At least 24 people have died this Monday in a Russian attack on the town of Komyshuvakha, near the front line, in the Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhia. The airstrike hit a school where the civilian population was receiving humanitarian aid, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Kyiv detailed that Russian forces launched ten aerial bombs. These are high-power explosives with their own navigation systems, which are dropped from aircraft.

Air Alert, the application that alerts the Ukrainian population of Russian attacks, suffered a cyberattack this Sunday evening, as confirmed by the military and the company that manages it. Ukrainians received three consecutive alarm messages on their mobile phones shortly before eleven at night, one hour earlier in Catalonia. The first warned of a "radiation danger" in Kyiv; the second, of a "chemical threat", and the third, of "street fights". It is the first time that this application has suffered a hacking attack. A few hours later, Russia reported that the alarm application of its Ministry of Emergency Situations had also been hacked.

In the garden of the Ukrainian embassy in Spain, in a prime area of Madrid, the blue and yellow flag was flying at half-mast on Friday. A member of the Kyiv diplomatic corps explained that it was a sign of mourning for the railway accident in Chaplyne. "Well, and also for Dnipro. Yesterday Russia bombed a train station full of civilians and killed 15 people", he added. Inside the building, Yuliia Sokolovska, the ambassador, was waiting for ARA. A year and a few months ago she came to the Spanish capital to take up this position. Her recent political career suggests that Sokolovska is one of the voices that best knows the inner workings of Kyiv in these dark times of invasion: after being Minister of Social Policy, she was, for four years, deputy head of the office of the President of Ukraine, one of the positions closest to Volodymyr Zelensky. The interview took place in a room presided over by a portrait of the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, a symbol of national identity and of resistance against Russian oppression.

Russia launched a propeller-driven drone attack on Thursday against the train station in Dnipro, in eastern Ukraine, which has left at least 14 dead and a dozen injured. The direct impact against one of the platforms affected a train full of passengers that was at the station at that moment, according to local authorities. Ukraine's railway services had issued a high-danger warning at the station, but despite this, there were people on the platform. Shortly after this attack, another one took place in broad daylight against the city of Chernihiv, in northern Ukraine, where two teenagers died.

A few months ago, Roberta Pinotti (Genoa, 1961) assumed the presidency of the National Theatre of Genoa, founded in 1951, at a time when Italy, like half of Europe, was trying to rebuild its cultural life after the Second World War. The position might come as a surprise if one considers the most recent stage of her long political career: she was Italy's Minister of Defence from 2014 to 2018, the first woman to hold that portfolio. The scenery has changed abruptly in the last decade and today's Europe, marked by war and the rupture with the United States, bears little resemblance to the innocent Europe of when Pinotti was a minister. Could it also be put another way: is today's Europe a consequence of that innocence? Pinotti is in Barcelona invited by ARA to participate in the’Enfoquem, the forum that will take place this Monday at the Sant Pau Art Nouveau Site in Barcelona.

Ukraine continues to resist the Russian invasion not only with its army, but also with a network of citizen initiative organizations that deal with all kinds of daily problems and are supported by volunteers without any kind of protection. After almost five years of war, this network is at the limit of its strength. This is confirmed by a report that the NGO Novact presented this Thursday to the Parliament of Catalonia. The report has followed 200 civil initiatives in the country between February 2022 and June 2026 and includes 105 interviews with community leaders, institutions, and local organizations. Civil society has taken on the coordination of emergencies, evacuations, and emergency repairs, particularly in areas under occupation or near the front line, in the west of the country.

Russian commanders have been promising Vladimir Putin the imminent conquest of the Donbas for months. The Russian president's triumphalism led him to proclaim, at the beginning of October, that this territory would fall much sooner than Volodymyr Zelensky and the European allies predicted. However, over the last few months, a counter-offensive by the Ukrainian army, which has had no publicity and the details of which have only recently begun to be known, has caught Russian troops and military observers themselves by surprise. Kyiv has been able to stabilize the advance of the Kremlin's soldiers at the Donetsk fortress belt and has thwarted Putin's plans to achieve one of his fixations in this war before the end of the year.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky seeks to mend bridges with his US counterpart, Donald Trump, following the crisis triggered by the New York tycoon's deal with the Kremlin for the purchase of diesel. "We are grateful that [intelligence collaboration] is working now," the Ukrainian president said after the meeting in Oslo with several European leaders and the White House envoy, Steve Witkoff, to address peace. Ukraine has been complaining for a week that the United States was not sharing intelligence information about Russian attacks, warnings that allow Kyiv to issue alerts for incoming Russian missiles, giving the population a few minutes to seek shelter. US officials had attributed these interruptions, which have already occurred several times in the past, to "adverse weather conditions," while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had alleged they were due to a computer glitch. During the meeting, the Ukrainian leader proposed "ideas" for peace, which Witkoff will convey this Wednesday to the Russian government in his meeting with Vladimir Putin in Saint Petersburg.

