As soon as we set foot in the student residence in Starobilsk, in the occupied Luhansk region, it became clear that this was not a command post of the elite drone branch of the Russian army, as Kyiv claims. Last Friday, Ukrainian aircraft killed 21 young people there, mostly girls, who were sleeping at the time of the attack, and injured dozens more. Ukraine's denial and the West's silence pushed Russian diplomacy to organize a guided tour for foreign journalists to the scene of the tragedy. The expedition, in which ARA participated and which took place hours after a massive retaliatory bombing by Moscow, became an attempt by the Kremlin to accuse Volodymyr Zelensky of a war crime and to impose its narrative on the international community. Last Friday, Ukrainian aircraft killed 21 young people there, mostly girls, who were sleeping at the time of the attack, and injured dozens more. Ukraine's denial and the West's silence pushed Russian diplomacy to organize a guided tour for foreign journalists to the scene of the tragedy. The expedition, in which ARA participated and which took place hours after a massive retaliatory bombing by Moscow, became an attempt by the Kremlin to accuse Volodymyr Zelensky of a war crime and to impose its narrative on the international community.

In the last 25 years, the collapse of Russia and Vladimir Putin's regime has been predicted on countless occasions. Lately, these rumors have revived among Western analysts after European intelligence circulated reports about a possible coup and the Russian president's fear of being the victim of an assassination by his inner circle. Discontent over the delicate economic situation, growing internet restrictions and fatigue from a war that causes increasing devastation in Russian cities are ruffling the elites, but the system is not faltering or cracking. On the contrary, malaise, distrust, and intrigues could lead to an increase in internal repression and even greater empowerment of the secret services.

“We do not want to be dragged into an arms race”, said Vladimir Putin after launching the largest strategic nuclear weapons exercises in Russian history – those with long range, designed to strike the enemy's centers of power. For the first time, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko has commanded such tests together with his Russian counterpart. These maneuvers are taking place coinciding with warnings from Volodymyr Zelensky that Moscow is trying to drag Minsk into attacking Kyiv from its territory.

If the Soviet Victory Day truce against Nazi Germany in 2025 led to the first round of direct talks between Russia and Ukraine in three years, this year's ceasefire has led to an escalation of the conflict. Volodymyr Zelensky promised on Thursday that he would respond "fairly" to the large-scale Russian bombing with more than 1,600 drones and missiles, which ravaged Kyiv, leaving 24 dead and around fifty injured. And this Sunday he has responded. Russian air defenses detected 556 Ukrainian drones during the early hours of the morning, 120 of which were heading towards Moscow, in the largest attack on the capital since the start of the war, now more than four years ago.

A single ambiguous phrase from Vladimir Putin was enough for everyone to venture into predicting the proximity of a peace agreement in Ukraine. The Russian president implied that the war “is approaching its end”, opened the door to meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky in a third country, and proposed former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder as a possible European interlocutor with Russia. But, in reality, the Kremlin has not moved for a long time: its leader is convinced that Kyiv's defeat is a matter of months, he has no intention of meeting with the Ukrainian president unless it is to sign the end of the conflict, and any negotiation with the European Union will have to be done on his terms.If Donald Trump is difficult to decipher because he constantly contradicts himself, the exegeses of Putin's statements tend to overinterpret. During the surprise press conference that the Russian president convened on Victory Day evening, he took advantage of a criticism of Western support for Ukraine to say: “They began to stoke confrontation with Russia, which continues to this day. I believe the matter is approaching its end, but nevertheless, it is a serious matter.” 

The three-day truce agreed between Russia and Ukraine with the mediation of Donald Trump, which expired on Monday night, was marked by three elements: Volodymyr Zelensky refrained from launching drones against Red Square during Volodymyr Putin's military parade; if this agreement were violated, Moscow threatened a retaliatory attack against Kyiv; and, in a humanitarian gesture, each side committed to releasing a thousand prisoners. 24 hours after the ceasefire ended, the Russian army launched one of the most massive bombardments against Ukrainian cities since the start of the war, and the Kremlin resisted carrying out the promised exchange of captives.

