Donald Trump, who in his election campaign promised to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, began his second term by starring in an extremely tense meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, where he did not hide his disdain for the Ukrainian leader. That set off alarms in Kyiv and, although the two leaders apparently eased the tension, it has become clear in recent days that Trump continues to belittle the Ukrainian president, whom he points to as the culprit for not being able to reach a peace agreement while celebrating the alleged willingness of Vladimir Putin. And in all this context, aid from the United States to Ukraine has remained blocked for almost two years, since Trump returned to the White House.

Writer Sofia Andrukhovych (Ukraine, 1982) continues to try, despite the war, to write from Kyiv. These days she is in Barcelona to talk about memory, trauma, and creation in times of conflict at the Biennial of Thought, and to present The story of Romana and Uliana. Amadoca (Salamandra), translated into Spanish by Olga Korobenko. Originally conceived in three interconnected parts (the story of Romana, the story of Uliana, and the story of Sofia), the Spanish edition includes only the first two books. Through family memories and intense love stories, the author, daughter of the writer Yuri Andrukhovych, covers the Stalinist repression, the Holocaust, and the war in the Donbas.

The war in Ukraine has entered a new stage. Trump is not only distancing himself from Kyiv but is also altering the European strategic balance and reviving a privileged relationship with Putin. His policy responds to a worldview that disdains traditional alliances, but it also responds to the historical fatigue of a society that has paid with lives and money for its status as a superpower.

The two worst moments in the relationship between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy have had a common denominator: they have arrived preceded by a telephone conversation between the United States president and Vladimir Putin, in which the Kremlin leader promised him major joint business deals. It happened in February 2025, before the public brawl between the American leader and the Ukrainian leader in the Oval Office of the White House, and it has happened again now, following the agreement for Moscow to sell diesel with Washington's permission, which caught Kyiv off guard. The Russian president has known at all times how to offer Trump what he desired, persuade him with his reasons, draw him to his positions, and pit him against Zelenskyy.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants Brussels to step up aid for the war, now that support from the United States is faltering. After Donald Trump lifted sanctions on Russian diesel, the Ukrainian president asked European partners to contribute to the war effort with 70 billion euros more in order to "contain Russia".

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".

A clear message from the European Union to Donald Trump. Community leaders disapprove of the US administration's decision to relax sanctions on Russia with the release of Russian diesel. Trump's move, which aims to lower fuel prices with one month to go before the US midterm elections, has landed like a bucket of cold water in Europe, as it puts their entire sanctions architecture on the ropes.

After a few months in which it seemed that the relationship between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy had gotten on track, the statements, announcements, and events of the last few days suggest quite the opposite. On Friday, the President of the United States announced an agreement with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, with which Moscow is expected to deliver about two million tons of diesel to the US over the next two months, which represents a significant lifeline for the Kremlin's war economy. That same day, Trump hinted that Ukraine should change its president and threatened to stop sharing information with Kyiv in retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries.

While Donald Trump eases the pressure on Vladimir Putin with a deal to put millions of barrels of Russian diesel on the market and demands that Volodymyr Zelensky call elections in Ukraine, the European Union reaffirms its support for Kyiv and urges Washington to do the same. The head of European diplomacy, Kaja Kallas, announced this Monday the broadest sanctions package deployed so far against the Kremlin. The EU is incorporating nearly 1,600 names linked to the Russian military-industrial complex into the list of sanctioned individuals and entities.

Drones on the battlefield, drones in hybrid attacks... and also maritime drones. This week, two commercial vessels were attacked simultaneously with drones in the Black Sea. One of them sank and there were fatalities. The escalation of maritime drone attacks adds to the air strikes that continue to hit Ukraine. On Thursday, unmanned devices left six dead and 17 injured in Kyiv.

The center of Kyiv filled with dense black smoke this Monday afternoon. The Russian army bombed the center of the Ukrainian capital in broad daylight, leaving at least one woman dead and 21 injured, including three children. The city's mayor, Vitali Klitschko, reported that Russian drones attacked non-residential buildings in three districts of the city at four in the afternoon. One of the bombed buildings is the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the country's main public scientific research institution, located in one of the most central areas of the city, very close to important monuments, such as the National Opera and the German embassy.

A kind of perfect storm is taking over the world: gas prices are climbing like never before (which means that everything will go up even more) and in a matter of four days the fear that artificial intelligence will get out of control and kill us all (and that, along the way, it will sink jobs, stock markets, and the Chinese Communist Party) has increased exponentially.

Russia and Ukraine have maintained their cross-attacks against energy infrastructure in recent hours, despite the fact that this Monday the President of the United States, Donald Trump, announced a ceasefire on attacks against these types of targets. Russia has attacked gas stations in Kyiv and energy and port infrastructure in other regions, while Ukraine has bombed an oil refinery in the Russian region of Samara.

