The Debate

Ukraine's "no surrender" attitude is on display, what with daring drone raids deep in Russian territory last weekend and a new attack on the Kerch Strait bridge that links Moscow-occupied Crimea to the mainland. These are spectacular shows, but can outgunned and outnumbered Kyiv keep it up? 

The question is particularly timely with the US defence secretary skipping a meeting of the NATO support group on Ukraine this Wednesday. The US, for now, is still sharing intelligence and disbursing military aid allotted to Kyiv by the previous administration. But for how much longer?

We ask the question ahead of the NATO summit later this month in the Netherlands, and ahead of Thursday’s Oval Office initiation for new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. What will the likes of Germany and France do if Trump loses interest entirely in Europe's defence and Ukraine's fate?

Produced by Rebecca Gnignati, Aurore Laborie and Ilayda Habip.

Can South Korea turn the page on its most turbulent time since democracy was installed? An election held this Tuesday looks like a landslide victory for the Democratic Party of Lee Jae-myung. What is his agenda? Where will he take South Korea? Will he be able to bring stability to the East Asian economic powerhouse that was plunged into doubt and confusion last December with a declaration of martial law by soon-deposed leader Yoon Suk Yeol?

Produced by Rebecca Gnignati, Elisa Amiri, Ilayda Habip.

Why did an EU success story vote for a pro-Trump candidate? Karol Nawrocki has been narrowly elected Polish president, in part thanks to a first-round surge by candidates further to the right. Why has a nation that's a net recipient of EU funding, one that shares a border with Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, turned its back on Brussels? 

We ask if time's soon up for the swing of two years ago in favour of the reformist coalition led by centre-right Prime Minister Donald Tusk and draw conclusions from the defeat of Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski. Could there even be a snap general election?

What about that ongoing battle over the independence of the courts, culture war issues like abortion and attitudes towards Ukraine and European defence? Historical rivalries with Kyiv were talked up on the campaign trail. But historical rivalries are even greater with Moscow. And just as the likes of Germany and France scramble to level up on defence, Sunday's election winner clearly believes that his backers in Washington will maintain the 10,000 US troops stationed in Poland. Is that a sure bet? Can Poland be both Atlanticist and Eurosceptic? 

Produced by Alessandro Xenos, Théophile Vareille, Elisa Amiri, Ilayda Habip.

A fortnight after Romania, Poland is holding a presidential run-off where the pro-EU candidate faces uncertain odds. On Sunday, Warsaw's liberal mayor Rafał Trzaskowski will need the kind of boost in turnout that propelled his counterpart from Bucharest to victory. Nicoşur Dan came to campaign last weekend for Trzaskowski, the candidate from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk's Civic Platform party.

Trzaskowski is not the only one with celebrity endorsements. US President Donald Trump is dispatching his Director of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to stump for nationalist right-wing candidate Karol Nawrocki. The Law and Justice party of Poland's outgoing president Andrzej Duda hopes to rally the 20 percent of voters who veered further to the right in the first round. In a nation where living standards have skyrocketed since joining the EU two decades ago, why are so many citizens eager to elect Eurosceptics?

Would a Nawrocki win call time after just one year on the efforts of Tusk to undo PiS's contentious rule of law reforms? Currently, the former president of the European Council has positioned himself at the heart of Brussels policymaking. Looking ahead, which direction do Poles want?

Produced by Rebecca Gnignati, Elisa Amiri, Ilayda Habip.

The man who coined the term "soft power" recently died. It’s ironic that Joseph Nye taught at Harvard University, the institution that's in the eye of the storm of the Trump administration’s crackdown on foreign students. A court has now stopped the US government from banning foreign student enrolment at the country's most elite university, but more suspensions of federal funding are in the works.

Now comes a broader move. The US State Department is pausing visa applications for the country's more than 1 million foreign students, this "in preparation for an expansion of required social media screening and vetting". In a land that prides itself on its First Amendment of the Constitution guaranteeing free speech, who decides when posting a picture of a Palestinian flag constitutes a national security threat?

Are we seeing a passing fancy or the true decline of US soft power? As Europeans try to lure students and researchers to migrate to these shores, as the UK moves towards rejoining the Erasmus foreign student exchange programme that the pro-Brexit Conservatives quit, we ask what the pushback against foreign students and the use of social media posts as evidence for the prosecution say about our times and the free flow of ideas and information.

Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gniganti, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip, Alessandro Xenos.