It is difficult to avoid the obvious cinematic reference in the latest episode of the conflict in Ukraine. In recent days, a Russian satellite has been chasing an American one used by the Ukrainian army and, finally, it has abruptly changed direction, in what experts warn could be considered the first example of space warfare in history. However, the real version of Star Wars is not as epic as that of the famous saga, nor is it fought with laser swords. In the midst of the battle for communications, with Donald Trump using Starlink to pressure Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin trying to build his own network of satellites, the Russian device could have inaugurated a new form of combat in Earth's orbit.

Ten days after a new crisis erupted between the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Kyiv believes that the New York tycoon is seeking Ukraine's surrender to Russia. This was stated by Zelenskyy in an interview with Bloomberg in which he considers that Washington's delays in sending the anti-ballistic missiles necessary to protect the population and infrastructure from Russian attacks and the lack of cooperation in intelligence, among others, are measures that seek to “convince Ukraine to capitulate”.

Amid the rapprochement between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the Ukrainian army launched a drone attack this Saturday night against Saint Petersburg, Russia's second-largest city with more than five million inhabitants, and the Leningrad region. It is considered one of the largest drone attacks of the entire war, and it has left one person dead and five injured. About 20,000 people were left without electricity due to the damage caused to an electrical substation, and damage also occurred to several residential buildings.

Just one week after the President of the United States, Donald Trump, announced the acquisition of 300,000 tons of Russian diesel, the New York tycoon signed an executive order late this Friday that temporarily suspends the application of a broad package of sanctions against Russia. He argued before Congress that it is a measure that responds to the "national interest," as reported by the White House.

"We were born in war and we will die in war," says Natasha, accompanied by her husband, Leonidas, both eighty-three years old, on the fourth floor of an empty building in the center of Kramatorsk. Liena, a worker at one of the few grocery stores left in the neighborhood, tries to convince them to leave the city, that even living in a basement is a death sentence: "If the Russians arrive, they will throw a grenade and ask afterwards if there is anyone alive." The octogenarian couple lives trapped in the uncertainty of a meager pension, between the approach of a war front that is about nine kilometers away and the anxiety over daily shootings and the high-pitched sound of fiber-optic drones searching for vehicles to destroy. Despite this situation on the streets, every Sunday morning they attend the mass offered in an abandoned restaurant near their home, where about thirty people gather to pray and sing.

The confrontation between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy is becoming more evident with each passing day. The US president continues to pressure his Ukrainian counterpart to stop attacking Russian refineries, while he negotiates the lifting of sanctions on Russian hydrocarbons and cuts military aid to Kyiv. Ukraine resumed its bombings this Thursday against these types of Russian facilities, after three days of suspension following Trump's announcement of an alleged immediate energy truce, which Moscow neither accepted nor complied with. "Enough is enough," said Zelenskyy in an interview with the Financial Times in which he announced that the blockade on attacks against Russian energy infrastructure was over. Hours later, Trump reacted by stating that "it is a disgrace".

Ukraine raises the stakes against Donald Trump. After the US president had agreed with Vladimir Putin to purchase 300,000 tons of diesel from him to try to lower the price and announce an "immediate" truce from both sides against energy infrastructure, Kyiv has realized that, once again, the White House is playing in favor of the Kremlin and that it cannot trust Washington. Not only has Russia not stopped the attacks, but, in addition, President Volodymyr Zelensky has denounced in the last few hours the blackout of intelligence information from the United States, which makes the task of its air defenses to stop Russian ballistic missiles and drones much more difficult.

Serhiy Kuznetsov faces a historic trial starting today. He is the Ukrainian accused of leading the military group that, under orders from Kyiv, in September 2022 sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines, located in the Baltic Sea and through which, until a few weeks before the attack, Europe was supplied with Russian gas. The trial began this Wednesday with a two-hour hearing in Hamburg (Germany), where the Public Prosecutor's Office accuses the Ukrainian soldier of committing a war crime for having attacked civil infrastructure with combat methods prohibited against civilian targets.

The announcement that Donald Trump made on Sunday regarding an energy truce between Russia and Ukraine has no value on the ground. This was confirmed this Wednesday afternoon by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, from Downing Street, after Russia once again punished Kyiv with a large-scale attack of ballistic missiles and drones during the early hours. The impacts in residential areas have caused at least eight deaths and around twenty injuries, and the projectiles have damaged several energy facilities, which has once again left parts of the capital in the dark and aggravated supply difficulties.

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.

United States President Donald Trump is escalating his tone against his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky. "It is time for Ukraine to have a new president," Trump said, following Ukrainian attacks against a Russian oil export terminal. "We told him he could do whatever he wanted with Russia, but no attacks on the refineries because it is causing a global problem," the United States President asserted, in reference to the increase in diesel prices.

The city of Oleshky, in the Russian-occupied part of Kherson, has become a symbol of the human tragedy of the war in Ukraine. Trapped on the front line since 2022, in recent months its residents have stopped receiving food because the road that connects the municipality to the outside is completely mined and at the mercy of drones. Without water, electricity, or heating, and now also without food, its inhabitants are trying to survive as best they can and fear the arrival of winter, while the Kremlin refuses to evacuate them and accuses Kyiv of being responsible for the siege.