The war in Ukraine has entered a new stage. Trump is not only distancing himself from Kyiv but is also altering the European strategic balance and reviving a privileged relationship with Putin. His policy responds to a worldview that disdains traditional alliances, but it also responds to the historical fatigue of a society that has paid with lives and money for its status as a superpower.

The two worst moments in the relationship between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy have had a common denominator: they have arrived preceded by a telephone conversation between the United States president and Vladimir Putin, in which the Kremlin leader promised him major joint business deals. It happened in February 2025, before the public brawl between the American leader and the Ukrainian leader in the Oval Office of the White House, and it has happened again now, following the agreement for Moscow to sell diesel with Washington's permission, which caught Kyiv off guard. The Russian president has known at all times how to offer Trump what he desired, persuade him with his reasons, draw him to his positions, and pit him against Zelenskyy.

The so-called "energy ceasefire" between Russia and Ukraine announced by Donald Trump has not even begun. When he tried to impose it on Sunday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy replied that he knew nothing about it but that they would accept it. "We are ready to respect an energy ceasefire if Russia is ready to do the same," he said. As of this edition's deadline, Russia has officially said nothing about it, but it hasn't been necessary. Last night, Russia attacked a power plant in Kharkiv and a gas production plant and a service station in Zhytomyr, according to Kyiv.

Vladimir Putin is intensifying both his full-scale war against Ukraine and his shadow war against the rest of Europe. His main goal against Europe is to end the support that the continent gives to Ukraine, in order to be able to subjugate the country, a milestone he considers existential both for the future of Russia and for his own future. While in Europe we must prepare as well as we can to defend ourselves against all kinds of hybrid attacks, the central axis of our response should be to redouble support for Ukraine. Ukraine is his main target. It is there – and only there, not in a struggle of a thousand small hybrid attacks – where Putin's Russia can be defeated and effectively deterred.

A few days after the incontestable victory of Vladimir Putin's party in the legislative elections, the predictions of those who foresaw an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine, a radicalization of Kremlin policies, and a hardening of repression are beginning to come true. The new Duma, constituted this Wednesday, has a record number of war veterans and, on the United Russia bench, the largest in history, sit deputies known for promoting illiberal laws.

"It is not only nonsense, but also an example of provocation." Vladimir Putin has grown tired of denying his responsibility for the acts of sabotage that European authorities attribute to Moscow and of dismissing Western intelligence reports that warn that Russia is preparing to attack NATO. On the contrary, in the Russian capital they claim to feel threatened by the growing militarization of Europe and fear that the allies will use Ukraine to try to inflict a strategic defeat on them. In fact, they are convinced that the Atlantic Alliance is already in conflict with Russia and that, therefore, European countries are legitimate targets, if not for a conventional war, then for a hybrid war.

What do the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), the German Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) and Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Bulgarian Vazrazhdane, the French National Rally, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM), and the Spanish National Democracy or the Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain (PCPE) have in common? Some are far-right and others are far-left, but they share certain unequivocal attitudes: they are openly pro-Russian, and some have been funded with little dissimulation by the Kremlin. Some defend Putin's traditional/conservative values regarding the family, while others consider him the best ally against the United States. Of course, all of them oppose NATO, which is to say, they are in favor of unilateral disarmament like the one preached by the last dinosaurs of the USSR.The so-called “hybrid war” that Russia exerts against its Polish or Romanian neighbors—minimalist attacks, controlled explosions without casualties, targeted sabotage—responds to a logic perfectly coherent with the Kremlin's strategic tradition. These are not military operations in the classic sense, but rather a form of psychological and political erosion intended to fracture European cohesion by means of, among other mechanisms, formations like those I mentioned before. The goal is clear and simple—division—but its realization proves tortuous: in a Europe that, sooner or later, will have to rearm itself to guarantee its own security, any ambiguous episode can fuel internal dissent and hinder, or even prevent, decision-making.The model is by no means new. From the final years of Tsarism, those of the Rasputin era, to the USSR or the current Russian Federation, Moscow has successfully cultivated a specialty: poisoning, both informational and literal (they say Rasputin ended up being immune to cyanide; Litvinenko was not so lucky). The disinformation of the Soviet era—those campaigns of rumor-mongering and blatant infiltration into leftist Western media—was a weapon of attrition that sought to sow doubt about the reliability of democratic institutions.