A way to pull the rug out from under Hamas or a scheme to permanently chase Palestinians out of parts of Gaza? Israel insisting that a brand-new Geneva-registered aid group aims to deliver long-awaited aid to secure distribution sites while preventing the Palestinian militant group from diverting food and medicine.

With the United Nations out of the loop, and Gaza residents forced to travel vast distances mostly for what look like rations, the international community warns it's a bid to force the displacement of a population that's only seen a trickle of aid since the embargo that started in March. What's Israel's ultimate goal?

And will the United States sign off on a move condemned by some of the Jewish State's closest allies like Germany and Italy? More broadly, what's to become of Gaza two-point-four million citizens, two-thirds of whom live in refugee camps? The daily bombing continues, but is there a plan?

 

Produced by Rebecca Gnignati, Elisa Amiri, Ilayda Habip.

With 299 victims over 25 years, why wasn’t serial rapist Joël Le Scouarnec stopped sooner? Closing arguments in the trial of the 74-year-old surgeon in the western French city of Vannes. We’ll ask about a man convicted of purchasing child pornography online two decades ago and yet investigators failed to uncover worse crimes and the medical board allowed him to continue to practice.

France’s largest-ever sex abuse trial concludes, exposing decades of abuse at the Bétharram Catholic school in the southwest. The children of Prime Minister François Bayrou attended the school, where his wife also worked. Bayrou, however, maintains that he was unaware of the abuse at the time. At what point does it become a cover-up and when does deference cross a line in a nation where children are taught to obey authority figures?

Most important are the victims. On the stand, Le Scouarnec eventually confessed – but to the plaintiffs, his answers felt mechanical, devoid of real remorse. Why is it so often the victims who carry the shame? Two of them took their own lives. How can that shame be overcome, and how does one begin to find closure?

Produced by Théophile Vareille, Elisa Amiri, Ilayda Habip.

Is it something in the water? Why insist on bottled brands at every meal when in a country like France, it flows freely from the tap – even if it’s not exactly free. We’ll ask about old habits and new realities that force a rethink of what we drink.

Anger bubbling over this week with the French senate concluding that the government “at the highest level” covered up for Nestlé which continued to put the words "natural mineral water" on bottles and cans of iconic brands such as Perrier even though the threat of bacteria and pollution have long forced the Swiss food giant to filter the output of its spring in southeast France. Wherein lies the real issue here… for consumers… citizens…

… and for the planet? We often cover stories about water scarcity. But it’s also water management, in this instance how we provide and distribute drinking water. Whose job is it to make sure that it’s clean, that it’s fairly meted out? And who gets to profit from the service of providing this vital necessity? 

Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Juliette Laffont, Jimena Morales-Velasco, Alessandro Xenos.

It’s a White House visit preceded by some heavy-handed sales tactics. South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa in the lion’s den of the Oval Office after Donald Trump advisor Elon Musk accused Pretoria of discrimination over a stalled commercial deal to buy his Starlink low orbit satellite system.

Ramaphosa reportedly now offering a workaround of post-Apartheid local Black ownership laws, laws to address historical inequality in a nation where whites make up 7-percent of the population but still own 70 percent of the land.

Adding pressure on Donald Trump’s visitor, a lie that’s even appeared unsolicited on Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot. Grok talking up a supposed genocide against whites in South Africa – a country that’s got way too high a homicide rate for sure, but where in reality one percent of the victims are whites. Trump himself talking up the trope and offering refugee status to whites.

So how should the nation that currently hosts the rotating chair of the G20 handle its relations with the United States? How should it handle the South African-born Musk who enjoys outsized leverage it seems? And more broadly, what path for a South Africa that needs foreign investment to fulfil its potential?

Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Juliette Laffont, Jimena Morales-Velasco, Alessandro Xenos.

Aid returning at a trickle into Gaza after a two-month blockade, but troops are on the move and the bombing continues with an average of dozens killed a day the past week. Israel’s prime minister talking up what might sound like a permanent reoccupation. This collective punishment of two million civilians, many, says the UN on the brink of starvation, is exactly the sort of overreaction that Hamas wanted when it perpetrated the worst terror attack in Israel’s history more than 18 months ago. 

At the time, allies insisted on Israel’s right to respond. But now, even nations with historical reasons for giving the Jewish state a wide berth are critical, the likes of Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, and the UK which has just summoned Israel's ambassador while suspending free trade talks. It's signed a communiqué with Canada and France which may recognize a Palestinian state next month. We’ll ask how far the pivot’s gone since October 7th and what sort of future for Palestinians and for Israelis. 

 

Produced by Rebecca Gnignati, Elisa Amiri, Jimena Morales-Velasco.