Vladimir Putin’s obsession with reversing the demographic crisis that has plagued Russia for more than ten years has encountered an obstacle of his own making: the war in Ukraine. Tens of thousands of men, many of them young men of reproductive age, have lost their lives on the front lines since 2022. To try to compensate for this bleeding, which adds to the endemic low birth rate, several initiatives have been proposed so that these soldiers can reproduce after death and render a final service to the homeland and their families.

This year's Victory Day military parade will be remembered for two circumstances. The first, Vladimir Putin's fear, which led him to turn his showcase of military power into a minimal and unprecedented spectacle: without tanks or missiles, practically without foreign guests and without Western media. The second, Volodymyr Zelenskyy's mockery, who, urged at the last minute by Donald Trump, desisted from threatening Red Square with his drones and signed a sarcastic decree to “allow” the Russian celebration this Saturday.

Vladimir Putin has ignored the ceasefire offer proposed by Volodymyr Zelensky, which came into effect this Wednesday, just after midnight. Ukraine denounces that Russian drones have attacked several cities and caused casualties. According to Kyiv authorities, this shows that the Russian president rejects peace and that his invitation to stop attacks on Friday and Saturday only aims to secure Russia's Victory Day military parade this Saturday. Some voices within the Ukrainian government even advocate for not respecting the truce promoted by the Kremlin on its important holiday.

It was the last thing Vladimir Putin wanted in the most important week of the year. A Ukrainian drone has impacted an emblematic luxury residential skyscraper just a few kilometers from the Kremlin. The incident, which has not caused casualties, takes place five days before the Victory Day military parade, the global showcase of Russian military might. For the first time in almost two decades, neither tanks nor missiles will be exhibited because security cannot be guaranteed, and Putin, in full psychosis over a possible attack by Kyiv, has even desperately proposed a truce of a few hours to ensure that Volodymyr Zelensky does not spoil the party.

A Russian influencer from Monaco has shaken up public debate in Moscow like it hasn't been shaken in a long time. In a video addressed to Vladimir Putin, Viktoriia Boniia, a former contestant on Dom-2, Russian Big Brother, warned the president that people and leaders "are afraid of him" and "don't tell him the truth." One of the reasons for her complaints was the growing internet blockages, the last straw for the patience of citizens, tired of four years of war and an increasingly worsening economic situation.

As in so many other aspects, also concerning the management of the family nucleus, Vladimir Putin bears little resemblance to most world leaders. Between transparency and overexposure, the Russian president opts for extreme hermeticism, which gives rise to mystery and rumors about extramarital affairs and illegitimate children. If the misfortunes of royalty are often the subject of the gossip press, in Russia investigative journalists are the ones who delve into the secrets of their head of state's most intimate circle. A tsar's life protected with the zeal of a spy.

Everything was designed to evoke the splendor of the Soviet Union. As a setting, the House of the Unions, a palace from the late 18th century, next to the Duma, which hosted the wakes of all the leaders of the USSR, from Lenin to Gorbachev; the name, Sovintern, recalling the Comintern (the Communist International); and neoconstructivist typography, in homage to post-revolutionary poster art. However, the international network that was presented this Monday in Moscow “does not want to recreate the Soviet past”, declared Sergei Mironov, the head of the promoting party A Just Russia, but rather to build “a socialism of the 21st century”.

February 14, 2025. A Russian drone loaded with explosives crashes into the structure protecting the old sarcophagus of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The fire burns for three weeks, damages the walls of the new construction and forces it to be repaired because it is no longer capable of containing radiation. Despite this, a year later, on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of the worst atomic disaster in history, maintenance is at a standstill. Russian attacks on Ukraine hinder the engineers' task, and environmental organizations like Greenpeace have just warned that, if nothing is done, there is a risk that the sarcophagus will “collapse” and cause a “catastrophic” radioactive leak, which “knows no borders”. a catastrophic radioactive leak, which “knows no borders”.

