Category: VIEWS

The contrast is striking. At the end of the last century, the United States had to take matters into its own hands to silence the guns in the former Yugoslavia, whereas today, faced with the new fire threatening Kosovo, the firefighters are European.

Both at home and in the diaspora, they are feeling around and searching. In other words, the Russian opposition is still a long way from forming one single opposition with common objectives and a common programme, but in Berlin a short while ago, in Paris last week and in the European Parliament on 5 and 6 June, their meetings are multiplying and their convergences are getting more and more pronounced because they are now all convinced that they will have to define the “post-Putinism”.

They would have every reason to support Ukraine. Latin American countries should remember that they too have a powerful neighbour that has long regarded them as their “backyard” and has not entirely lost its desire to impose a suzerainty on them. African countries, for their part, should not ignore the fact that Mr Putin’s attempt to annex Ukraine is as anachronistic and crazy as if France were to set out to reconquer Algeria or Britain to reclaim Nigeria.

When they deal with the future, polls are no more reliable than forecasts. This is the first, universal, conclusion to be drawn from the Turkish elections, and the other two are no less universal, for normally, hyperinflation, the stifling of liberties and the corruption boom should have inflicted the most humiliating defeat on Recep Erdoğan and his party.

One refuses to believe it. One does not even want to consider it, but everything suggests that Vladimir Putin is no longer in control. President, he still is, in title at least, but could a head of state in charge really let pass, without giving any reaction, an insult directed at a Minister of Defence to whom he is notoriously close and at the Chief of Staff to whom he has personally entrusted the conduct of Ukrainian operations?