Frederic Benhaim

This weekend, I met a Ukrainian Marine who spent two and a half years as a prisoner of war in Russia. He told me about how they tortured him with electric shocks and by beating him with sticks. He lost more than sixty pounds in captivity. He spent long stretches in solitary confinement. They did all of this to try to get him to sign false confessions. They’ve done this with other prisoners. The Russians try to torture them until they sign a false confession that could be used for propaganda. It goes against every law of war and every basic tenet of our humanity, but that’s exactly who Putin is. This Ukrainian Marine didn’t give in. He told me that every night, when they were done abusing him and he finally had a moment, he would say out loud “one more day closer to home.” He didn’t know when that day would come, but he had faith it would. Finally, he was released in a prisoner exchange. That’s what ordinary Ukrainians are sacrificing for their homeland. Which is why we need to put the screws to Putin economically so that he actually comes to the table to end this war.

And another great documentary by ARTE. This two-part ARTE investigation is a brutal reality check for anyone still clinging to the fantasy that Russia is somehow “isolated” or “running out of steam.” What the films show, methodically and with receipts, is that Russia’s war against Ukraine is not being sustained despite sanctions, but through a deliberately constructed global system designed to bypass them. This is not improvisation. It is industrialized, coordinated, and openly contemptuous of Western enforcement. The first part dismantles the myth of Russian military self-sufficiency. Yes, the Kremlin is still drawing heavily on vast Soviet-era stockpiles, tens of thousands of tanks, missiles, and artillery shells inherited from the USSR. But that is only the foundation. On top of it, Russia has layered a modern weapons program that depends almost entirely on foreign technology. Hypersonic missiles like Kinzhal are paraded as symbols of invincibility, yet their real story is failure, interception, and paranoia. When these “wonder weapons” underperform against Western air defense, Putin does not adapt policy, he purges people. Scientists and engineers are arrested, publicly humiliated, or die in custody, not because they betrayed secrets, but because the regime cannot tolerate reality contradicting propaganda. Fear is not a side effect of the system, it is the system. At the same time, the documentary exposes how sanctions are systematically hollowed out. Investigators trace Western-made microelectronics inside Russian missiles and drones, parts manufactured in the EU, the US, and Japan. These components do not magically appear. They travel through shell companies, fake transit routes, and permissive jurisdictions, especially via Central Asia and Turkey. Thousands of front companies exist for one purpose only: to keep Russian weapons flying. Sanctions increase cost and friction, but they do not stop the flow, because enforcement is fragmented, slow, and politically timid. The result is grotesque: European technology embedded in weapons that are leveling Ukrainian cities. The second part widens the scope and shows that Russia is no longer acting alone at all. Iran is not just supplying drones, it has effectively exported a full weapons industry into Russia. The documentary reveals a secret drone factory on Russian soil, built with Iranian expertise, producing hundreds of Shahed-type drones per day. Even more damning is how this factory is staffed. Young women from Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Mali are recruited under false pretenses, trafficked into a militarized industrial zone, forced to work in toxic conditions without protection, and kept silent through confiscated passports and constant surveillance. This is not just a war crime supply chain, it is human exploitation at scale, baked directly into Russia’s military production. North Korea completes another piece of the puzzle. The film documents, using satellite imagery and weapons forensics, how Pyongyang has supplied Russia with millions of artillery shells, ballistic missiles like the KN-23, and eventually troops. Tens of thousands of North Korean soldiers are effectively being used as disposable manpower to spare Russian urban elites from mobilization. In exchange, Moscow transfers military know-how and strategic technology. This is not desperation, it is strategic outsourcing of death. Then there is China, the quiet enabler holding the entire structure together. The documentary is careful and devastating here. China does not send soldiers. It does not openly ship weapons. Instead, it allows Russia to survive. Roughly 60 percent of components found in Russian weapons now transit through China or Hong Kong. Chinese companies, often newly created or repurposed, move massive volumes of dual-use goods that keep Russian factories running. Without this permissive Chinese role, the film makes clear, the Russian war machine would stall. Beijing does not need to fire a shot to reshape the battlefield. It simply keeps the taps open. Overlay all of this with Western political drift and internal division, and the warning becomes impossible to ignore. The documentary shows how Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China are not united by ideology so much as by shared hostility toward democratic constraint. They cooperate because none of them are accountable to voters, courts, or parliaments. The goal goes far beyond Ukraine. It is about forcefully rewriting the international order, proving that borders can be changed by violence, that sanctions can be mocked, and that democratic hesitation is a strategic weakness to be exploited. Taken together, these films do something most coverage still fails to do. They stop pretending this is a regional conflict or a temporary crisis. They show it for what it is: a coordinated authoritarian war economy facing a fragmented democratic response. The conclusion is uncomfortable but unavoidable. If Europe and its allies do not close loopholes, enforce their own rules, and act like this is a systemic threat, not a talking point, then this axis will keep pushing until something breaks.