Bombarded energy infrastructures. Hydrocarbon exports at discounted prices. Public finances stressed by the war effort. High inflation. This has been, for four and a half years, Russia's economic outlook since the president, Vladimir Putin, ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine that has led to one of the longest conflicts in the history of a country that is no stranger to belligerence.

The Russian pacifist opposition is debating between boycotting, protesting, and pragmatism in the legislative elections that end this Sunday and in which no one doubts the victory of Vladimir Putin's party. Voters opposed to the war have seen how the authorities removed the only anti-war formation, Yabloko, and how all candidates potentially dangerous to the regime were disqualified. In addition to the usual strategies to coerce public workers into marking the official list –the “administrative mobilization”– and to prevent the presence of independent observers, this time the Kremlin has generalized electronic voting, a system that analysts denounce as facilitating the manipulation of results.

In this Sunday's parliamentary elections in Russia, there will be no candidacies from the liberal Yabloko party, excluded by an unexpected Supreme Court ruling in the middle of August. History repeats itself: Yabloko has been erased from the Russian political scene just as the Kadet party, the historical liberals, was erased, who in 1917 tried to block the path to the Bolshevik coup d'état.

Sitting down to write about the siege on democracy while images of Russians voting appear on screens is poetic justice. We call the cardboard stage sarcastically organized by Vladimir Putin's regime legislative elections. The new tsar has been at the center of Russian power for 27 years thanks to methods learned in the KGB. The systematic elimination of dissent, of civil and political opposition, and of free media, along with a predatory instinct, have turned him into a totalitarian leader who swims in corruption. After internally drowning any symptom of democratic development and wiping out the oligarchs and the opposition, Putin has been waging a war against Ukraine for four years, with Chinese acquiescence, which he is now expanding to the whole of Europe. The advantage of totalitarians is that social control has no costs. Especially for a paranoid and icy mind like that of the Russian president, who is determined to turn into reality the territorial expansion that only connects with a glorious past in his imagination.

The Russian government has ordered the temporary transfer of the management of the assets of the Swiss food group Nestlé, the French supermarket chain Auchan –Alcampo in the Spanish market– and the also French Leroy Merlin, specialized in DIY material, to the company L.E.V. Management. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is thus responding to the sanctions of European countries against the Russian regime for the invasion of Ukraine, in particular Switzerland, a traditionally neutral country.

It had been three years since Vladimir Putin kissed children in public, a symptom that his popularity is wavering. The poor polls for his party, United Russia, have forced him to get involved in the campaign for the Russian legislative elections, which are being held between this Friday and Sunday. They are the first in wartime and the first in which the inhabitants of the occupied Ukrainian territories are participating, who have already begun to vote in ballot boxes guarded by armed soldiers. These are elections manipulated by the Kremlin, with the pacifist opposition banned, where the overwhelming victory of the ruling party is taken for granted and which, in a context of social unrest due to economic problems, internet blocks, and conflict fatigue, the authorities hope will pass without much notice or surprise.

After more than half a year with peace talks stalled due to the conflict in the Middle East, Donald Trump seeks to relaunch negotiations to reach an agreement that puts an end to the war in Ukraine. His emissaries, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, landed this Saturday in Moscow, where they met with Vladimir Putin, and this Sunday they will be in Kyiv for the first time to meet with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The visit takes place in the midst of an escalation of long-range cross-bombardments and with the Russian president less willing than ever to make concessions. Despite this, both sides have ended up accepting a three-day ceasefire over the two capitals to ensure the safety of the American diplomats.

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.

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump face an autumn where they will have to navigate between ballot boxes. Parliamentary elections in Russia, and in the United States, which do not decide who will continue to rule the Kremlin and the White House, but which can condition the immediate future on crucial issues such as the war in Ukraine or the one in the Middle East. Between the elections for the Russian Duma on September 20 and those for the US Congress on November 3, six weeks will pass, a short enough period to detect in which interests Putin and Trump coincide, and where they clash and grate.

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.

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.

Margaryta Yakovenko (Tokmak, Ukraine, 1992) arrived in Spain at 6 years old, but every summer she returned to her hometown to spend it with her family. In 2022, with the Russian invasion, everything changed. Now Tokmak is an occupied city to which she cannot return. This is the common thread of the book Occupation (Seix Barral).

With NATO mired in its internal tensions, Russia and Ukraine have decided to intensify the strategy of inflicting maximum possible damage on each other, before any talk of negotiating their immediate future resumes.