In Russia, the fight against Satanism is not a relic of the past, but a state policy. The powerful Russian Orthodox Church has promoted the persecution of this belief as a catch-all to accommodate an ultraconservative agenda and repression of identities that deviate from traditional Russian values. Heavy metal bands, Halloween festival organizers, or psychics are the latest victims of a crusade that authorities also use to demonize the LGBTI community and justify the war in Ukraine as a "de-Satanization" operation.

Vladimir Putin has been annoyed that in recent weeks a narrative has emerged according to which Ukraine is on the verge of turning the tide of the war. “Europeans have the categorically incorrect impression that the situation on the battlefield is changing in favor of the Ukrainian forces,” they say from the Kremlin. The reason is the partially successful effort by Kyiv's troops to stifle Russian logistics on the southeastern front, which opens a window of opportunity for Volodymyr Zelensky. However, in the east, in Donbas, Russia continues to advance and will soon conquer Kostiantynivka, one of the last major towns in the region. The problem is that it is advancing so slowly that pressure is growing from the warmongering sectors for the Russian president to decree a new mobilization, a hugely unpopular measure that could prove entirely ineffective.

Ukraine is determined to de facto turn the occupied peninsula of Crimea into an island. On Sunday morning, Kyiv's drones attacked the ports on both sides de facto the occupied Crimean Peninsula into an island. In the early hours of Sunday, Kyiv's drones attacked ports on both sides During the last few days, Ukrainian medium-range drones

In the great Russian metropolises there are no air-raid shelters, no emergency protocols, the sirens do not sound when drones approach. People record from home, between fascination and unreality, how the aircraft fly over buildings with an unsettling parsimony until they crash. No one wants to think that these explosions could affect their apartment or that they could be the next victims. In the fifth summer of the war, the bulk of Russian urban society refuses to accept that it is at war, even though it is becoming increasingly difficult for the Kremlin to hide the ravages of the conflict within its cities.

The impact of a drone against the Kapotnya refinery, about 15 kilometers south of central Moscow, caused an explosion this Thursday that blew the roof off the plant. The striking moment, captured on video by dozens of residents, testifies to Ukraine's most massive attack on the Russian capital since the war began. In total, 555 aircraft flew towards Russian territory, of which 194 headed for the city. The bombing caused 17 injuries and once again highlighted the vulnerabilities of Russian air defenses and further aggravated the fuel crisis the country is going through.

There was no surprise in Armenia's legislative elections. The party of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has achieved a comfortable victory that will allow him to form a government and continue with the strategy of approaching the European Union and the United States and distancing himself from Russia. These results also validate the peace process initiated by the Armenian leader almost a year ago to put an end to a conflict of nearly four decades with Azerbaijan. However, the parliamentary majority is insufficient to amend the Constitution and remove the claim to the Nagorno-Karabakh territory, as Baku demands to finalize the agreement.

This Sunday, Armenia will hold its first elections since Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan decided to leave the Russian orbit, convinced that his historical ally was no longer capable of guaranteeing its security. In recent years, Armenia has embarked on an unprecedented course towards Europe and the United States in search of new partners, and Western leaders openly support the current government, which is the favorite for re-election. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has launched a campaign of economic pressure to sow fear among the population.

No face-to-face meetings or concessions. The letter that Volodymyr Zelensky sent to Vladimir Putin in which he asked him to end the war in Ukraine has received the expected response: an unappealable no. The Russian president appeared at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum amidst escalating bombings and with his soldiers struggling to advance a few meters on the front, but he showed himself convinced, once again, that the conflict can only end with Russia's victory. 

A window of opportunity for Ukraine. This is how various military analysts describe the situation of the conflict with Russia, after Kyiv has taken the lead in the dominance of medium-range drones, those sent about 150 kilometers from the front line and crucial for disrupting enemy logistics, which are sent about 150 kilometers from the front line and are crucial for disrupting enemy logistics. The Ukrainian army has managed to slow down the Russian offensive on the southern front and is now threatening the roads that supply weapons, food, and fuel to the soldiers. If it is capable of isolating the Russian lines, it could even launch a counter-offensive, some experts point out. However, Moscow will react sooner or later.

Volodymyr Zelensky warns Vladimir Putin that if he does not decide to end the war in Ukraine, he runs the risk of being a victim of a coup. In an open letter to the Russian president, the Ukrainian leader assures that it is not a threat, but that this is how Russian history works. "When Russia gets tired, changes occur," he writes. According to Zelensky, if Putin does not come to the conclusion that this conflict must end, "he will have to fight for his own survival".

“Don’t you dare say I surrendered Karabakh!”, shouted Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan a few weeks ago at a refugee from that territory with whom he started arguing on the Yerevan metro. In September 2023, Azerbaijan invaded the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh, a territory in dispute since the fall of the Soviet Union, and expelled the more than 100,000 ethnic Armenian inhabitants who remained there. Neither Pashinyan, nor Karabakh’s ally Vladimir Putin, nor any leader from the Western world did anything to prevent it. That defeat is still an open wound today for tens of thousands of displaced people and a national trauma that the Armenian candidate for re-election, in Sunday’s legislative elections, is trying to bury.

The image of the foreign delegates of the St. Petersburg Economic Forum entering the exhibition center with columns of smoke from Ukrainian drones in the background is probably the last thing Vladimir Putin would have wanted to see. Kyiv has launched an attack on the oil export port of the country's second city, coinciding with the inauguration of this event, which the Kremlin wants to present as its alternative to the World Economic Forum in Davos. The Russian president plans to attend on Thursday and Friday.

Volodymyr Zelensky had warned for days of an imminent large-scale bombing of Ukraine, and it has finally arrived. At least 22 people have died and more than a hundred have been injured in a night attack on some of the country's main cities, especially the capital, Kyiv, and Dnipro in the east. Russia launched 73 missiles, in one of the most intense attacks of the last year in a single night, in addition to 656 drones. Vladimir Putin had promised that he would respond forcefully and systematically to the massacre of 21 young people in a university college in Luhansk, in occupied Donbas, two weeks ago.

Romanian authorities have no doubt that the drone that crashed early this morning against a residential building in the city of Galati, near the border with Ukraine, and lightly injured two people was Russian. Never before had an unmanned vehicle caused victims in the territory of a European Union and NATO member country. However, despite the evidence presented by the Romanian government, which has described the incident as the most serious since the start of the war, Vladimir Putin is playing dumb and questions whether his army launched the aircraft.

From attrition to exhaustion. The conflict in Ukraine has entered a phase of military and diplomatic stalemate that has pushed both armies towards long-range attacks. While the lines move drop by drop, more and better drones and missiles fly into the depths of the enemy country. The result of this escalation is a death toll among the non-combatant population that is on track to break all records this year.Officially, neither army is bombing civilian targets. Ukraine has been successfully hitting Russian industries, refineries, and ports for months,

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.”