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In response to Macron's comments, Putin brandishes the threat of a nuclear conflict

On Thursday, Vladimir Putin warned the West of a "real threat" of nuclear war if the conflict in Ukraine escalates, in his annual address to the nation, the high point of the year at which he defines Russia's priorities.

Putin did not mince his words after Emmanuel Macron's remarks on Monday evening at the end of an international meeting on Ukraine. " There is no consensus today on sending troops on the ground in an official, accepted and endorsed manner. But as a dynamic process, nothing should be ruled out. "The French President said on Monday evening. Germany, the United States and NATO immediately disassociated themselves from his remarks.

Weapons " capable "to reach the territories of Western countries

To regular applause from the audience, the Russian President responded calmly in his address to the nation on Thursday. The master of the Kremlin felt that these threats were creating a " real "It also said that Russia had nuclear weapons. capable "to reach the territories of Western countries.

Western countries must understand that we too have weapons capable of hitting targets on your territory "warned the President Everything they're inventing at the moment, everything they're frightening the world with, is a real threat of a conflict involving the use of nuclear weapons, which would mean the destruction of civilisation. "he added.

Vladimir Putin also welcomed the progress made by his troops in Ukraine, who have scored several successes in recent weeks against Kiev forces on the defensive and short of ammunition. " The military capabilities of the (Russian) armed forces have been multiplied. They are advancing confidently in several directions. "

Russia is " ready for dialogue "with the United States

As a reminder, the Ukrainian army failed in its counter-offensive launched in the summer of 2023 and finds itself on the defensive against more numerous and better armed Russian soldiers. In mid-February, the Russians succeeded in seizing the fortress town of Avdiyevka on the eastern front and are continuing to push forward in this sector, to the satisfaction of Vladimir Putin.

" We kept the country together, we didn't allow it to be torn apart".he also said. He also lashed out at the current American authorities, accusing them of " want to show that they run the world as before In his view, Russia is "a threat" to the United States and "a demagoguery" in the run-up to the American presidential election in November. In his view, Russia is " ready for dialogue "with the United States on issues of strategic stability ".

The speech comes on the eve of the funeral of opposition figure Alexei Navalny

Thursday's speech also comes on the eve of the funeral planned in Moscow for his main opponent, anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, who died in prison on 16 February under murky circumstances. Vladimir Putin, who has never mentioned Alexei Navalny's name in public, has yet to comment on the death, which has shocked Western powers.

In his speeches to the nation, Vladimir Putin traditionally takes stock of the past year and sets out new strategic directions in front of his country's political and military elite. He also usually attacks the West, presented as the depraved enemy of the "traditional values" officially defended by the Kremlin. On the same occasion, in February 2023, he accused the West of using the conflict in Ukraine to " to finish "He reiterated his view that they were supporting neo-Nazi forces in Russia in order to consolidate an anti-Russian state there. He also called for " traitors "In Russia, in the midst of a crackdown on any voice critical of the Kremlin's policies and military intervention in Ukraine, with thousands of fines and dozens of heavy prison sentences.

23 MARCH STRIKE IN PARIS: THE FRIGHT OF THE RESIDENTS OF A BUILDING HIT BY A RUBBISH BIN FIRE

Some people set fire to rubbish that had accumulated in the streets. The flames quickly spread to the front of a building.

The situation degenerated in a matter of minutes. On Thursday, during a demonstration against pension reform, some people deliberately set fire to some rubbish littering the rue Saint-Marc, in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris. The fire quickly spread to the front of the neighbouring building.

"We went to the window and saw that people were starting to burn rubbish bins," a local resident told BFMTV. "And it started to catch fire everywhere.

140 fires in Paris

The flames hit the wooden storefront on the ground floor of the building and quickly spread. "Suddenly, the flames exploded and lots of people gathered around", recalls a resident of a neighbouring building. "I thought I was going to go out and put the fire out, but the flames got so big so quickly that I couldn't."

In the street with their simple fire extinguishers, the mobile firefighters were unable to bring the flames under control themselves. People in the street then tried to remove the rubbish to prevent the fire from growing.

"We saw that the building was on fire, and we started clearing away the debris", reported an off-duty policewoman on the street. "We're trying to clear it away, we were only thinking of one thing: people. Get the people out."

Some of the building's residents left, fearing that the flames would spread to the entire building.

When the CRS arrived on the scene, they secured the street to allow a fire truck to arrive. It took the fire brigade around twenty minutes to bring the fire under control. The door to the ground floor flat had to be forced open to make sure no-one was inside.

A total of 140 fires were reported to have started in Paris on Thursday, during demonstrations against pension reform.

