
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.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


France 24
4 hours ago
- France 24
Looted art: the battle for looted treasures
France: tens of thousands of pieces The Djidji Ayokwe, the beloved "talking drum" is one of tens of thousands of artworks and other prized artefacts that France looted from its colonial empire from the 16th century to the first half of the 20th century. Three metres long and weighing 430 kilogrammes, it was seized by French troops in 1916 and sent to France in 1929. President Emmanuel Macron in 2021 promised to return the drum, used as a communication tool to transmit messages between different areas, and other artefacts to the west African country. Ivory Coast, Senegal and Benin have all asked for the repatriation of their treasures. In late 2020, the French parliament adopted a law providing for the permanent return to Benin of 26 artefacts from the royal treasures of Dahomey. Britain: refuses to budge The Parthenon Marbles, the object of a long-running dispute between the United Kingdom and Greece, are the most high profile of contested treasures. Athens has for decades demanded the return of the sculptures from the British Museum, saying they were looted in 1802 by Lord Elgin, the then-British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. The current government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has escalated its efforts to secure the repatriation of the Marbles, holding official and unofficial meetings with the government of Keith Starmer last autumn. The British Museum has also refused to return any of the sacred sculptures and carvings known as the "Benin Bronzes" taken during a British military expedition in the former kingdom of Benin in southern Nigeria in 1897. It has the biggest collection of the Benin Bronzes which are held in museums across the United States and Europe. The British Museum is also standing firm on the 11 Ethiopian tabots, or sacred tablets, that it holds. Germany: agrees to return Bronzes The German government agreed in 2022 to hand 1,100 Benin Bronzes back to Nigeria. The first 22 were sent back in December 2022. Netherlands too The Netherlands in June 2025 officially handed back to Nigeria 119 Benin Bronzes sculptures with a ceremony held at the National Museum in Lagos, showcasing four of them in the museum's courtyard. Egyptian antiquities Many artworks and artefacts have over the centuries been looted from Egypt, the cradle of an ancient civilisation that has long fascinated Europeans. Among the most high profile cases are the Nefertiti bust, the Rosetta Stone and the Dendera Zodiac, which are on show in top museums in Germany, the United Kingdom and France. The bust of Nefertiti, the wife of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, was sculpted around 1340 BC but was taken to Germany by a Prussian archaeologist and was later given to the Neues Museum in Berlin. The Rosetta Stone, a basalt slab dating from 196 BC, has been housed in the British Museum since 1802, inscribed with the legend "Captured in Egypt by the British Army in 1801". It bore extracts of a decree written in Ancient Greek, an ancient Egyptian vernacular script called Demotic and hieroglyphics. The Dendera Zodiac, a celestial map, was blasted out of the Hathor Temple in Qena in southern Egypt in 1820 by a French official. © 2025 AFP


Euronews
4 hours ago
- Euronews
Russian transport minister found dead hours after being fired by Putin
Russian Transport Minister Roman Starovoit was found dead near Moscow on Monday, just hours after President Vladimir Putin fired him following massive disruptions of Russian civilian airspace caused by Ukrainian drone raids. According to Russian media reports, a gun was found near Starovoit's body. Reports also claim he died in an apparent suicide. However, no official information on the cause of death has been released at this time. Earlier on Monday, the Kremlin provided no specific details or reasons for the dismissal of Starovoit, who had served as the governor of Russia's Kursk region before being reappointed transport minister in May 2024. However, his firing came after almost 300 flights were grounded at major airports over the past weekend due to the latest Ukrainian drone raid. On Saturday and Sunday, 485 fights ended up getting cancelled, according to the Russian federal aviation agency, Rosaviatsiya. In total, from early morning on Saturday until Monday morning, some 1,900 flights were delayed due to what the agency referred to as 'airspace restrictions imposed on airports in central Russia.' Kremlin-controlled outlet Komersant reported that the disruptions cost the airlines over 200,000 euros. Ukraine's drone raids on Russia While Russia has intensified its aerial attacks against Ukrainian civilians and residential and energy infrastructure, Kyiv is targeting Russia's military sites and war infrastructure. On Saturday, Ukraine's military general staff said that Ukrainian forces struck the Borisoglebsk air base in Russia's Voronezh region. Borisoglebsk is believed to be the home base of Russia's Su-34, Su-35S and Su-30SM fighter jets. The Kremlin reported that Russian air defence shot down eight Ukrainian drones headed for Moscow late on Sunday, out of a total of 90 UAVs overnight over Russian territory, the Black Sea and Russia-annexed Crimea. Most of them were downed over the border regions near Ukraine, but three were also destroyed over the Leningrad region, including the regional capital of St Petersburg, the ministry said on Telegram on Monday. Kyiv's drone campaign has already disrupted civilian air travel in Russia several times. At the beginning of May, just days before Moscow's Victory Day parade, Ukrainian drones caused massive disruption at Moscow's airports, with 350 flights affected.

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.