‘But what happened in  Moscow after sunset on that Saturday evening when Woland and his followers left the capital and vanished from Vorobiovî Hills? There is no need to mention the flood of incredible rumours which buzzed round Moscow for long afterwards and even spread to the dimmest and most distant reaches of the provinces. The rumours are, in any case, too nauseating to repeat.’

The state elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern attracted attention far beyond the states’ borders and Germany. In Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD emerged as the strongest party with 43.8% of the vote, more than doubling its 2021 result. The CDU fell to just 17.2%, cutting its result in half.

August 2026, Corsica, unknown location: In a closed room, a group of fifteen hooded men is gathering in front of a table. They are brandishing assault rifles and submachine guns, heavy weaponry that is difficult to come by in rural Europe. In front of the armed group, a delegation of hand-picked journalists from the local newspapers is seated, listening to and recording a declaration from the hooded figures

On 31 August 2026, the Bishkek Arena filled with 51,000 spectators and some of the world´s heads of state. The heads of state of Russia, Iran and Turkey, alongside India and Pakistan, took their seats in the stands as Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov declared the sixth World Nomad Games open.

Ratko Mladić died on 27 August 2026 in a UN detention centre in The Hague, where he was serving a life sentence. He spent sixteen years hiding before he was arrested and sent to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 2011.

While the rest of Europe has seen massive growth of far-right politics in Europe, at both the national and regional levels, three regions in Spain break this trend: Galicia, Navarre and the Basque Country. These are regions characterised by rural areas and a strong sense of identity, and yet their populations still to this day reject the ideas that far-right politicians offer.