Three people have died and six others, including two minors, have been injured this Sunday in the Moscow region due to a Ukrainian drone attack during the main day of the parliamentary elections in Russia. The governor of the Moscow region, Andrei Vorobyov, stated that the fatalities are a 44-year-old woman and an elderly man who were in their home at the time of the attack.

Vladimir Putin has already achieved the popular endorsement he so desired for his war and that no one doubted he would obtain. His party, United Russia, has received almost 58% of the votes in the legislative elections, with more than 95% of the results counted, and will have the highest number of deputies in history: 355 out of the 450 in the Duma. Figures higher than those of five years ago, when it scraped 50% of the votes, and which will even allow him to expand the constitutional majority, but which does not correspond to the unrest expressed by the population in recent months.

“They have opened Pandora’s box,” Vladimir Putin warned recently, after a month of the Ukrainian campaign against Russian online retail warehouses. That threat seemed like a new step in the rhetorical escalation with which the Kremlin has been pressuring Volodymyr Zelenskyy for months, and which until now had not translated into the promised wave of systematic attacks. In recent weeks, however, this warning has become a reality. Russia has been relentless day and night against Kyiv and its region, causing dozens of deaths. Moscow is chest-thumping about having turned the Ukrainian capital into a city in permanent alert and has once again recommended that foreign diplomats flee. Furthermore, it has given the starting signal for the season of bombings against Ukrainian energy facilities with the drop in temperatures.

A Russian drone attacked a passenger train traveling between Kyiv and Warsaw this Sunday, just two kilometers from the border with Poland, without causing any injuries in what Ukraine has described as "Putin's terror striking directly at the doors of the EU and NATO." Tonight, Russia attacked Ukraine with four missiles and 405 drones. The attack has left at least six dead and more than forty injured and has especially affected the western part of the country, which was relatively more preserved. Since Ukrainian airspace is closed due to the Russian aggression, the train is one of the main routes for the entry and exit of people and goods to the country.

About fifteen people gather around a table in the evening at the Rodina restaurant for dinner. Activists, journalists, and evacuation volunteers bid farewell, amidst pizzas and a bit of wine, to one of the most famous establishments in the city of Kramatorsk, which will close its doors forever the next day. "I decided to quit a month ago, I have a young son and the situation has become unsustainable. We don't know what we will do, but now everyone is closing," says Rose, who opened a gastronomic venue in an old cinema three years ago. Now it is surrounded by the fiber optic cables of Russian drones that remain hanging in trees and buildings shaken by daily explosions. When Rose took over the Rodina, which in Russian means "homeland," she kept the name because in Ukrainian the same word means "family".

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.

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”.

The President of the Generalitat begins an official trip this Wednesday that will take him to spend 48 hours in Ukraine, accompanied by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jaume Duch, and he will also meet with the Mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni. Illa will arrive in Kyiv at a particularly complicated moment, as missiles have been falling on the city for six consecutive days, where at least 12 people died this Tuesday in a Russian attack on railway infrastructure.

The escalation in the Ukraine conflict is not pleasing to Russia's partners. The latest to make this known to Vladimir Putin has been the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi. Both met in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, within the framework of the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which also hosted a meeting between the Russian and Chinese presidents, Xi Jinping. The Indian leader warned Putin that “every day the war continues, humanity takes a step back” and demanded that he “move from an interminable war to the end of hostilities as soon as possible”. He also assured that New Delhi supports all peace efforts and will continue to do so in the future.

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?

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.

Long-range attacks have once again been deadly, another night, in the war in Ukraine. At least fifteen people have died in Kyiv and its region, and around forty more have been injured, after a massive Russian bombing with missiles and drones, one of the most brutal since the start of the invasion, according to authorities. Air defenses have seen, again helplessly, how an indeterminate number of ballistic missiles – military analysts estimate around 25 – bypassed their protection and hit various locations in the capital. Ukrainian air forces have stopped providing the quantity of these devices fired by Russia because they cannot shoot any down.

"What happens if the war drags on for another year, two, or three? Can Russia be given the effective right to dictate when Ukrainians can choose their government again?", asks former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, in a recent social media post, just a month after President Zelensky dismissed him, an event that "triggered the most massive popular protests in Ukraine since the start of the war. In a ten-minute video message, the young entrepreneur and fleeting minister who had gained popularity due to his modern vision on the battlefield, denounces that Ukraine is experiencing a governance crisis, where appointments are made based on loyalty rather than results, and that corruption continues to plunder state coffers and directly affects the resources sent to the front and the country's very survival in the context of Russian aggression.

When the third round of trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine, and the United States concluded on February 18, everyone took for granted that there would be a fourth in a few days. With the same conviction, no one expected those negotiations to lead to a short-term ceasefire. Although they had not been unfruitful, especially in the military aspect, political issues remained entrenched. What was unthinkable then was that, half a year later, there would have been no further talks to address the end of the conflict, that the peace process would be frozen, that the positions of both sides would have only moved further apart, and that the war would have entered its most destructive phase. Just this morning, ten people were killed and seventeen more were injured in a Russian attack in the Kharkiv region. This is because both Kyiv and Moscow believe they have more to gain on the battlefield than at the negotiating table.

The Ukrainian Viktor Ishchuk (1983) says that practically all his memories, including childhood ones, are tied to classical dance. For years, Ishchuk was a soloist with the National Opera of Kyiv Ballet and, since 2011, has served as director of the Kyiv Ballet. "In 35 years, every day of my life has revolved around dance and, especially, Swan Lake. It is the most famous work in the world of classical ballet, and it is inexhaustible," says the choreographer and dancer from the foyer of the Tivoli Theatre. It is Monday, August 17th in the afternoon and the hall on Casp street has just reopened after the holiday break. Technicians and hall staff are preparing for the first show of the season, Swan Lake by the Kyiv Ballet, which will be shown from this Tuesday until August 30th.

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.