Putin's choice of a long war in Ukraine
Pervyshov is one of the "heroes" of the invasion of Ukraine. As a reward for his military commitment, the former mayor and modest local MP, who volunteered to go to the front, was promoted to governor in November 2024. Since then, Pervyshov has been celebrated as a symbol: a figure of the new elite, decorated and honored, elevated after fighting.
Although Putin had just repeated to Macron his argument about fighting the return of Nazism in Europe, the Russian president was able to show, through Pervyshov, that war and victory remain his priorities. The conversation with the French president − viewed with mockery in Russia as a weak European − went unnoticed in the country. By contrast, the meeting with the governor, upheld as a model, received wide coverage on television.
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France 24
4 hours ago
- France 24
Looted art: the battle for looted treasures
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Euronews
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- Euronews
Russian transport minister found dead hours after being fired by Putin
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LeMonde
4 hours ago
- LeMonde
France MPs approved the returning of colonial-era 'talking drum' to Côte d'Ivoire
France's parliament approved on Monday, July 7, returning to Côte d'Ivoire a "talking drum" that colonial troops took from the Ebrié tribe in 1916, in the latest greenlight to the repatriation of colonial spoils. The Ayôkwé Djidji drum is a communication tool more than three meters long and weighing 430 kilos that was once used to transmit messages between different areas, for example to warn others of a forced recruitment drive. The lower house of the French parliament approved separating out the artefact from national museum collections to enable its return, after the upper-house Sénat backed the move in April. In 2018, Côte d'Ivoire officially asked Paris to return 148 works of art taken during the colonial period, including the Ayôkwé Djidji. President Emmanuel Macron promised to send the drum and other artefacts back home to the west African country in 2021. Clavaire Aguego Mobio, leader of the Ebrié, at the time called Macron's pledge "a highly historic move." He told Agence France-Presse that his people had long given up on the return of the drum, "which was our loudspeaker, our Facebook." Since his election in 2017, Macron has gone further than his predecessors in admitting to past French abuses in Africa. The restitution of looted artworks to Africa is one of the highlights of the "new relationship" he said he wanted to establish with the continent.