Text by BFMTV Damien Gourlet, Pierre Barbin with Laurène Rocheteau

Emmanuel Macron is unlikely to visit Kiev before the second round

Volodymyr Zelensky has invited Emmanuel Macron to visit Ukraine. It won't be for a while yet," moderates Clément Beaune.

UKRAINE - Will Emmanuel Macron travel to Ukraine like British Prime Minister Boris Johnson or European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen? "Not in the next few days", replied Clément Beaune on Sud Radio on Monday 18 April.

Although the Head of State has had numerous telephone conversations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, he has not visited Ukraine, unlike some of his European counterparts. But for the Secretary of State for European Affairs, a visit before the second round of the presidential election on Sunday 24 April "would no doubt be misinterpreted".

But Emmanuel Macron is expected to be there. In an interview broadcast on Sunday by CNN, Volodymyr Zelensky said that he had invited his French counterpart to meet him in Ukraine. This invitation follows Emmanuel Macron's reluctance to describe what has been happening in the country since the Russian invasion on 24 February as "genocide".

Emmanuel Macron in Ukraine "if it's useful".

"I told him that I wanted him to understand that this is not a war, that this is nothing other than genocide. I invited him to come when he had the chance," said Volodymyr Zelensky. "He will come, and he will see, and I am sure he will understand."

For his part, Clément Beaune stated that "the President of the Republic, as President of the Republic, has always been very clear: he may go, if it is useful (...) We cannot make a visit that is merely symbolic, it must be a visit that has an impact". In the meantime," says Clément Beaune, "our support is very, very clear, and involves military and humanitarian aid.

Speaking to CNN, the Ukrainian president also said that he would like US President Joe Biden to come to Ukraine, after his surprise claim that Russian forces were committing "genocide". "The decision is his, of course, it depends on the security situation. But I think he is the leader of the United States and for that he should come and see."

Text by Le HuffPost

The French Parliament adopts the law implementing the "health pass".

The day after another day of mobilisation by its opponents, the anti-Covid health pass was definitively adopted in France on Sunday evening. MPs and senators reached an agreement in principle on this controversial text.

The National Assembly ended the parliamentary marathon that began on Tuesday with a wide-ranging vote, with 156 votes in favour, from the majority and the right, 60 against, from the left and the Rassemblement National, and 14 abstentions.

The leader of the La France insoumise MPs, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, unsuccessfully put forward a final motion to reject the bill, denouncing the anti-Covid pass as "parole" and calling for "disobedience". Olivier Véran, the French Minister for Health, was a little provocative, welcoming the "new-found national unity" after a total of 60 hours of debate in both chambers.

Time limits

Shortly before, it was the right-wing-dominated Senate that had approved by 195 votes to 129, with 17 abstentions, the same text providing for an extended pass and compulsory vaccination for healthcare workers. In the joint committee, 14 deputies and senators reached an agreement (see also box) in the early evening, after almost four hours of meetings.

Therefore, after 15 November, the pass system can only be continued with a new vote by Parliament. Initially, checks will be carried out by the administrative police rather than the criminal justice system.

No redundancies for care workers

In addition, as the senators wished, it is the health insurance scheme that will first monitor the compulsory isolation of people infected with Covid-19, before the police intervene if necessary. "We couldn't treat French people like criminals", said Senator Hervé Marseille (Union Centrist).

Finally, there will be no dismissal for people who fail to comply with the vaccination obligation because of their profession, but their salary will be suspended. This point had been hotly debated.

Pass extended at the beginning of August

In a rare move, a last-minute government amendment authorising prefects to impose the pass in large shopping centres in a highly restricted manner was adopted at the last minute. However, the requirement to present the pass had been deleted by the Senate, a deletion subsequently approved by the Joint Committee.

The extended pass is due to come into effect at the beginning of August. Time is running out in the face of an unprecedented surge in infections in France linked to the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant of Covid-19. The bill still has to pass through the Constitutional Council, to which Prime Minister Jean Castex and the left-wing party have referred the matter.

Text by Le monde agences/jop/vajo/vic

McFly and Carlito: Emmanuel Macron is already campaigning on YouTube

By issuing a challenge to the famous duo of youtubers, the President hopes to benefit from their cool image among young people. An electoral propaganda strategy that should be more closely supervised.

McFly and Carlito have over 6 million subscribers on YouTube, undeniable comedic talent and perhaps the best intentions in the world. But when they say that making a video with Emmanuel Macron isn't the same as helping him get re-elected, they're wrong.

