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On the front page of the press, the telephone conversation yesterday between the French and Russian Defense Ministers. The first conversation between Sébastien Lecornu and Sergueï Choïgou since October 2022. According to
Le Figaro
, this phone call, at the initiative of Paris, proves that France “has not completely given up on maintaining a link with Russia” , with which it “remains willing to continue sharing intelligence in matters of counter-terrorism”, almost two weeks after the Moscow attack and less than four months before the Paris Olympics. The issue of Ukraine was also discussed. If we do not know the details of this exchange,
our colleagues at RFI
indicate that it above all showed "the persistent disagreement" between the two countries, with Moscow evoking "a willingness to dialogue on Ukraine", which Paris denies "categorically"... France also recalls, for its part, that it "does not have any information enabling a link to be established between (the Moscow attack) and Ukraine" - to which the The Russians respond, saying they hope that "the French secret services" are not involved in this attack.
Russia, which American intelligence services claim to have alerted to the risk of an attack in Moscow.
The Financial Times
, the British daily, claims that these alerts of imminent threat from the Islamic State group were "minimized by the Russian security services", which, "instead of responding to these warnings", would have "accused the States -United to support the organization themselves” and “delivered to the CIA their own list of suspected terrorists: Russian dissidents living in exile in Europe”.
From Russian dissidents to Cuban dissidents. In Havana,
Libération
met intellectuals who want to continue to think, despite repression and propaganda. According to Libé, the muzzling of dissidents increased after the major demonstrations of July 2021. A repression which adds to the serious economic difficulties, as evidenced, in particular, by the essayist Roberto Zurbano. “We no longer have time to think, because of the economic situation in the country. We have to queue to buy food, find a scheme to earn a few pennies,” he says. Roberto Zurbano manages, despite everything, to escape from daily worries to reflect on the society in which he lives, its racism and its machismo. Very far from the anti-"Yankee", anti-imperialist diatribes of the regime, this intellectual describes Cuba as a
"invisible plantation", where "black women have the same role they had when they were slaves: cleaning toilets, working in the kitchen or selling flowers in slave costume", in historic Havana.
Also read this morning, the major report from
La Croix
in Western Sahara, on the borders of Morocco and Algeria. In this territory disputed for 48 years by Morocco and the Polisario Front, an independence movement, supported by Algeria, the Sahrawi people live on both sides of a border which separates thousands of families. This “Sand Wall”, erected by Morocco in the 1980s, is described as a “colossal” complex 2,700 kilometers long, guarded by 100,000 Moroccan soldiers and protected by some 10 million anti-personnel mines. A wall which has “literally cracked space and time”, according to
La Croix
, which tells how the Sahrawis try, despite everything, to maintain or establish contacts, on both sides of the “Wall of Sands”. ".
From sand to bitumen. Is his journey through the desert finally over? The second favorite political figure of the French according to a recent survey, former president François Hollande returns to the forefront with a book - and his famous "love scooter", as
Le Figaro
mischievously calls it . The newspaper announces the auction of the scooter on which the former President of the Republic was photographed by a paparazzi in 2014 in front of the building of the actress Julie Gayet, a photo which sparked a political-media vaudeville. Starting price: 10,000 euros…
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