At a time of special tension between Europe and Russia and amidst a constant escalation of attacks between Kyiv and Moscow, any suspicious movement in the airspace quickly triggers alarms. This is what has happened in the last few hours with a drone and the plane of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who would have been involved in a scare on his trip on Tuesday to Oslo to attend the funeral of King Harald V this Wednesday.

"Europeans are facing a harsh truth: that this is the new normal." This sentence from the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, brings to mind that "new normal" of restrictions on individual freedom in favor of public health to which we had to adapt during the COVID-19 pandemic. The statement, however, is not from six years ago, but from this week. Now, the new normal to which we must get used to is that of systematic attacks by Russia. "We are in a new era of European security," insisted the leader of the EU executive. The message arrived after German authorities directly blamed Moscow for an attack with an explosives-laden drone at Leipzig airport at the beginning of August, one of the most serious sabotage attempts recorded so far on European territory, at a key NATO logistics center.

When last Saturday 38 people died near Kyiv in one of the deadliest Russian attacks of the entire war, many inevitably thought of the unstoppable destructive power of ballistic missiles. But what crashed into the ammunition depot in the suburb of Mila was not a fearsome Iskander, but a new-generation drone. The Geran-4 and Geran-5, the latest Russian evolutions of the Iranian Shahed, have also become the latest headache for Ukrainian air defenses, which see with impotence how, in addition to missiles, they now also have difficulties stopping this new Kremlin weapon.

"We are not at war, but we are a daily target of hybrid warfare." This is how German Foreign Minister Alexander Dobrindt summarized on Tuesday the moment that one of the main European powers is going through, and which is extensible to a good part of the region. After Dobrindt's words, Germany has recorded three violent acts in the last two days, which coincide with the German government's accusation against the Kremlin of being responsible for the attempted drone attack at Leipzig airport on August 4th. Amidst the uncertainty and waiting for police investigations to progress, Germany and Europe are debating between avoiding an excessive escalation that worsens the situation or taking a stand given the gravity of the incident in Leipzig.

The drone attack at the beginning of August on the German airport of Leipzig has put the European Union and NATO on alert, who view with concern how incursions with military aircraft into European territory are becoming increasingly frequent. The day after German authorities held Russian intelligence services responsible for the Leipzig incident, this Wednesday the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the Secretary General of the Atlantic Alliance, Mark Rutte, met urgently in Brussels, and they have pledged to increase pressure on Moscow.

If you want to better understand the world we have started living in for the past few months, there are a couple of news items of the day that are very helpful.The day before yesterday, Pedro Sánchez stated that Morocco did not instigate the massive entry of people into Ceuta, that it had been the work of Russia and Israel, who had spread through the networks in Morocco that Spain was waiting for workers with open arms, so to speak. Putin himself has denied that Russia had anything to do with it, and the Israeli government has also denied it. But this morning, the digital newspaper El Español published that the Spanish police have informed the judge that the massive entry into Ceuta was guided by Moroccan gendarmes under the orders of plainclothes agents with the aim of collapsing the border control system and eliminating Spain's response capacity.

Volodymyr Zelensky is looking for new ways to pressure Vladimir Putin to stop the war in Ukraine. In the last few hours, the rhetorical escalation has reached a new level after the Ukrainian president issued a warning to international airlines that still maintain flights to Russia. “Russian airspace will become completely unsafe,” he stated on Tuesday night. While clarifying that Kyiv “does not threaten civil air transport nor does it threaten a single aircraft,” Zelensky holds the Russian authorities responsible for how they manage their airspace from now on, taking into account that “there will be drones in the Russian sky to a dimension that must be considered”.

Although many Eastern European countries had already accused Russia of practicing what is called "hybrid warfare" against them, it is now Germany that has directly accused Moscow of being behind the incident in early August at Leipzig airport, when a drone loaded with explosives impacted a Ukrainian plane without exploding. A month later, the investigation by German authorities reaches this conclusion after analyzing the drone's operation and characteristics. In August, the German Defense Minister, Alexander Dobrindt, was already very clear when he stated: "We are the daily target of hybrid warfare".

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs demands that the Spanish government provide proof of its alleged involvement in a disinformation campaign related to the migration crisis in Ceuta. "When there are accusations, there must be concrete facts that then require verification. And only after that can we talk about an accusation that, in some way, can be taken seriously," said Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at a press conference this Tuesday, according to the Interfax agency.

Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Sweden, Romania, Lithuania, and now also Germany. Incursions and drone threats in NATO territory have become more frequent in recent months and have intensified. In early August, a drone loaded with explosives impacted a Ukrainian cargo plane at Leipzig airport without detonating, in one of the most direct sabotage attempts recorded so far at a key NATO logistics center and further into European territory. After nearly a month of investigations, this Tuesday, for the first time, the German government has directly blamed Russian intelligence services for the incident.

