"We are not at war, but we are a daily target of hybrid warfare." This is how the 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 registered 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. Amid 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 severity 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.

The “war of cities” that some experts predicted a few months ago is now a reality. The conflict in Ukraine has entered a destructive phase in which each side tries to strike the other with all its might in the hope of breaking its will. While Vladimir Putin's missiles terrorize Kyiv and the major Ukrainian cities, Volodymyr Zelenskyy's drones set fire to refineries and warehouses in the interior of Russia. The consequence is that this summer is the bloodiest since the start of the invasion for civilians, with each month registering a higher number of casualties than the previous one.

Vladimir Putin has once again taken advantage of the weakness of Kyiv's air defenses to lash out at the Ukrainian capital. 24 ballistic and four hypersonic missiles hit the city and surrounding areas without any opposition, causing at least 17 deaths and more than forty injuries. The Russian army is responding in this way to Volodymyr Zelensky's strategy of daily targeting Wildberries warehouses, Russia's main online trading company.

The Ukrainian army intensified attacks inside Russia this Friday, far from its borders, and Vladimir Putin responded with a missile bombing against Kyiv in broad daylight. Today's is one of the deadliest days in recent times, with a provisional death toll of eleven in Ukraine and six in Russia. The attack on the Ukrainian capital caused at least six deaths and dozens of injuries, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky, who also lamented five more deaths in Sloviansk, eastern Ukraine. In Russian territory, six people died and 26 more were injured in a Ukrainian bombing at a factory in the Kirov region, about 900 kilometers northeast of Moscow.

Kyiv launched an offensive this morning with more than 400 drones against several Russian regions, with a toll of five dead, about twenty injured, and several fires in residential and industrial facilities. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky justified the operation as a direct action "in response to Russian attacks against civilian infrastructure and against Ukrainian cities and communities".

The dismissal of the Ukrainian Minister of Defense, Mykhailo Fedorov, has generated a wave of protests and indignation in the streets. In cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv, protesters carried banners with strong slogans: "Shame", "Don't destroy what works", or "Power belongs to the people". These demonstrations, reminiscent of those in 2025 when President Zelensky tried to enact a controversial law that threatened the independence of anti-corruption bodies, demonstrate the institutional instability the country is going through, which began this week with the government's restructuring and the fall of Prime Minister Yulia Sviridenko. Fedorov is a popular politician who has the backing of Ukraine's military advances in recent months, which are supported, for example, by the effort of technological modernization with the use of drones.

Russia does not loosen its pressure on Ukraine. This Monday in the early morning, Moscow has once again bombed Kyiv, just four days after the last fatal attack on the Ukrainian capital. At least 14 people have died in Kyiv and six more have lost their lives in the neighboring town of Vyshneve, where 500 people have been evacuated due to the risk of new explosions following attacks on fuel depots. In addition, according to the balance of the Ukrainian authorities, 87 people have been injured.

On Wednesday night into Thursday, Russia again attacked Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine with dozens of cruise missiles and drones, just hours after President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Moscow was preparing a new large-scale attack. At least 25 people have died and around a hundred more have been injured, including two children, according to the head of the military administration of the city of Kyiv, Timur Tkachenko, and the mayor, Vitali Klitschko. Search and rescue operations in collapsed buildings will continue through the night, and authorities have warned that the death toll is likely to rise.

Ukrainian oligarch Vadim Iermolaiev and his wife are the victims of the bomb package attack on Monday evening in Monaco, according to French broadcaster BFMTV. The couple is in critical condition and their 13-year-old daughter suffered minor injuries and is stable. The unprecedented attack has shaken the principality. According to the Monegasque government, which has not yet confirmed the identity of the victims, the explosion was caused by a package bomb on a street bordering France, around 9:00 PM. The public prosecutor of Monaco, Stéphane Thibault, reported that an individual was seen leaving a bag or package in the building's lobby and then fled the scene towards the French town of Beausoleil, according to surveillance cameras in the area. However, authorities have ruled out a terrorist motive for the expl for now. The police have not located the perpetrator. The Minister of State of Monaco, Christophe Mirmand, has highlighted that it is an unprecedented attack in the country: “This is the first time in history, as far as I know, that such an act has taken place in the principality”. For his part, Prince Albert II has described the incident as a "heinous crime" and "a shock to the entire Monegasque community". Vadim Iermolaiev, ranked among the 100 richest Ukrainians in Ukraine according to the Forbes list, was born in the city of Dnipro, in southeastern Ukraine. There, he founded and led the commercial and industrial corporation Alef Group, becoming one of the most influential real estate developers and entrepreneurs in the region. In 2019, the tycoon renounced his Ukrainian citizenship to become a citizen of Cyprus. In an interview with Forbes, the businessman justified this decision for reasons of “international protection”, arguing that the Ukrainian judicial system is "not ideal" and that the tax system is "not objective". Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the businessman resides in Monaco, according to the Ukrainian media Ukrainska Pravda. Iermolaiev, who has not publicly defended pro-Russian views, has been affected by sanctions from the Ukrainian government since 2023 for maintaining commercial activities with Russian entities operating in the Kremlin-occupied Crimea. Specifically, for his alcohol sales business, which paid taxes to the Russian state, according to information from the Ukrainian secret services. The government of Volodymyr Zelensky subjected him to asset freeze and demanded that he cease any financial operations in Ukraine for 10 years.