Vladimir Putin has launched his spring offensive in Ukraine. Taking advantage of a dry March after a brutal winter, the Russian army has intensified attacks against the last major Ukrainian-controlled cities in Donbas, Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, with assault operations exceeding 600 attacks in four days and battalions of up to 500 soldiers. The objective is clear: to conquer what the military calls the Donetsk fortress belt before the diplomatic path, if it ever materializes, freezes the conflict map.

Oleksandra Matvitxuk (Kiv, 1983) is a Ukrainian lawyer and one of the most prominent voices in the defense of human rights in Eastern Europe. She leads the Center for Civil Liberties, a key organization in documenting war crimes committed by Russia. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, she has become an international figure in the fight against impunity. She visited Barcelona at the invitation of CIDOB.

The work of Banksy It never fails to provoke a reaction. The artist (or artists) behind that name creates stencil paintings brimming with social and political commentary, all from a position of anonymity. Their interventions appear on walls, streets, squares, and public spaces worldwide, and each work sparks social debate. Their career has taken them to Paris, New York, Bethlehem, London, and Bristol, the British city where they have left some of their most recognizable murals in the early hours of the morning. The themes are diverse: from critiques of war and social inequality to ironic graffiti about consumer society and politics.

Giant images of Volodymyr Zelensky fill billboards during the election campaign in Hungary. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has decided to turn the general elections on April 12 into a referendum on the war in Ukraine and, in doing so, fuel the war psychosis that already guaranteed him a strong majority in 2022. The Fidesz leader has been in power for sixteen uninterrupted years, built on assumptions about the future. Since 2010, Orbán and his party—which has become a benchmark for the transatlantic far right—have managed to construct a vast partisan media ecosystem, at the heart of which is the National Communications Office, under the prime minister's watchful eye. Billions of euros invested in communication campaigns and a coordinated social media strategy are complemented by the creation of grassroots activist movements that amplify the arguments, theories, and accusations dictated by Fidesz.

I had the opportunity to chat for a while with Oleksandra Matviichuk, who was visiting Barcelona at the invitation of CIDOB. This 42-year-old Ukrainian lawyer is the director of the Center for Civil Liberties, which is dedicated to documenting all the war crimes that Putin and the Russian army are committing in Ukraine and to defending the victims of the Russian occupation. Matviichuk was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022. It's only been three and a half years, but it feels like a decade, especially now that the world's attention is focused on Iran and not Ukraine.

Trump's word is worthlessBut it does come at a price, the price we all must pay for his decisions. Aware that The war with Iran has driven up oil prices and lowered stock markets.That is, that his voters have to pay more for gasoline and that his friends are losing billions in the stock market, Trump took the floor last night to say that The war is "virtually over" And that they are far ahead of the agenda they had set, that Iran "has already fired all it was supposed to fire." And Trump's words had the desired effect: the stock markets rose this morning and the price of oil fell. If this is a fluke that won't make a summer, Trump doesn't care. Yesterday he went for the coup, but he knows there are two things ordinary Americans hate: paying higher gas prices and having inflation erode their purchasing power, all because of a war that lacks the support of the vast majority. Consider that these days oil has reached its highest price in the last three and a half years, specifically in the summer of 2022, months after the war in Ukraine began, and that the cost of living is shaping up to be the major issue in the November elections. And we all know that when oil goes up, everything goes up.

Russian invasion of Ukraine. Year five –five!–. The war, that Vladimir Putin was supposed to resolve in three days and that Donald Trump would solve in 24 hours, continues.

Oksana Zabuljko (Lutsk, 1960), philosopher, novelist, and essayist, is one of Ukraine's most influential living authors and still lives in Kyiv. She has written some thirty books, but you probably don't know her because Catalan and Spanish are not among the dozens of languages ​​into which her work has been translated. She is incisive, direct, and insightful. She visited Barcelona at the invitation of the CCCB.

