The Debate

What happens when summer turns to fall? After the slow and steady Russian gains in the Donbas comes the surprise Ukrainian counter-invasion in Kursk. Now come harrowing nights of bombings across Ukraine. What to expect when fall turns to winter?

This week has seen consecutive nights of bombings across Ukraine, most recently hitting Volodymyr Zelensky's hometown of Kryvyi Rih in the centre of the country. 

Meanwhile, Ukraine is sending thousands of troops into the Kursk region, in what has quickly become the biggest invasion of Russian territory since World War II. It started as what seemed like an incursion on August 6. 

After the Russian occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the opening days of the full-scale invasion back in 2022, another atomic facility is now in the news. The head of the UN nuclear watchdog is visiting Kurchatov, home to the Kursk nuclear power plant. The frontline is now 40 kilometres away. 

Who has the upper hand now? Everything can seem frozen until it is not. What will tip the balance in the days, weeks and months ahead?

Produced by François Picard, Andrew Hilliar, Juilette Brown, Meiqi An

Could we be seeing a turning point for tech titans who reap huge profits for the "anything goes" content served up on their platforms? Free speech absolutists – including Elon Musk – are up in arms over the weekend arrest near Paris of the 39-year-old founder of Telegram. How strong is the case against the Russian-born Pavel Durov and his messaging app Telegram, which is popular among dissidents and pro-Putin milibloggers alike? Durov's detention comes as online hate speech and disinformation continues to spiral, as evidenced with the false narrative spun on social media during the UK's recent far-right riots.

Produced by Andrew Hilliar, Guillaume Gougeon, Juliette Brown and Ilayda Habip.

There is a paradox that is often forgotten: As the United States’ share of the global economy continues to grow, its tech giants rule the world, its culture reaches the whole planet, even where dictators try to put up firewalls. So is this the best its democracy can do? In these volatile times, citizens in the US have the choice between two aging men, one who stands charged with trying to overturn the 2020 election result, and the other whose fitness is doubted by many within his own camp.  

We will ask about Joe Biden’s insistence on staying in the race and why it’s proving so hard to contemplate alternate scenarios. 

Is it really too late? The last time, millions followed Donald Trump when he made good on his threat to challenge the result if he lost. What further erosion of trust in government? Here in France, snap elections with no clear winner are also testing institutions. Why do politics seem broken on both sides of the Atlantic?

Produced by Alessandro Xenos, Rebecca Gnignati and Juliette Brown. 

World leaders meeting in Washington for the NATO summit were sold a show of strength celebrating the Alliance’s 75th anniversary. But beyond the photo ops, there is a feeding frenzy. The White House was swamped by questions over the fitness of a US president who is six years older than the defence and security pact that in those days bound together nations against the threat of Soviet expansion. 

Long before Monday’s bombing of a children’s hospital in Kyiv, NATO leaders already knew they were coming up to decision time: whether to keep helping Ukraine defend itself or risk direct confrontation with Moscow by giving Volodymyr Zelensky the planes and missiles his country needs to take Vladimir Putin’s war to Russian soil.

With the US and France preoccupied with domestic politics, NATO’s has a crucial role to play this year with isolationist advocates on the march on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Produced by Alessandro Xenos, Rebecca Gnignati and Juliette Brown. 

The optics are startling. Russia bombed a children’s hospital in Kyiv while Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who currently holds the Council of the European Union’s rotating presidency, wrapped up a peace tour that included stops in Moscow and Baku before Beijing. At no point during his Kremlin visit did Orban denounce Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine nor display the EU flag.

Following France's legislative elections, Orban announced that his Fidesz party is joining forces with Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) in the next European parliament. Their new voting bloc called Patriots for Europe is to be chaired by Le Pen’s lead candidate during the French elections – 28-year old Jordan Bardella. Will the RN stick to its newfound support for Ukraine? Will the duo supplant Italy’s Giorgia Meloni as the leader of the nationalist right in Europe?

After recent European elections, it is the start of a new term in Brussels. The last five years saw a pooling of resources in the fight against Covid, the first-ever mutualisation of debt among the 27 state members, the Green Deal, the emergence a common European defence strategy. As Orban and others travel to the NATO summit in Washington, what is in store for Europe the next five years?

Produced by Alessandro Xenos, Rebecca Gnignati and Juliette Brown. 