White House emissaries, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, met this Sunday in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in an attempt by the Trump administration to revive peace talks after more than half a year of deadlock, since the United States and Israel launched their offensive against Iran. It is the first time that the two White House envoys have set foot in Ukraine, while they have been to Moscow several times. This same Saturday they made a stop in the Russian capital to meet with President Vladimir Putin.

After more than half a year with peace talks stalled due to the conflict in the Middle East, Donald Trump seeks to relaunch negotiations to reach an agreement that puts an end to the war in Ukraine. His emissaries, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, landed this Saturday in Moscow, where they met with Vladimir Putin, and this Sunday they will be in Kyiv for the first time to meet with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The visit takes place in the midst of an escalation of long-range cross-bombardments and with the Russian president less willing than ever to make concessions. Despite this, both sides have ended up accepting a three-day ceasefire over the two capitals to ensure the safety of the American diplomats.

At least twelve people died early this morning in a new massive Russian attack with ballistic missiles and drones against the Kyiv region, according to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself. Among the main targets of the bombing is the Ukrainian state railway company, Ukrzaliznytsia, and, in fact, six of the fatalities are workers from the attacked facilities, as announced by the company itself. Among the victims is a citizen of Indian nationality.

Poland has intercepted a Russian reconnaissance aircraft flying over the Baltic Sea, as reported this Monday by the Polish Minister of Defense, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz. The aircraft, an IL-20, was intercepted by Polish fighters at midday, 30 kilometers north of the coastal city of Leba, while it was flying without a registered flight plan and with its transponder off, an increasingly common practice that hides information such as the aircraft's code, flight altitude, or planned route. The head of defense clarified that there was no violation of Polish airspace over the Baltic Sea.

Putin has completed twenty-six years in power this year (he did so in May). He was the second president of Russia, and is its fourth, and for two consecutive terms he and his loyal Dmitri Medvedev alternated as president of Russia and as prime minister. President of Russia is the position that was created to replace that of the president of the Supreme Soviet, the highest Russian authority during the years of the USSR. It was held, in the early years, by the dipsomaniac Boris Yeltsin, and then always by Putin, directly or through his puppets: first Medvedev and now Mikhail Mishustin, who serves as prime minister once Putin has ensured (via the 2020 Constitutional reform, known as the "reset counter" reform) that he can continue as president until 2036. How did he do it? He restarted the count of his terms with a law that "erased" the previous two. In this way, he has maintained the limitation of two presidential terms, but in practice he has added two more (of six years each) because the first two stopped counting.To remain in power, he needs to win the elections, but the tendency of his opponents to die prematurely and in circumstances as appalling as they are enigmatic is well known. Journalists like Anna Politkovskaya, Natalia Estemirova, or Paul Klebnikov, exiled magnates like Boris Berezovsky or his collaborator Alexander Litvinenko, the mercenary Yevgeny Prigozhin, or political leaders like Boris Nemtsov or Alexei Navalny form the list of the most prominent figures allegedly murdered by Putin's regime. Beyond these famous names, the victims of political repression in Putin's Russia number in the tens of thousands, including journalists, activists, writers, politicians, etc.Of these twenty-six years, it has been four and a half years since Putin gave the order to invade Ukraine, while in the West it was still being said that he would not dare. In 2022, Putin claimed that the war would be short and that he was carrying it out with the aim of “desnazifying” Ukraine, an argument that neither Putin himself remembers anymore. The war has generated hundreds of thousands of deaths on both sides and millions of displaced people and refugees, and for now, there is no end in sight. But the invasion (this one really is) and the war in Ukraine have become geostrategic actors that no longer cause surprise or scandal, but are fully normalized within European politics. Like Putin himself, who for a quarter of a century has committed crimes, violations, and breaches of international law in the face of the passivity of the West, underpinned by all sorts of economic, energy, and logistical interests. Europe has begun in recent years a night that will be long and extremely hot (due to climate change and violence), surrounded by howling wolves. It would be good if at some point someone thought about how Europe itself, instead of trying to fight the wolves that now harass it, has dedicated itself to feeding them.

The escalation in aerial attacks in the Ukraine war has once again resulted in civilian casualties. Following last week's deadly bombings against Kyiv, this Monday Ukrainian drones attacked the Republic of Tatarstan, in the center of European Russia, killing at least thirteen people and injuring 75 more. The unusual magnitude of the attack's consequences, one of the deadliest on Russian territory since the start of the invasion, reveals the difficulties Vladimir Putin faces in protecting the country's immense expanse, beyond Moscow, an almost impregnable city.

Ukraine has gone a step further in its strategy to put pressure on the Russian economy. In addition to systematically hitting oil refineries and logistics routes, it has now launched a campaign against the warehouses of the main Russian e-commerce company, Wildberries. In just over two weeks, it has attacked them nearly thirty times and rendered more than one and a half million square meters unusable.