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.

Polish authorities have reported that an object of still unknown origin has violated Polish airspace and fell in its territory early this morning. "Everything indicates that it was a Russian Kh-101 ballistic missile, but we want to be 100% sure of the type of missile and who launched it," stated the Prime Minister of Poland, Donald Tusk, who described the incident as "very serious." The Polish Minister of Defense, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, also confirmed that it is "very likely" to have been a Russian cruise missile. "The (Kh-101) missiles are used exclusively by Russia's strategic air force," added the head of Foreign Affairs, Radosław Sikorski.

Who would have thought four years ago, when the Russian attack on Ukraine took place, that on July 14, 2026, Ukrainian units would parade on the Champs-Élysées in Paris with a not exactly victorious, but satisfied air. Hopeful. Ukraine's drones continue to harm Russia and Putin continues to take refuge in rhetoric and missiles exploding in Kyiv. But this crisis –perhaps the beginning of the end of the war– also highlights the democratic shortcomings of the regime managed by Volodymyr Zelensky. The latest episode has been the dismissal of the Minister of Defense, Mykhailo Fedorov, and as a consequence the head of the military command, Oleksandr Sirski, who was the one demanding it. By expelling Fyodorov, the Ukrainian president gets rid of a rival, but loses one of his best strategists with a lot of support in the streets of Kyiv. A conflict that gives indications of how Ukraine would end up if Putin finally threw in the towel. Or if the Kremlin's dens forced him to throw it in.

In a gloomy basement of a destroyed building in Druzhkivka, a soldier pilots a small drone against a Russian antenna somewhere in Ukrainian Donbas. The pilots take twenty-hour shifts to fight Russian positions sixteen kilometers away, and fatigue does not prevent them from being optimistic about the new army commander-in-chief, Mikhailo Drapati, after his predecessor was sacked this week by President Volodymyr Zelensky, amid the most significant protests the country has experienced since the Maidan revolt in 2014.

It was a long time ago the meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, in Alaska, where the American president received his Russian counterpart – against whom an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court is pending – with a red carpet. That August, the leaders spoke of a possible general peace framework in Ukraine that would involve Kyiv ceding the Donbas region. The optimism of the meeting crystallized in three-way negotiations in Geneva, in February of this year, which were abruptly interrupted without any agreement. Since then, it seemed that the White House – distracted by the war in the Middle East – had set aside diplomacy in Ukraine.

"Drapati! Drapati! Drapati!" This name has been heard often in recent days' protests in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, that of who, as of a few hours ago, is the new commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, Mikhailo Drapati. Since last week, many Ukrainians have taken to the streets daily to protest the dismissal of the Minister of Defense, Mikhailo Fédorov, a decision with which Volodymyr Zelensky sided with the old military guard to the detriment of younger voices with an initiative for change. The Ukrainian president chose to dismiss Fédorov and keep the commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Sirski. But on Tuesday night, after six days of demonstrations, he announced Sirski's dismissal and Drapati's appointment as his replacement, responding to the proclamations in the streets.

The Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, announced late Tuesday the resignation of the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, Oleksandr Sirski, and the appointment, in his place, of Mykhailo Draparti, who until now led the joint forces of the army. The move comes after six days of protests in several cities of the country for the dismissal of the Minister of Defense, Mykhailo Fedorov, who had clashed with the general over the strategy to follow in the war against Russia.

"The main defense against drones is eyes and ears," says Bogdan Zuyakov, a Ukrainian volunteer who has evacuated over five thousand people from the Donetsk province since the beginning of the war. At only 26 years old, Bogdan explains that the worst scars are left in memory, not on the body, when he recalls the number of evacuees and volunteers who have died along the H20 national road, which connects the towns of Kostiantynivka, Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk, and Sloviansk, in the known belt of fortresses where the Ukrainian army is fiercely defending the quarter of the Donetsk region it still holds. the well-known belt of fortresses where the Ukrainian army is fiercely defending the quarter of the Donetsk region it still holds.

A few months before leaving the Elysée, Emmanuel Macron wants to set the idea he has been pursuing for years on track: Europe must militarily emancipate itself from the United States and work together for its security and defense. Donald Trump's arrival at the White House gave impetus to the idea, and the war in Ukraine has contributed to European countries working together to defend themselves, albeit with still unencouraging results.

In recent months, Ukraine has deployed a successful campaign ofdeep attacks on Russian refineries and supply routes to Crimea with medium-range drones, which has generated optimism among European allies and Western analysts. But, despite these good results, the advance of Russian troops in Donbas – a region formed by the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, the latter almost completely occupied – seems inexorable and has accelerated with the battle of Kostiantynivka, an enclave south of the large Ukrainian defensive line in Donetsk, where Ukraine still holds a quarter of the territory.

Margaryta Yakovenko (Tokmak, Ukraine, 1992) arrived in Spain at 6 years old, but every summer she returned to her hometown to spend it with her family. In 2022, with the Russian invasion, everything changed. Now Tokmak is an occupied city to which she cannot return. This is the common thread of the book Occupation (Seix Barral).

The Ukrainian oligarch Vadim Ermolaev, his wife and his thirteen-year-old daughter were victims last week of a sudden explosion as they entered the building where they live, on Révérend Père Louis Frolla street, in Monaco. According to police sources, the detonation was caused by a device hidden in a backpack that targeted this businessman with a troubled past, leaving him critically injured, as was his wife. On Friday, the Monaco Prosecutor's Office identified Anastasiia Berezovska, a 39-year-old Ukrainian woman, as the presumed perpetrator of the attack. Berezovska, disguised as a man, left the device at the door and detonated it remotely when Ermolaev, his wife, and his daughter arrived at the building, according to the prosecutor. The suspect, who allegedly did not act alone, fled on foot to France and was seen in Frankfurt days later.

With NATO mired in its internal tensions, Russia and Ukraine have decided to intensify the strategy of inflicting maximum possible damage on each other, before any talk of negotiating their immediate future resumes.

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.