Our interview with Ukraine’s president – and our commitment to covering the conflict

I spent last week in Ukraine, interviewing the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and taking the temperature of the country after more than two years of war.

We had been working on getting the interview for more than a year, and had two false starts before heading to Kyiv in springtime. The beautiful sunshine added to the sense of incongruousness that pervaded the trip: calm, empty skies (no passenger flights since 24 February 2022, just the famously efficient Ukrainian Railways) but nightly air raid sirens and a missile shot down over the city during our visit; beautiful buildings but statues shrouded in protective wrappings; fantastic coffee in hip cafes but conversations with deeply traumatised people.

And of course, a young, charismatic leader wearing camo trousers and a black T-shirt, living in a presidential compound with chandeliers and sandbags.

I conducted the interview along with Shaun Walker, our central and eastern Europe correspondent; international correspondent Luke Harding; and Nick Hopkins, the Guardian’s executive editor for news. We saw up close the magnetism that has charmed world leaders, and considered how much that matters in a digital era – and to what extent it isn’t enough. We got a strong news story, wonderful photos by Julia Kochetova and video by Phil Caller.

We also visited Bucha, a commuter town an hour outside Kyiv, where in 2022 Russian troops dug a mass grave in the grounds of a church and left scores of dead civilians; and then to Yahidne, a village towards the Belarus border in which more than 350 people were held captive in a cramped and windowless basement by Russian soldiers for 27 days. Survivors talked about rebuilding their communities and their lives, while being terrified that the troops might come back again. I found their stories deeply affecting; so too the posters that we encountered in Lviv and throughout the capital featuring the faces of Ukrainians killed fighting Putin, their lives cut short. They were overwhelmingly men, which made me wonder about how unbalanced society was becoming; this was noticeable on the streets. Shaun’s strong piece on the Ukraine army’s mobilisation squads is worth reading.

Everyone we spoke to was worried that the world was forgetting about Ukraine, and that the recent attacks in the east of the country were passing people by. But the stakes remain high, and we think it’s important that the Guardian has stayed committed to reporting on Ukraine, live blogging almost every single day of the war and having large numbers of people on the ground throughout.

As well as our incredible war reporting, such as this report from Kharkiv or this from Kostiantynivka, don’t miss our writing about Ukrainian culture, led by Charlotte Higgins, and sport, led by Nick Ames. Our Russia correspondents, Andrew Roth and Pjotr Sauer, also report in depth on what is happening on the other side. We try to report, and understand, the full story of what’s happening in Europe’s war.

This kind of journalism is expensive – thank you again for all your support.

PS: Another of our Ukraine experts, Lorenzo Tondo, was this week awarded the Premiolino award, the biggest award in Italian journalism. Lorenzo is the first journalist working for a non-Italian news organisation ever to win this prestigious prize.

There was a packed week of elections across the globe. Leftist climate scientist Claudia Sheinbaum (above) won this weekend’s Mexican presidential election – becoming the country’s first female, and Jewish, leader. In South Africa, Rachel Savage explained how, after three decades, the African National Congress party lost its majority in parliament for the first time in 30 years, while Alexis Akwagyiram’s opinion piece captured a sense of hope for the future of South African politics. We also continued our excellent coverage of the world’s largest election as voters took to the polls in India, with south Asia correspondent Hannah Ellis-Petersen providing insightful analysis of how Narendra Modi lost his aura of invincibility and his “messianic spell” on voters.

Three months after our revelations of comments by the Conservative mega-donor Frank Hester caused widespread fury, Rowena Mason, Henry Dyer and Matthew Weaver revealed a string of fresh allegations, including that he referred to a staff member as the “token Muslim”, imitated people of Chinese descent and remarked that one individual was attractive for a black woman. It came hours after Hester, who didn’t respond to the allegations, was confirmed to have given a total of £15m to the Tories, cementing his position as their biggest ever donor – and meaning he has bankrolled nearly half of the party’s election campaign. As the UK election campaign continues, don’t miss our podcast Politics Weekly UK, where host John Harris was in the affluent county of Surrey, and voters showed him how the Conservatives’ blue wall is about to crumble.

Guardian US reporters covered president Joe Biden’s new executive order that will close the US border to asylum seekers, at times when a daily threshold of crossings is exceeded. The coverage included powerful first-person accounts of the US asylum process, as told to Sam Levin.

An exclusive by Guardian Australia’s Natasha May uncovered a study showing how fast food chains such as McDonald’s, KFC and Domino’s Pizza are successfully influencing news outlets to produce “covert marketing” for their brands.

Simon Goodley and Rob Davies investigated Daniel Křetínský, the Czech billionaire bidding to buy the UK’s Royal Mail, and uncovered his links to businessmen embroiled in controversial property deals stretching from the Czech Republic to Turks and Caicos.

In a major speech in New York on Wednesday, secretary general of the United Nations António Guterres called fossil-fuel companies the “godfathers of climate chaos” that should be banned from advertising in every country. He also called on news and tech media to stop enabling “planetary destruction” by taking fossil fuel advertising money in a dire new warning about global heating. The Guardian has refused to take fossil fuel advertising since 2020.

As part of a new series on those suffering the effects of long Covid, Sam Wollaston spoke to Lucy Keighley, a super-fit woman who lost her health and her business to the virus. The feature included beautiful portraits by Christopher Thomond and also reflected the responses of almost 1,000 readers from around the world who we asked to tell us their experiences of this condition.

We published a powerful guide to ADHD and autism, which was a big hit with many of our readers. Highlights included Ian Sample on the science behind neurodivergence, Gaby Hinsliff on the need for workplaces to adapt, Shaparak Khorsandi on the link with creativity, Chris Packham and others on how they adapt in their relationship and Caro Nightingale’s incredibly powerful, honest and moving account of parenting an autistic child.

I enjoyed the latest joyful piece in our Euro visions series (Kate McCusker on why Lithuania is the best place in the world to be young), Leo Hickman’s discovery that his parentage was not as it seemed, and this inspiring tale of rewilding.

And, if all this frenzy feels a bit much, Rebecca Solnit writes powerfully on how the madnesses of recent years, from Covid to Trump to war to the climate crisis, have affected our private lives, and we should go easy on each other. She calls it “psychic devastation”. “Everything is weird,” she writes, “and everyone is wrecked”.

One more thing …In preparation for my Ukraine trip I watched the incredible Oscar-winning documentary 20 Days in Mariupol. Filmed by AP reporters who stayed in the besieged city in the first weeks of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, it has unbelievable footage, often graphic and extremely upsetting.

Cook this | Meera Sodha’s vegan recipe for peanut and miso tofu bánh mì

The queen of all sandwiches, featuring protein, pickled vegetables, fresh herbs and mayo all packed into a baguette to thrill your tastebuds. Try cooking it using our new Feast app which is available now on iOS, with Android coming soon.

Listen to this | From child refugee to Guardian reporter: one journalist’s extraordinary story – Today in Focus

How does it feel to report on the refugee crisis when it’s also the story of your own family? Aamna Mohdin explains.

Come to this | Elif Shafak: There Are Rivers in the Sky

Shafak is an award-winning Turkish-British novelist, whose work often explores themes of love, identity and cultural division. She will be talking about her new novel, There Are Rivers in the Sky. More information here.

Wednesday 7 August, 8pm-9pm (BST), livestream only

The Guardian’s crosswords and Wordiply are here to keep you entertained throughout the weekend.