“When I read or watched movies about employment, I didn’t think it was something so, so terrible and dangerous. It turns out that, in reality, you can only think and keep quiet, like the partisans,” Nina confesses, and a few seconds later her message disappears. For four years now, she has been writing and deleting every text message she sends to her family on the other side of the line that separates Ukrainian territory under Russian occupation. And from time to time, she reminds them to do the same. She was never a political activist or a fighter against any regime. But with the arrival of Russian troops in Melitopol, now the district center of the occupied Zaporizhzhia region, fear gripped her. In these few sentences in Russian that appear on the mobile phone screen, there is no information about military objectives or any criticism of the regime. She only talks about how her life has changed since the beginning of the large-scale invasion four years ago. This fear explains why it is so difficult to find information and stories about life in the occupied territories of eastern Ukraine. It's also become difficult to keep in touch with family members who stayed behind. "We mostly talk about the weather; you know what I mean." "I used to be irritated by these strange, primitive digital images with good wishes, but I have relatives who, since the beginning of the war, started sending them to me twice a day. 'Good morning' and 'good night.' I'm glad to receive these messages: it's their way of telling me that they're old, that they're alive now, and that everything is alive, taking refuge in other parts of Ukraine.

For 1,461 days, Europe has been experiencing a large-scale armed conflict that, for now, Despite the peace talks, it seems far from being resolved.In those 48 months, the lives of thousands of citizens have been disrupted. Personal stories They help us understand the human side of the conflict and its consequences, but in the coldness of the data we also find some interesting explanations that help us understand the magnitude of the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

The warlightningVladimir Putin's occupation of Ukraine has now dragged on for more than 1,460 days. Four years of fighting have irrevocably changed the European continent and the very nature of war. Nearly two million soldiers killed, wounded, or missing on both sides, and millions of displaced civilians are the direct victims of the largest land war on the European continent since World War II. And yet, Ukraine is entering its fifth year of military occupation, with Russia occupying only 12% more territory than it controlled before February 24, 2022.

Just as for centuries, if not millennia, humans have carried the burden of myths about honor and war, in contemporary times (19th and 20th centuries) this began to change. The greater our destructive capacity, the more alarms were raised. The Kantian philosophical-political idea of Perpetual peace (1795) has been slowly making its way into our minds and hearts. A winding road, with dead ends, whose end we will still have to wait to see, if there is an end at all. It's so hard to believe in happy endings, isn't it? Today, almost no fiction has one. Neither happy nor unhappy. Everything is open, uncertain. Series don't really end... We are in a to be continued Infinite. War resists disappearing tooth and nail. It's ingrained in us.

Over the past year, the Trump administration has practiced unconventional diplomacy, gunboat diplomacy, and, in the most delicate crises, diplomacy without diplomats. On Tuesday, the Trump administration attempted to employ all three tactics simultaneously. In Geneva, the president's most trusted envoys—his real estate friend Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner— They spoke with the Iranians in the morning. and in the afternoon, with the Russians and the Ukrainians

From Saudi Arabia to Switzerland: exactly one year has passed since the first meeting between Russian and American representatives to end the invasion of Ukraine. On that occasion, Volodymyr Zelensky lamented the attempt to decide how to end the war without consulting Kyiv. A year later, on the cusp of the fifth year of the conflict, one might consider trilateral talks with both sides and American mediation, such as those that began this Tuesday, to be progress. However, Vladimir Putin's inflexibility, the resistance from the Ukrainian side, and Donald Trump's haste to score another international victory without considering the underlying issues of the conflict foreshadow a 2026 of more war and more peace negotiations.

The voracity with which Assault operations are bleeding Russian troops dry in Ukraine This has forced the Kremlin to seek soldiers beyond its borders. In Africa, Russia leverages the influence it has cultivated for years to create recruitment networks that exploit the desperation of many young people yearning for a better life. For the first time, an investigation by the INPACT group—which was founded to monitor the atrocities committed by Wagner mercenaries—has quantified this phenomenon: it has documented nearly 1,500 cases of young Africans sent to the front lines, of whom 300, one in five, died.

