The failure of Ukraine’s counter-offensive has brought to the fore all the contradictions in the Ukrainian war effort. Disaffection is spreading in the army and among civilians. At the same time, Ukraine’s western allies are getting cold feet and starting to talk about negotiations.

When the news of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s demise hit the headlines last week, the usual pundits appeared on our television screens with the alacrity of a flock of vultures, anxious to pick over the bones of a dead animal in the African savannah.

An unprecedented number of wildfires have set Europe alight in the past month. Nine Mediterranean countries have been hit, leading to many people losing their homes and even their lives. These are the deadly consequences of capitalism’s climate catastrophe.

The prominent Russian left-wing intellectual and academic Boris Kagarlitsky was detained by the Russian security services FSB on July 25, on the basis of a criminal investigation against him for “justifying terrorism”. He was transferred to Syktyvkar, the capital of the Komi Republic, where a tribunal decreed his preventative arrest. He can be held until September 24.

The murder of Nahel M (a 17-year-old French-Algerian) by a police officer in Nanterre on Tuesday morning has sparked a powerful wave of indignation and anger across the country. Riots and enraged protests have rocked Paris for two nights running, where a reported 2,000 security personnel have been deployed. Protests are now spreading beyond the capital.

The events of the last weekend in Russia have given rise to all sorts of speculation. The motivation behind the actions of the different actors is shrouded in mystery, but these events reveal something about the character of Russia’s war in Ukraine and of Putin’s regime itself.

We have received the following resolution by our Russian comrades, written on June 24, after Wagner PMC Chief Yevgeny Prigozhin declared a rebellion, and moved columns of troops in the direction of Moscow.

Dominating news headlines around the world presently is the huge search and rescue operation underway to retrieve a handful of wealthy tourists, including a British billionaire who went missing in the Atlantic on a submarine adventure to explore the shipwreck of the Titanic. Meanwhile, there is a conspiracy of silence in the international media over the details coming out about the drowning of 700 migrants in the Mediterranean last week – the direct result of a willful, callous neglect of human life.

The world woke on Tuesday 6 June to reports of a new ‘Russian atrocity’. A massive dam in Nova Kakhovka, a Russian-controlled area in Southern Ukraine, was breached, unleashing a torrent of water from the Dnipro River, resulting in devastating flooding in the Kherson Oblast.

Whatever its scale, the 14th “day of action” against Macron’s rotten pension reform, scheduled for 6 June, will have no more effect on the government than did the 13th. Even if Macron did not really obtain the ‘appeasement’ he was hoping for, he can conclude that, on the pension reform, he has undoubtedly won the battle, at least temporarily. However, from the point of view of the French bourgeoisie, it is a Pyrrhic victory in which the winner emerges much weaker, overall, than the loser.