Poland has intercepted a Russian reconnaissance aircraft flying over the Baltic Sea, as reported this Monday by the Polish Minister of Defense, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz. The aircraft, an IL-20, was intercepted by Polish fighters at midday, 30 kilometers north of the coastal city of Leba, while it was flying without a registered flight plan and with its transponder off, an increasingly common practice that hides information such as the aircraft's code, flight altitude, or planned route. The head of defense clarified that there was no violation of Polish airspace over the Baltic Sea.

Putin has completed twenty-six years in power this year (he did so in May). He was the second president of Russia, and is its fourth, and for two consecutive terms he and his loyal Dmitri Medvedev alternated as president of Russia and as prime minister. President of Russia is the position that was created to replace that of the president of the Supreme Soviet, the highest Russian authority during the years of the USSR. It was held, in the early years, by the dipsomaniac Boris Yeltsin, and then always by Putin, directly or through his puppets: first Medvedev and now Mikhail Mishustin, who serves as prime minister once Putin has ensured (via the 2020 Constitutional reform, known as the "reset counter" reform) that he can continue as president until 2036. How did he do it? He restarted the count of his terms with a law that "erased" the previous two. In this way, he has maintained the limitation of two presidential terms, but in practice he has added two more (of six years each) because the first two stopped counting.To remain in power, he needs to win the elections, but the tendency of his opponents to die prematurely and in circumstances as appalling as they are enigmatic is well known. Journalists like Anna Politkovskaya, Natalia Estemirova, or Paul Klebnikov, exiled magnates like Boris Berezovsky or his collaborator Alexander Litvinenko, the mercenary Yevgeny Prigozhin, or political leaders like Boris Nemtsov or Alexei Navalny form the list of the most prominent figures allegedly murdered by Putin's regime. Beyond these famous names, the victims of political repression in Putin's Russia number in the tens of thousands, including journalists, activists, writers, politicians, etc.Of these twenty-six years, it has been four and a half years since Putin gave the order to invade Ukraine, while in the West it was still being said that he would not dare. In 2022, Putin claimed that the war would be short and that he was carrying it out with the aim of “desnazifying” Ukraine, an argument that neither Putin himself remembers anymore. The war has generated hundreds of thousands of deaths on both sides and millions of displaced people and refugees, and for now, there is no end in sight. But the invasion (this one really is) and the war in Ukraine have become geostrategic actors that no longer cause surprise or scandal, but are fully normalized within European politics. Like Putin himself, who for a quarter of a century has committed crimes, violations, and breaches of international law in the face of the passivity of the West, underpinned by all sorts of economic, energy, and logistical interests. Europe has begun in recent years a night that will be long and extremely hot (due to climate change and violence), surrounded by howling wolves. It would be good if at some point someone thought about how Europe itself, instead of trying to fight the wolves that now harass it, has dedicated itself to feeding them.

On the facade of the Nativity of the peaceful Sagrada Família, a scene is depicted that is the prelude to all wars: a demon offers a bomb to a worker. It is man's temptation by violence. The worker looks at the Virgin Mary for protection and to avoid throwing it. The world has found itself insistently facing this gaze. This gaze is especially relevant today. What makes the worker often end up throwing the bomb? This gaze is especially relevant today. What makes the worker often end up throwing the bomb?

Vladimir Putin not only does not believe that the stubbornness to continue the war in Ukraine to the bitter end could be a burden for the legislative elections of September 20, but he considers it an attraction. The Russian president has dedicated a large part of his speech at the congress of his party, United Russia, to defending the need to achieve victory. Although the event was supposed to serve to present the campaign program, Putin has overlooked the citizens' major concerns and has avoided making any concrete promises to reverse the poor economic situation or internet blockages.

At least 14 people have died and 121 have been injured, including 22 children, in a Russian drone attack on a shopping center in the Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, located in the Dnipropetrovsk region, in the east of the country. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called it an "absolutely cynical and cowardly blow." According to the leader, the attack was carried out in two waves of drones: "half an hour after the first impact and fire, a second attack occurred against the rescue services," denounced the Ukrainian leader in a Telegram message. This is the strategy known as double-tap, which aims to attack emergency services, journalists, and other civilians who come to the scene to rescue the initial victims.

The Kremlin intensifies its crusade against the pacifist opposition one month before the legislative elections. Specifically, it seeks to punish the only party opposed to the war in Ukraine that had initially been authorized to participate in the elections, Yabloko. The justice system has sentenced one of its vice-presidents, Lev Shlosberg, to 11 years and one month in prison for having defended the need for a ceasefire and criticized Vladimir Putin. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has rejected the party's appeal against the decision to ban them from the electoral process, after Yabloko's popularity soared in polls in recent weeks and an unprecedented wave of support among young people was generated.

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.

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the Kuril Islands for the first time this Thursday, the disputed Pacific archipelago administered by Moscow but claimed by Tokyo for over eight decades. The visit, which had not been previously announced, has sparked the indignation of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who called it "absolutely unacceptable" and warned that it "hurts the feelings of the Japanese people." Consequently, the Japanese Foreign Minister has urgently summoned the Russian ambassador to Tokyo, Nikolai Nozdrеv, to lodge a formal protest.

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.