It's 19 February 2021, and McFly and Carlito are posting a video on their YouTube channel: "The PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC has issued us with a challenge. Crazy? Yes." The codes of the "Youtube Game" are respected, with the two youtubers commenting and going back over the phone call they received earlier from the President, and the challenge he gave them: to make a video on barrier gestures that exceeds 10 million views. If they succeed, they will be invited to the Elysée Palace to shoot a new video, giving them the opportunity to create new content and the promise of several million more views. The challenge was met in three days: by midday on Wednesday, the video already had 11 million views. A look back at an election propaganda campaign aimed at 15-25 year-olds, disguised behind a harmless video on barrier gestures.

Macron in search of the Halo effect

To understand Emmanuel Macron's objective behind this challenge to two young youtuber stars, icons of a generation, we first need to understand how a cognitive bias works: the Halo effect. The Halo effect causes you to make unconscious associations of ideas, and to transfer the qualities of a person or object to the person or object associated with it.

For decades, this bias has been the basis of a plethora of advertising campaigns in which brands associate the image of a sportsperson or celebrity with their products, hoping that, through a halo effect, their image will 'rub off' on their product. Among the 15-25 age group, McFly and Carlito are icons of cool. Their videos, viewed millions of times, promise their subscribers a funny time, something to smile about and clear their heads. In short, a cool moment. In other words, by this simple halo effect, if McFly and Carlito make a video with Emmanuel Macron, it automatically makes Emmanuel Macron cool.

No matter what is said, and no matter what the subject, our brains will make the unconscious association between their personalities and the image of Emmanuel Macron.

Image and personality, decisive factors for 2022?

In a democracy, we like to believe that when people go to the polls, they are voting in good conscience for a programme, for ideas, for a vision of the future. In reality, we know that this is not true. All the more so with someone like Emmanuel Macron. According to an Ipsos-Sopra Steria poll, in 2017, 8 % of votes for Emmanuel Macron in the second round were for "his personality. 8 %, compared with his score in the first round, represents around 700,000 votes. And yet an unsuccessful candidate has been saying for three and a half years that in 2017 he would have been in the second round. "à 600 000 votes". That candidate is Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

Since 2017, young people (born between around 1998 and 2005) have been the target of numerous reforms that have made their living conditions more difficult and their future more uncertain. With Parcoursup and the reform of the lycée, their chances of accessing a good education have been reduced, and have widened the inequalities between young people from favoured city centres, and the others (suburbs and "provinces"). Emmanuel Macron has also failed to live up to the expectations of this generation when it comes to the climate, as evidenced by his failure to respect the Paris agreements and his backtracking/amendments on neonicotinoids, glyphosate and the ban on disposable plastic.

The issue of police violence is also at the heart of the concerns of part of this generation, as demonstrated by the huge success of the demonstration on 2 June outside the Paris Magistrates' Court in memory of Adama Traoré and George Floyd. It is also a marker of the break with a President who makes no secret of his support for the methods of the Paris Police Prefect, Didier Lallement. Above all, these young people are starving and desperate. Between the exponential increase in prostitution, whether physical or digital, and the daily lengthening of queues outside food aid centres, we can see that an entire generation has been abandoned in the midst of a health crisis.

Faced with this situation, it is perfectly reasonable to think that the executive has commissioned surveys to gauge how this generation feels about its actions. And it is just as reasonable to think that the results of these polls are not good, hence the need to use influencers to limit the damage done by politics through communication.

Using influence to get round the rules

What is happening between McFly and Carlito and Emmanuel Macron is not a first under the LREM presidency, as this executive has already used it on several occasions to deliver messages to a population far removed from traditional media. Whether it's fitness youtuber Tibo InShape to promote the SNU, influencer EnjoyPhoenix who was invited to spend a day with Brune Poirson, then Secretary of State for Ecology, to green the government's image, or Nino Arial as part of an anti-harassment campaign, the use of influencers has become common practice under Emmanuel Macron's five-year presidency.

And this practice raises many questions.

With an audience of several million followers and the halo effect they confer on the politicians with whom they collaborate, influencers are a powerful means of political propaganda among the under-30s. But they are also a way for politicians to get round the French ban on advertising on social networks. In France, the legislation governing advertising for political propaganda purposes is particularly strict: it is prohibited in the six months preceding an election.

No banners, no keyword purchases, no sponsored posts on Facebook or Instagram, nothing. But as it stands, legislation does not prohibit commissioning a video from an influencer. However, given the young age of their audience (often underage) and the fact that an influencer is not bound by any duty of neutrality, unlike a journalist, we need to think about how, at the very least, to regulate and legislate these practices, which represent a real risk to the integrity of future elections.

by Antoine Kalawski, Liberation.fr