Volodymyr Zelensky denied on Wednesday that he plans to call presidential elections this spring, as reported earlier in the day by [the newspaper/newspaper/etc.]. Financial Times Citing Ukrainian and Western sources, the British newspaper reported that Zelensky was expected to announce elections on February 24, coinciding with the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion. However, the Ukrainian president has stated that elections could only be held in the event of a ceasefire and has urged Europe and the US to work on a joint negotiation process with Moscow. "He is not planning to do so," a source from the Ukrainian presidential office told the newspaper. Kyiv Independent"When there is no security, there is nothing else," he added. In this regard, Zelensky's team points out that what will determine a possible election call will be security guarantees, not its coinciding with a sensible date such as the fourth anniversary of the Russian attack. A source quoted by Reuters, familiar with the matter, also points out that the date cited by the Financial Times That would be unrealistic.

The Sumi Maternity Hospital is an oasis of peace amidst the war. This city of some 250,000 inhabitants in northeastern Ukraine lies about 20 kilometers from the front line, near the Russian border, and suffers constant attacks, which have intensified in recent weeks. Alerting the population with sirens or through the Air Alert mobile app, designed by the Ukrainian authorities, is of little use: here, a missile takes between 5 and 8 seconds to hit the city center, and in the case of drones, there are less than two minutes to find shelter. But in the Maternity Hospital, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary on March 8th of next year, there is only calm and silence. This is what the mothers and babies need in a place where, despite the horror, life finds a way.

The war in Ukraine, a European war, had a peculiar landscape this week: impressive views of Toledo, a fortified city.

Russia carried out a massive drone and missile attack early Saturday morning against Ukraine's two largest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv, as a clear pressure tactic in the peace negotiations taking place in the United Arab Emirates. The talks, involving the United States, Ukraine, and Russia, resumed Saturday in Abu Dhabi for the second consecutive day. As a result of the massive attack, at least one person was killed and four others were wounded in the Ukrainian capital. Nineteen more were injured in the rest of the country. In Kyiv, some 88,000 homes were left without heat. The mayor of the capital, Vitali Klitschko, urged Kyiv residents for the second time this January to leave the city if they can. due to the energy crisis caused by the Russian offensive. "I am addressing the residents in all sincerity: the situation is extremely difficult and may become even more complicated. Make sure you have reserves of food, water, and essential medicines. If you have the option of leaving the city for a place with alternative sources of energy and heat, do not rule it out," he said on Friday. The thermometer has dropped to -16 degrees Celsius in recent nights in the Ukrainian capital.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced a first trilateral meeting between Ukraine, Russia, and the United States. Zelensky made the announcement in Davos after meeting with Donald Trump for just under an hour. According to the Ukrainian president, the meeting will take place this Friday and Saturday in the United Arab Emirates and will be attended by both diplomats and military officials. Neither Moscow nor Washington has yet confirmed the three-way negotiations, although on Thursday, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff also traveled to Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin. Very little information has emerged from the meeting between Trump and Zelensky since its conclusion. Although the president described it as "a good meeting," it is unclear whether any progress was made in the peace talks, including discussions on a post-war recovery plan. With the meeting now over and Trump departing from the World Economic Forum, the signing of a draft agreement for Ukraine's post-war economic recovery seems unlikely. This would be a setback for the Ukrainians, who have long tried to keep Trump involved in the peace talks by highlighting the business opportunities for the United States in Ukraine. In the context of the meeting with Trump and near the fourth anniversary of the war, Zelensky also criticized Europe, calling it a "fragmented kaleidoscope of small and medium-sized powers" that lacks the courage to act decisively. "Europe loves to debate the future, but avoids acting today, which defines the kind of future we will have. This is the problem," said the Ukrainian president, who, despite the harsh words, also thanked Europe for its support. Zelensky praised the EU's decision to indefinitely freeze Russian funds, but still believes that more decisiveness is needed from the bloc. "Let me be clear, Europe must do more. European sanctions must block our enemies as effectively as American ones," the Ukrainian stressed. In an indirect compliment to Trump, he also criticized the Europeans, saying that if it weren't for the US president, they still wouldn't have raised their military spending targets to 5% of GDP.