International

The square of the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv has become an impregnable fortress this morning. All eyes in the capital were on the temple, where the President of the European Council, António Costa, the new British Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, on his first international trip, and other European leaders have come to support President Zelenski on the 35th anniversary of the country’s independence from the Soviet Union. Burnham is also said to have arrived with good news: during today he plans to share the plans of his long-range missiles for production in Ukraine, according to British media reports.

It is already breaking news, not so much for what it does, but for what is hinted to be happening behind closed doors.

Outside Latin America, where the U.S. is imposing its imperium in an update of the Monroe Doctrine, Donald Trump’s foreign policy is floundering, both in Europe and in Asia and the Middle East, his Achilles’ heel.

The serious warnings of this scorching summer in Europe, with fires that have devoured France or Belgium, a heatwave that left thousands dead, and an unusually warm Mediterranean Sea, do not faze Brussels. Ursula von der Leyen’s European Commission, in its second term, is carrying out a series of controversial policies, having put the handbrake on some of its green ambitions due to pressure from industry, major community countries, and also the European People’s Party (EPP), the majority party in the European Parliament, where it can rely both on the pro-European coalition and the far right. In Strasbourg, a far right more numerous – and louder – than ever works tirelessly to “dismantle the green agenda,” their political obsession in this legislature alongside reducing immigration.

This scorching summer has offered scenes never seen before in Europe. Seaplanes drawing water from the Seine to extinguish the fire in Fontainebleau, in the historic hunting forest of the kings of France. The Rhine and the Danube at their lowest flow levels and almost unfit for navigation. Forest fires in Wales, on the border between Belgium and Germany, on the beaches of Croatia.

“I don’t sleep thinking about whether the patients have survived,” confesses P., a general surgeon from Pinar del Río, in western Cuba. The doctor, with whom this newspaper spoke via WhatsApp, prefers to remain anonymous. The lack of medical personnel, medicines, and basic resources necessary to practice his profession, worsened by the shortage of supplies the island suffers and the U.S. sanctions, leads him to ask himself: “Why am I still here?”. The tension he experiences at work has caused him alopecia, weight loss, and episodes of depression.

Volodímir Zelenski accused Russia on Friday of deliberately attacking the civilian population after two Russian drones struck a shopping center in broad daylight in Kriví Rih, the hometown of the Ukrainian president. The attack killed at least 14 people and injured another 121, including 22 children. In a message on social media, Zelenski described the action as an “absolutely cynical and cowardly strike.”

Melania Trump, 56 years old, found the way out of the White House maze in which she had been lost for several weeks. There had been no news of her, nor images, as if she had vanished since attending with her husband, but in a much more discreet role, the World Cup final held on July 19 at MetLife in New Jersey.

German security agencies suspect that agents of the Russian secret services may have planned attacks in Germany, following the discovery of an underground stash with several firearms and ammunition in a forest near Berlin.

Today’s wars cannot be understood without drones. Aware of this, the U.S. military created a unit based in Europe last November dedicated to studying and mastering the use of this weaponry. The idea was to draw lessons from what is happening in Ukraine, where unmanned vehicles have completely transformed the battlefield. Once their training was completed, the group, named the Unmanned Assault Battalion, had to be capable of deploying anywhere the use of drones was required.