This time, the polls got it wrong. The French stared at the prospect of a far-right win and – despite the start of summer vacation – voted in their greatest numbers since 1981 to stop that populist surge. Instead, a left-wing alliance cobbled together three weeks ago after President Emmanuel Macron's shock dissolution of parliament now boasts the largest bloc. 

But it is far, very far from an outright majority. With Marine Le Pen's National Rally hitting another record high in seats and the prospect of another snap election in 12 months if parliament remains stuck in three-way gridlock with the centre right, can the French do the unthinkable and be like the Germans?

That is to say: compromise, find creative solutions, build coalitions based on party platforms, not Bonapartist personality contests? Emmanuel Macron promised the snap elections would clarify France's political landscape. 

Instead, with power back in the hands of parliament, politicians are going to have to draw the lessons from this tumultuous election cycle and address the grievances of an electorate that wants change.

Produced by Alessandro Xenos, Rebecca Gnignati and Juliette Brown. 

The ink on the campaign posters barely had time to dry. Yet, France’s frenzied snap legislative election races are nearly over. President Macron hoped to clear the air with his shock dissolution of parliament but after the far-right’s unprecedented surge and so many unholy alliances and tactical withdrawals ahead of the runoffs, good luck predicting the makeup of the next National Assembly. 

One certainty, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally will boast the most seats. But how many? How close or how far from an outright majority? After the highest turnout in decades in the first round, what will voters think of their options come Sunday? And who do they want to govern France?

Yes, the ballots will have been counted but the horse-trading will be far from over. Can a nation that historically prefers Bonapartist figureheads to Nordic-style policy compromises try its hand at grand coalitions or technocratic arbiters? Or should we brace ourselves for a whole new level of uncertainty?

 

Produced by Alessandro Xenos, Rebecca Gnignati and Juliette Brown. 

While French voters ponder the temptation of the far right, across the Channel they are also campaigning. But there, it feels like the revenge of the moderates. Out with Little Britain Brexiteers, out with Jeremy Corbyn's hard left, in with a more genteel version of the Labour Party. Before 2016, Britain always seemed like that isle of temperance where the tabloid headlines screamed, but that was just a bit of fun to sell newspapers. 

So what next for Brexit Britain… and the Conservatives, which have become the party of Rwanda deportation schemes for asylum seekers? Does it, too, swing back to the centre or double down?

If he wins by a predicted landslide, Labour leader Keir Starmer will have managed to capture the silent majority that's not radical. But for how long? With a platform that's light on specifics, he knows he cannot be all things to all people for long. 

Produced by Alessandro Xenos, Rebecca Gnignati and Juliette Brown. 

A sitting president who goes for it without reading the room. We could be talking about French President Emmanuel Macron's shock dissolution of parliament that this coming Sunday could usher in France's first far-right government since Nazi occupation. Or we could be talking about a floundering US President Joe Biden, who at 81 broke his campaign promise to only seek one term in office and who turned in a disastrously weak performance in last Thursday's debate with Donald Trump.

Will Biden persist? What is preventing Trump from returning to power through the ballot box in November? 

More broadly, why are voters in 2024 ready to forgive or condone what happened in 2021? With Covid, the climate emergency and superpower tensions with China and Russia, Western thinkers had thought voters wanted to revert back to a strengthening of institutions and alliances.

Instead, familiar nativist figures who had been written off have come roaring back. Why? And what's stopping them?

Produced by Alessandro Xenos, Rebecca Gnignati and Juliette Brown. 

It turns out the polls did get it right. One in three French voters chose the far right in Sunday’s first round of snap legislative elections, putting Marine Le Pen's party on the brink of power with an unprecedented score for an extreme party that's never before won in France through the ballot box. With one short week before the run-off, we ask why and what it will take for rivals to coalesce.

Politics indeed makes for strange bedfellows. With a 577-seat National Assembly, we ask just how hard it will be for old rivals to hold their noses and vote for each other in the more than 400 run-offs where the far right has a chance.

More broadly, what has changed in the two short years since the last parliament got voted in in the wake of President Emmanuel Macron's re-election? What consequences will his decision to dissolve said parliament have on France, Europe and beyond?

Produced by Alessandro Xenos, Rebecca Gnignati and Juliette Brown.