Vladimir Putin is having more and more trouble maintaining the bloody virtuous cycle that is allowing him to advance drop by drop in Ukraine. Russian army recruitment figures have fallen in the first three months of the year and do not compensate for the pace of casualties caused by Ukrainian drones amid the Kremlin's offensive. The Russian president is trying to avoid a new mobilization that, according to experts, would be inefficient and insufficient to conquer all of Donbas. Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky is trying to combat the shortage of soldiers by introducing robots onto the battlefield, the technological innovation that both sides crave to tip the scales of the war.

August 10, 2023. 2:10 AM, Moscow time. The Luna-25 mission launches from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Russian Far East. For the first time in 47 years, Russia is launching an unmanned lunar mission, which aims to touch down near the Moon's south pole, study its soil, and search for traces of frozen water. On August 16, the spacecraft enters lunar orbit and, three days later, begins its landing maneuvers. But at the crucial moment, something goes wrong. The engines do not shut off when they should, the craft adopts an incorrect trajectory, and it crashes into the lunar surface.

“A swallow does not make a summer” would be the Russian equivalent of our “A flower does not make a summer”. In this winter Orthodox Easter Week, with temperatures near 0 degrees and snow in Moscow, the Easter truce will have passed like a fleeting mirage of 32 hours. Faced with Vladimir Putin's refusal to extend the ceasefire beyond midnight on Sunday, as Volodymyr Zelenskyy had asked him to, both sides have mutually accused each other of repeatedly violating the pause in fighting in the hope that Donald Trump will see that the other is the main obstacle to peace.

Pessimism has taken hold of Russian military commentators. After the Kremlin's army managed to close the gap with Ukraine in the drone race in the autumn of 2025, in recent weeks Kyiv's unmanned aerial vehicles have once again left Russian technology behind. Their superiority on the front has helped to slow down Volodymyr Putin's spring offensive, while, for the first time since the start of the invasion, more long-range Ukrainian drones than Russian ones are being launched.the distance to Ukraine in the drone raceThe ability to disrupt Kyiv's troop supplies was one of the successes of the Molnia-2, the Russian attack drone that allowed the Kremlin to increase pressure on the Ukrainian rear in late last year and facilitated the progress of Russian soldiers. Now, however, it is the new generation of Ukrainian drones that is causing Moscow's troops to falter. In March, they only advanced 25 square kilometers, according to military observers from the Blackbird group, far from the monthly average of 380 in 2025. The great hope of Russian commanders is that, with the arrival of good weather, the foliage of the trees will serve their men to camouflage themselves from the threat from the sky and allow them to survive the so-called

The territorial dispute clouds the peace negotiations over Ukraine, now suspended due to the conflict in the Middle East. Although the recognition of the occupied regions as Russian is important for Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin's ambitions involve the Belarusianization of Kyiv, that is, its political subordination. Moscow wants a meek and friendly neighbor that poses no threat in itself to Russia, nor as a vanguard of hypothetical Western aggression. However, the Russian president missed the opportunity to depose Volodymyr Zelensky at the start of the war, and after four years of daily bombings, the advent of a pro-Russian government in Ukraine seems like a fantasy or a bad joke.

“Are there any men in the audience? No? What a shame! Take off your pants and put on a skirt!” With these words, the dean of Voronezh State University of Engineering, in southwestern Russia, tried to pressure his students to go fight in Ukraine. The Kremlin has demanded that the rectors of the institutions send 2% of enrolled students to the war. They promise them one year of service in a drone unit far from the front lines, astronomical salaries, and a secure future, but activists warn that it is a trap and that they are very likely to get caught and lose their lives. astronomical salaries and a secure future, but activists warn that it is a trap and that they are very likely to get caught and lose their lives.