A single ambiguous phrase from Vladimir Putin was enough for everyone to venture into predicting the proximity of a peace agreement in Ukraine. The Russian president implied that the war “is approaching its end”, opened the door to meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky in a third country, and proposed former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder as a possible European interlocutor with Russia. But, in reality, the Kremlin has not moved for a long time: its leader is convinced that Kyiv's defeat is a matter of months, he has no intention of meeting with the Ukrainian president unless it is to sign the end of the conflict, and any negotiation with the European Union will have to be done on his terms.If Donald Trump is difficult to decipher because he constantly contradicts himself, the exegeses of Putin's statements tend to overinterpret. During the surprise press conference that the Russian president convened on Victory Day evening, he took advantage of a criticism of Western support for Ukraine to say: “They began to stoke confrontation with Russia, which continues to this day. I believe the matter is approaching its end, but nevertheless, it is a serious matter.” 

Ukraine's anti-corruption authorities have informed Andriy Yermak, Volodymyr Zelensky's former chief of staff, that he is being investigated as a suspect in connection with a corruption scandal that has affected several government members and people close to the president. Yermak, who was Zelensky's right-hand man, resigned last November after the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP) searched his office. These two agencies reported on Monday evening via Telegram that they have uncovered a group of individuals involved in a case related to "a luxury real estate project near Kyiv" valued at 460 million hryvnias (about 8.9 million euros). "One of the participants, the former chief of staff to the President of Ukraine, has been notified of the suspicion," they stated.

This year's Victory Day military parade will be remembered for two circumstances. The first, Vladimir Putin's fear, which led him to turn his showcase of military power into a minimal and unprecedented spectacle: without tanks or missiles, practically without foreign guests and without Western media. The second, Volodymyr Zelenskyy's mockery, who, urged at the last minute by Donald Trump, desisted from threatening Red Square with his drones and signed a sarcastic decree to “allow” the Russian celebration this Saturday.

Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a three-day ceasefire, from this Saturday to Monday, coinciding with the commemoration of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in Moscow. The first to announce it was the President of the United States, Donald Trump, but shortly after, Volodymyr Zelensky and the Kremlin confirmed it. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the truce would include a suspension "of all kinetic activity" and also an exchange of a thousand prisoners from each country. The announcement comes the day after the Russian Ministry of Defense declared a unilateral three-day truce, in this case, from Friday to Sunday. For his part, the Ukrainian president had proposed that the ceasefire begin on Wednesday.

It was the last thing Vladimir Putin wanted in the most important week of the year. A Ukrainian drone has impacted an emblematic luxury residential skyscraper just a few kilometers from the Kremlin. The incident, which has not caused casualties, takes place five days before the Victory Day military parade, the global showcase of Russian military might. For the first time in almost two decades, neither tanks nor missiles will be exhibited because security cannot be guaranteed, and Putin, in full psychosis over a possible attack by Kyiv, has even desperately proposed a truce of a few hours to ensure that Volodymyr Zelensky does not spoil the party.

Following growing unrest among soldiers' families, the Ukrainian army has implemented measures to limit the time military personnel can spend in combat positions without rest. The head of the army, Oleksandr Sirski, announced this Thursday that rotations for soldiers deployed on the front will be mandatory once they have completed a maximum of two months of service in these frontline positions.

February 14, 2025. A Russian drone loaded with explosives crashes into the structure protecting the old sarcophagus of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The fire burns for three weeks, damages the walls of the new construction and forces it to be repaired because it is no longer capable of containing radiation. Despite this, a year later, on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of the worst atomic disaster in history, maintenance is at a standstill. Russian attacks on Ukraine hinder the engineers' task, and environmental organizations like Greenpeace have just warned that, if nothing is done, there is a risk that the sarcophagus will “collapse” and cause a “catastrophic” radioactive leak, which “knows no borders”. a catastrophic radioactive leak, which “knows no borders”.

Vladimir Putin is having more and more trouble maintaining the bloody virtuous cycle that is allowing him to advance drop by drop in Ukraine. Russian army recruitment figures have fallen in the first three months of the year and do not compensate for the pace of casualties caused by Ukrainian drones amid the Kremlin's offensive. The Russian president is trying to avoid a new mobilization that, according to experts, would be inefficient and insufficient to conquer all of Donbas. Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky is trying to combat the shortage of soldiers by introducing robots onto the battlefield, the technological innovation that both sides crave to tip the scales of the war.

The use of robots in war is no longer science fiction: machines that replace soldiers are already operating on today's fronts. And Ukraine – like Gaza – is one of the major testing grounds for military technological development. President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced that the Ukrainian army has driven back Russian troops from a position using only drones and robots, without exposing any humans: "For the first time in the history of this war, we have recaptured an enemy position using only unmanned equipment: ground systems and drones. The occupants surrendered and the operation was carried out without infantry and without losses on our part," he assures.

“A swallow does not make a summer” would be the Russian equivalent of our “A flower does not make a summer”. In this winter Orthodox Easter Week, with temperatures near 0 degrees and snow in Moscow, the Easter truce will have passed like a fleeting mirage of 32 hours. Faced with Vladimir Putin's refusal to extend the ceasefire beyond midnight on Sunday, as Volodymyr Zelenskyy had asked him to, both sides have mutually accused each other of repeatedly violating the pause in fighting in the hope that Donald Trump will see that the other is the main obstacle to peace.

Pessimism has taken hold of Russian military commentators. After the Kremlin's army managed to close the gap with Ukraine in the drone race in the autumn of 2025, in recent weeks Kyiv's unmanned aerial vehicles have once again left Russian technology behind. Their superiority on the front has helped to slow down Volodymyr Putin's spring offensive, while, for the first time since the start of the invasion, more long-range Ukrainian drones than Russian ones are being launched.the distance to Ukraine in the drone raceThe ability to disrupt Kyiv's troop supplies was one of the successes of the Molnia-2, the Russian attack drone that allowed the Kremlin to increase pressure on the Ukrainian rear in late last year and facilitated the progress of Russian soldiers. Now, however, it is the new generation of Ukrainian drones that is causing Moscow's troops to falter. In March, they only advanced 25 square kilometers, according to military observers from the Blackbird group, far from the monthly average of 380 in 2025. The great hope of Russian commanders is that, with the arrival of good weather, the foliage of the trees will serve their men to camouflage themselves from the threat from the sky and allow them to survive the so-called

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.