Liam, 5 ans. Arrêté par l'ICE. Face à ce qu’il se passe aux États-Unis, la résistance n'est plus une option, c'est une obligation.

These are the faces of some of the French NATO soldiers who, also, died shoulder to shoulder with US & UK troops How dare Trump the draft-dodger, how dare he - or anyone else, suggest they were somehow kept out of harm's way @FrenchResponse

BREAKING: @AOC just completely went off on Trump after ICE murdered Alex Pretti. "Donald Trump [is] accusing a Veteran Affairs ICU nurse (Alex Pretti) as being a terrorist against the United States. A man who was treating services members to our country, who was dedicating his life to serving Americans. Who in his final act on this earth was helping a woman pushed to the ground. And they are calling him a Domestic Terrorist, in order to defend their gross abuse of power, their absolute breaching of the law and in order to precipitate greater conflict."

Oh look ! Dutch far-right populist party in chaos this week, split down the middle as members defect, disgusted with leader, "Dutch Trump" Geert Wilders But of course none of us will have heard about this as it doesn't fit in with the "Europe's turning far right" narrative

This is really moving ! In Budapest's Heroes Square Hungary's opposition leader @magyarpeterMP calls on the spirit of the 1956 Hungarian uprising against Russia and its thirst for freedom to defeat Orbán in front of hundreds of thousands of Hungarians🇭🇺🇪🇺 My English s/t👇

Raciste et fantasque en effet

Profaner un arbre commémoratif dédié à la mémoire d'Ilan Halimi, victime de la barbarie antisémite, est un acte odieux et révoltant. Cette atteinte à un symbole de mémoire et de recueillement ne laisse aucun doute sur les motivations antisémites de son auteur. L'antisémitisme est un poison qui doit être combattu sans relâche. Pensées sincères à la famille d'Ilan Halimi.

Le rapport de l'IGAS : igas.gouv.fr/Mission-sur-le…

En France, un enfant est tué par ses parents tous les cinq jours. Selon l’Inspection générale des affaires sociales, 49% d’entre eux vivaient dans une famille connue des services sociaux. Ce sont des morts qui auraient du être évités.

En Ille-et-Vilaine, 200 enfants en danger restent dans leur famille malgré une décision de placement à l’ASE. Combien de morts faudra-t-il encore pour qu’on s’y intéresse, qu’on respecte l’État de droit, et qu’on exécute enfin les décisions de justice ? ouest-france.fr/bretagne/ille-…

BREAKING: People are allegedly being suspended on X in Turkey for posting videos of these protests against Erdoğan’s corrupt and repressive regime. Keep sharing everywhere.

It is now official.

Triste destin que cette extrême droite qui se dit patriote et qui finit toujours par vénérer des dirigeants étrangers pourvu qu’ils soient autoritaires. Aujourd’hui Poutine et Trump, hier… Faut-il l’appeler le “syndrome de Sigmaringen” ?

@Acyn Hey Brian, why don’t you ask Elmo, the guy who’s running our country, why HE doesn’t wear a suit?

Kamala Harris told us exactly what was going to happen.

Pennsylvania is the proud home to over 150,000 Ukrainian and Ukrainian American people. Some have planted roots here for generations – and tens of thousands are here to find safety after fleeing Vladimir Putin’s aggression. My statement on today's White House meeting with President Zelenskyy:

It would’ve been a show of strength for the President of the United States to bring the elected leader of Ukraine to the Oval Office and engage with him in a dignified way.   But you would never know that after President Trump’s shameful display. Putin must be overjoyed with today’s theatrics. Following the U.S. vote in alignment with Russia at the United Nations this week, a disturbing pattern has emerged that is contrary to America’s longstanding support of democracy around the world.

Yes, we have to integrate and unify Europe 🇪🇺. Indeed.