The impact of a drone against an apartment block in the Romanian city of Galati, near the border with Ukraine, highlights the danger that the war could end up involving NATO more directly. Friday's incident has not been the first incident with Russian drones or missiles outside Ukrainian territory, while the Baltic countries also warn of the risk they face due to the deviation of Ukrainian drones entering their airspace. We analyze this with Tony Lawrence, head of the Defence Policy and Strategy Program at the International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS) based in Tallinn (Estonia).

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,

After weeks in which Russia has attacked Ukraine with force and announced it will bomb command centers of the Ukrainian state in Kyiv, Volodymyr Zelensky sent a letter this Wednesday to Donald Trump requesting to address the shortage of air defense missiles that Kyiv claims to be suffering from. This was reported by the media The Kyiv Independent and later confirmed by Zelensky's communication advisor, Dmytro Lytvyn. In a text also addressed to the United States Congress, the Ukrainian president states that the current rate of missile delivery "is not enough" to intercept Russian attacks.

The Russian economy has faced pessimistic forecasts since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, when a large part of Western countries gradually imposed all kinds of industrial and financial sanctions on it. Despite this, Moscow's narrative had been that the country's economy was holding up well to the economic shock, partly thanks to public investment and industrial activity resulting from the war, which offset the impact of the sanctions.

The visits within a week of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to Beijing have placed China at the center of gravity of world diplomacy. It seems that all roads lead to Beijing, as Trump and Putin have been only the latest and most relevant of a long list of visitors. In recent months, Xi Jinping has received the French president, the German chancellor, the Irish prime minister, the one from the United Kingdom, the one from South Korea, the one from Canada... Pedro Sánchez has also been on the list and his meeting with Xi Jinping coincided with that of the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, another example of the Chinese president's intense agenda.

Cristian Mungiu joins the exclusive list of filmmakers with two Palme d'Or awards. Nineteen years after winning the first with Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days, the Romanian filmmaker has once again triumphed at the Cannes Film Festival with Fjord, where he leaves his native Romania to travel to Norway and recount the drama of an evangelical and ultra-conservative Romanian family whose children are taken away by the progressive Norwegian social services when they discover that the father –Sebastian Stan, who recovers his native Romanian here– physically punishes them.

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.

The meeting between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in Beijing shows the strength of their alliance and how the two leaders share the vision of a new world order. Putin's official trip to the Chinese capital results in a string of mutual compliments, some agreements, and declarations of friendship.

China boasts of being the center of world diplomacy and accumulates visits from top leaders. After bidding farewell to Donald Trump four days ago, tonight it will welcome Russian President Vladimir Putin. Xi Jinping has had practically no time to put away the red carpet reserved for distinguished visitors as he is already receiving his main ally, who will be in Beijing for two days.

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.” 

A regime of Soviet origin that has been in power for more than 25 years is telling us about its rigid and hermetic nature. Vladimir Putin's quarter-century in the Kremlin is one of the longest authoritarian periods in Russian history, and it already surpasses Stalin's. That is why the bleak climate surrounding the Red Army parade –it is still called that– on May 9th in Red Square also spoke volumes: the images say a lot. And, beyond that, messages and comments about a Putin distanced from his usual residences, confined to the Kremlin and surrounded by security devices for fear of an attack. This had not happened since, almost three years ago, Wagner mercenaries, with Yevgeny Prigozhin at the forefront, staged an impromptu march towards Moscow. A logistical and political blunder that sought to impose conditions on Putin regarding the war in Ukraine.

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.

Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a three-day ceasefire, from this Saturday to Monday, coinciding with the commemoration of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in Moscow. The first to announce it was the President of the United States, Donald Trump, but shortly after, Volodymyr Zelensky and the Kremlin confirmed it. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the truce would include a suspension "of all kinetic activity" and also an exchange of a thousand prisoners from each country. The announcement comes the day after the Russian Ministry of Defense declared a unilateral three-day truce, in this case, from Friday to Sunday. For his part, the Ukrainian president had proposed that the ceasefire begin on Wednesday.

This Saturday, the same day that Europe Day will be celebrated in many European cities, there will be a Community Prime Minister who will be neither in Brussels nor in the capital of his country. Instead of commemorating the historic Schumann Declaration, which laid the foundations for the European Union, the Prime Minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, will be in Moscow to commemorate the victory of the Soviet army over Nazi Germany in World War II. He will be the only EU leader to travel to Russia during Vladimir Putin's major annual military display anniversary.

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.