukraine belonged to the Soviet Union, she worked in an electronic components factory, a time she doesn't remember with any nostalgia: "It was an assembly line and we couldn't even get up to go to the toilet. I didn't live well in Soviet times and I don't live well now: if I don't work, I don't survive, and nobody seems to care". She is in favour of her country joining NATO: "If not, who will protect us? We don't have nuclear weapons."

On a street in the industrial estate next to the port of Ceuta, Ridan, 16, stops us and shows us his mobile phone with a cracked screen and, with gestures, makes us understand that it has no battery. "Mom", he says, pointing to the phone. We leave him ours to call home, after four days wandering lost in the streets of Ceuta without knowing what to do or where to go, and sleeping on the breakwater of the beach. His father answers instantly, and the conversation barely lasts five minutes. "Dad, I heard that the border was open and I've gone to Ceuta. You and mum don't have a job and we are many brothers and sisters and we couldn't do anything to get out of this crisis that affects so many people. Now I will try to go up to the Peninsula. If I had wanted to steal or commit a crime I would have stayed in Tetuan. I'm going to get the papers and help the whole family", he tells them. The father tells him to take care of himself, to be a man and not to mix with "bad company". The mother does not get on the phone, she can only be heard crying.

Spain is returning to Morocco people who have arrived in Ceuta without the procedure established by law, the Spanish Refugee Aid Commission (CEAR) denounced yesterday. There is not even official data on how many of the 5,600 people who have returned to Morocco have been forced by the police and how many have returned on their own.