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.

Volodymyr Zelensky fears a perfect storm: a prolonged conflict in the Middle East, from which Vladimir Putin continuously benefits with the sustained increase in oil prices, which fattens the Russian budget for the war in Ukraine and stalls the economies of Kiev's European allies. To prevent this, the Ukrainian president is carrying out the most intense campaign of attacks against Russia's crude oil export ports since the start of the invasion. However, this strategy could be counterproductive to Zelensky's short-term interests, as it could contribute even more to the increase in oil prices and, therefore, to the Kremlin's revenues.

After a three-week journey from the Baltic Sea, crossing the Atlantic Ocean, to the Caribbean, the Russian tanker Anatoli Kolodkin will finally be able to dock in a Cuban port and will break the blockade that Donald Trump has been imposing on the island since January. “If a country wants to send oil to Cuba right now, I have no problem with it, whether it's Russia or other countries. It will have no impact, Cuba is finished.”, said the President of the United States, a few hours before the vessel reaches its destination. The 730,000 barrels of crude oil that the ship is carrying – about 100,000 tons – are estimated to alleviate Havana's fuel crisis for a month. At the same time, they will offer Vladimir Putin a geopolitical victory in the dispute with Washington over spheres of influence.

The Russian military has carried out its most massive attack on Ukrainian cities since the start of the war. In 24 hours, it launched 948 drones and 34 missiles, killing at least four people and wounding around 40. The bombardment is aimed at weakening Kyiv's air defense systems, which rely on US Patriot missiles, now more difficult to replace due to the Middle East war. Meanwhile, Ukraine has again struck one of Russia's main export terminals, the Baltic port of Ust-Luga, in an attempt to stifle the Kremlin's growing revenues from oil and fertilizer sales.

"The United States doesn't want allies, but vassals, and Russia cannot accept that framework for relations." These words of Vladimir Putin in 2015 resonate with increasing force among Russian analysts since the US attack on Iran. The aggression, in the midst of negotiations, has alarmed Moscow. who doubts the usefulness of engaging in dialogue with Donald TrumpAfter a year of rapprochement, Washington has once again revealed itself as a geostrategic adversary, and the Kremlin is becoming convinced that it cannot expect anything regarding the resolution of the war in Ukraine.

Despite Vladimir Putin's efforts to conceal the ravages of the war in Ukraine from residents of major cities, the conflict has once again become a part of daily life for Muscovites in recent hours. Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has denounced the largest Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow since the start of the invasion. According to him, nearly 250 unmanned aerial vehicles were shot down as they headed toward the capital. Russian military analysts believe this is an aerial escalation by Kyiv, while independent observers warn that the Kremlin may be exaggerating the threat to justify its actions. internet outages within the country and to convince Donald Trump of Volodymyr Zelensky's unwillingness to reach a peace agreement.

A cartoon that appeared in the Russian press shows a billboard with a caricature of Vladimir Putin and the text "He brought us back from the 90s." At its base, a man asks another, "Where did you get that? Does he look for people?" His interlocutor replies, "I'll show you on the map," and unfolds a huge map of Moscow. Walking through the Russian capital these days is like stepping back in time and, at the same time, contemplating a science fiction set. On March 5, the authorities blocked mobile internet in the city's central districts, and more than a week later, the network is still failing. The Kremlin justifies this action as being for "security reasons," but activists warn that this is just one more step toward Russia's inevitable disconnection from the global internet.

In the volcanic rivers of Kamchatka and the snow-fed torrents of Siberia, locals brave raging currents to hunt their prey. Russia has a long tradition of fishing in turbulent waters, a tradition that also extends to foreign policy. Donald Trump's attack on Iran has offered Vladimir Putin an unexpected lifeline. the rise in energy prices in a context of global instabilityHowever, just as these fishermen expose themselves to great dangers to catch the most coveted fish, short-term gains for the Russian economy threaten to become new risks if the conflict in the Middle East drags on.

"I don't even want to discuss this possibility," Vladimir Putin stated last June when a journalist asked him how he would react if Israel or the United States were to assassinate Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Once the possibility became a reality, the Russian leader merely sent a telegram of condolence to the Iranian president, criticizing what he considers a "cynical violation of all norms of human morality and international law." He has repeated this message in the following days. The man who invaded Ukraine without warning four years ago and who bombs its cities daily is not so much concerned about the image he projects to the world—his inability to help an ally—as he is about the ghosts this death evokes, inevitably linked to the trauma of the execution of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. The assassination of Gaddafi in 2011 horrified and obsessed Putin, who began to fear a similar fate. The Kremlin leader perceived it as a betrayal by the United States and Europe, and this was one of the causes of the break with the West. However, fifteen years later, Russia is not in a position to raise its voice forcefully against the White House. The initial telegram, much shorter and more neutral than a televised statement, avoided pointing fingers at those responsible for Khamenei's death and made it clear that Moscow cannot and does not want to antagonize an omnipotent Donald Trump, who has broken Putin's isolation and is mediating to resolve the war in Ukraine. Since then, Putin has barely spoken about events in the Middle East.