One year after the historic summit in Alaska between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, a peace agreement in Ukraine seems much further away than at that moment, although in reality it has never been close. During these months, Russian diplomacy has coined the concept spirit of Anchorage –the military base where the meeting was held– to argue that in Alaska the Americans had accepted the Kremlin's conditions to end the conflict. However, the passing weeks have shown that this spirit was an evanescent chimera. Relations between Russia and the United States are now going through one of the worst moments since the Republican's return to the White House,, and the thawing process that peaked a year ago is heading into a dead end.

Vladimir Putin wants to turn large families into the traditional Russian family. But while only 5% of households are made up of a father, a mother, and three or more children, almost 40% of families are single-parent and, in the vast majority of cases, matriarchal. Katia and Anya – fictitious names to preserve their anonymity –, a mother and daughter aged 45 and 11 respectively, are an example of this archetypal model in a society historically marked by high male mortality, the central role of women in care, and, after the fall of the USSR, by high divorce rates.

In Russia, a country where elections are conceived as a bureaucratic formality intended to legitimize the regime, the exclusion of the only party opposed to the "Ukraine war of the upcoming legislative elections has shaken up the campaign. After the Electoral Commission unexpectedly registered Yabloko, a party with historically very low support, the opposition almost unanimously called for votes for them and their popularity soared on the internet, especially among young people.

The escalation in aerial attacks in the Ukraine war has once again resulted in civilian casualties. Following last week's deadly bombings against Kyiv, this Monday Ukrainian drones attacked the Republic of Tatarstan, in the center of European Russia, killing at least thirteen people and injuring 75 more. The unusual magnitude of the attack's consequences, one of the deadliest on Russian territory since the start of the invasion, reveals the difficulties Vladimir Putin faces in protecting the country's immense expanse, beyond Moscow, an almost impregnable city.

The “war of cities” that some experts predicted a few months ago is now a reality. The conflict in Ukraine has entered a destructive phase in which each side tries to strike the other with all its might in the hope of breaking its will. While Vladimir Putin's missiles terrorize Kyiv and the major Ukrainian cities, Volodymyr Zelenskyy's drones set fire to refineries and warehouses in the interior of Russia. The consequence is that this summer is the bloodiest since the start of the invasion for civilians, with each month registering a higher number of casualties than the previous one.

Vladimir Putin has once again taken advantage of the weakness of Kyiv's air defenses to lash out at the Ukrainian capital. 24 ballistic and four hypersonic missiles hit the city and surrounding areas without any opposition, causing at least 17 deaths and more than forty injuries. The Russian army is responding in this way to Volodymyr Zelensky's strategy of daily targeting Wildberries warehouses, Russia's main online trading company.

Ukraine has gone a step further in its strategy to put pressure on the Russian economy. In addition to systematically hitting oil refineries and logistics routes, it has now launched a campaign against the warehouses of the main Russian e-commerce company, Wildberries. In just over two weeks, it has attacked them nearly thirty times and rendered more than one and a half million square meters unusable.

A terrorist attack in the heart of Moscow has once again set off alarms among the Russian army's top brass. On Saturday evening, a bomb exploded at the entrance of a luxury restaurant where General Aleksandr Tchaikovsky was celebrating his fifty-fifth birthday. He and the guests from the political and military elite with him escaped unharmed, but five patrons of the establishment died and 19 more were injured, some of them in critical condition.

When Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of Wagner, rebelled against the then Russian Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, on June 23, 2023, Vladimir Putin had already decided to disband Russia's most popular mercenary group due to the threat it posed to the regime's stability. Despite having been key in the conquest of towns like Bakhmut or Soledar, in Donetsk, the failure of the mutiny led private fighters to integrate into the regular army or return home. Some agreed to enlist in the armed forces, others sought a way to continue fighting in Ukraine while maintaining a certain autonomy, and many preferred to travel to Africa, where Wagner had become strong by defending local putschists and where it still struggles today to preserve the remnants of its empire.

Russian security services continue their crusade against Telegram and its founder, Pavel Durov. While the Kremlin and its technocrats resist definitively burying the application, aware of how popular it is in the country, the FSB – the former KGB – goes ahead, accuses its head of “collaborating with terrorist activities” and places him on the wanted list. According to the spies, the platform has done nothing to prevent Ukrainian secret services from using a dating chatbot to recruit Russian youth and adolescents with the aim of carrying out “acts of sabotage and terrorism, mass murders, and cyber fraud operations”.

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".