If on April 12th Viktor Orbán loses the elections, as the polls predict, Hungary will join the European countries where the far-right has peaked, like Marine Le Pen in the French municipal elections, or like in Italy, where Giorgia Meloni failed in a key call in the referendum on justice. The possible defeat of Orbán and the triumph of the liberal right of Péter Magyar would add to the siege of indications and suspicions that hangs over the Hungarian prime minister, accused of having leaked confidential information from the European Union to Vladimir Putin, as well as placing all sorts of obstacles to European support for Ukraine.

The film The Kremlin Magician, This French production, directed by Olivier Assayas with a screenplay by Emmanuel Carrère, represents what no one had dared to do before: to stage on screen the background and key figures of the first fifteen years of Putin's Russia. It depicts the transition to a police state, a synthesis of Soviet totalitarianism and oligarchic capitalism. I gather that screenwriter Emmanuel Carrère—son of historian Hélène Carrère de Encausse—has greatly irritated the Kremlin, but he has been skillful enough to guarantee the physical safety of some characters by changing their names.

I haven't waited until February 23rd. I've decided against timing my reflections to coincide with the fourth anniversary of Putin's attack. I prefer to write about the origins of this European tragedy. I will, of course, talk about Ukraine, and about the Russian and European perspectives on it, but not The Abu Dhabi peace plans are a never-ending storyI decide to backtrack and begin with a quote from the late Alexei Navalny. Words that say almost everything: "Once the war is over, Ukraine will have to be compensated for the harm caused by Putin's invasion." Terrible figures: a contraction of more than 50% of GDP; mourning for tens of thousands of dead, more than 100,000; how to repair the damage done to 6.7 million refugees. And how to achieve the return of the more than 20,000 Ukrainian boys and girls kidnapped by Russian units and treated as a weapon of war.

"Where are we in Anne Frank's diary?" The words of Pedro Rodríguez, professor of international relations at Complutense University, carry the weight of a pronouncement. A bombshell that forces us to reflect on Trump's threats in light of Hitler's crimes. The professor was responding to comments during a televised debate in which the panelists avoided using overly harsh labels to describe Donald Trump. They called him a capricious businessman who had pocketed $3 billion by 2025, or perhaps a narcissist leaning towards extremist positions. But no one dared to identify him as a fascist or, even worse, a Nazi. And Pedro Rodríguez, opening Anne Frank's diary, suddenly exposed the reluctance to speak plainly. These reservations are shared in the United States by figures who are, let's say, equidistant, such as journalist Robert D. Kaplan, but are by no means accepted by Nobel laureate in economics Paul Krugman or historian Robert Paxton, for whom Trump is a fascist reminiscent of Hitler.

Christmas 2021, two months before the attack on Ukraine, Putin began to give both real and false clues about the aggressionAnd he did so surrounded by illuminated fir trees as he approached Ded Moroz—Grandfather Frost—the Soviet equivalent of Santa Claus. Putin thanked him for his more than twenty years as President of Russia and asked for his support for his future plans—including the war he was considering. "My relationship with Ded Moroz has always been very good," Putin repeated, and he allowed himself to recall that he is the only Santa Claus who is part of his childhood memories from the 1950s, handing out sweets on New Year's Eve in the Leningrad neighborhood where he lived.

Donald Trump is losing control of the war in Ukraine every other day. Vladimir Putin isn't paying him the attention he'd like, and He had to cancel the ultimatum he had given to Zelensky to accept his peace plan. And while Europe has breathed a sigh of relief, although it still struggles. My articles "Europe is preparing to resist" and "Europe has yet to open its eyesPublished in May and October, respectively, these articles attempted to address European impotence. Flight and mourning. Europe as its own worst enemy. Until now, yes, it seems to be losing its fear and discovering the opportunity for self-reflection, recognizing that deterrence is not incompatible with firmness. It is reluctantly accepting that the Kremlin will eventually take a piece of Ukrainian sovereignty. Russia—which should be finished by autumn 2026—and also... the creation of the so-called military Schengen areawhich allows units from all Western armies to move freely within the European bloc. However, some issues of considerable strategic importance remain unresolved.

It's unsettling to see Donald Trump meeting with Viktor Orbán and promising him flexibility so that Hungary can continue buying gas and oil from Russia, despite the sanctions against Putin, circumventing US proposals to end the war in Ukraine. And all this knowing, as Trump knows very well, that Orbán's Hungary is a center of espionage that has the institutions of the European Union in its sights. Trump knows that FSB agents move freely in Budapest, and he surely doesn't care. It neither moves him nor affects him. He carries the accusation of having collaborated with the Kageb regime almost four decades ago. For thirty-eight years, and in different guises, the US president would have been the agent Krasnov..

It can be said that Vladimir Putin has completed the repressive police and judicial apparatus that he has been building up over 25 years in the Kremlin. The deployment by the FSB, the former KGB, of a new criminal charge against the dissidents in exile – which is described as a "terrorist community"- represents the push for a kind of general cause against the entire opposition, similar to the one unleashed by General Franco at the end of the Civil War.

With the The return of the prime ministership to tycoon Andrej Babis, the Czech Republic joins the disturbing Trumpist and at the same time Putinist sphere of the European Union. A Trojan horse that grows and becomes stronger. Look where, Andrej Babis comes, like the Hungarian Viktor Orbán, from the old communist nomenclature, and can understand perfectly with the Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico. All three have the same origins and know that preventing or obstructing aid to Ukraine is the best way to obtain Russian gas, even if the price to pay is to weaken the EU further.

Donald Trump's latest move on the geopolitical landscape has been to call for the arrest of Jewish-American-Hungarian magnate George Soros, whom he accuses of supporting violent popular mobilizations. As I write these lines, I know I'm embracing aspects of journalist Félix Flores' analysis in The Vanguard when he explains how Trump, by pointing to Soros as a member of organized crime, is giving Putin a splendid gift. Donald Trump never fails to take into account what pleases his friend Vladimir, as he calls him.

Neither a ceasefire nor a reduction in hostilities in Ukraine. This seems to be what Vladimir Putin is thinking as the end of the war approaches. face to face with Donald TrumpAnd that also seems to be what we're smelling—and he's been saying it for days—from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk: "I fear we're heading towards a freezing of the conflict." Alaska is thus emerging as the stage for the umpteenth Putin-Trump game of vagueness and ambiguity. The result would be more uncertainty, leading us to where we've perhaps never really moved: what Trump and Putin want is to agree on the future of Ukraine and Europe. Putin hasn't renounced the territorial spoils—Crimea and a good part of Donbas—a success disguised as a victory in the eyes of Russian society, and which would leave Ukraine with almost unconditional surrender: obligatory neutrality—always threatened with satellization—and no question of joining NATO.

It could be said that Viktor Orbán, the designer of the most convoluted illiberal and authoritarian trenches—both Putinist and Trumpist—within the European Union, is beginning to crumble, to fade away. The polls show that he is the most likely candidate. In his party, the far-right Fidesz, the lowest level of support in the last ten years: a 36% voting intention.

It is surprising and shocking that an American journalist and researcher like Robert D. Kaplan, a democrat, humanist and well-versed in Europe – let us remember his Balkan ghosts– declare himself, I wouldn't say an adept, but certainly sympathetic to some of Donald Trump's approaches. First of all, Kaplan, following the recent publication of his book Waste Land (RBA Editorial, 2025), on the risk of global geopolitics becoming an immense Weimar Republic—and, therefore, a threat of self-destruction for democracy—he dares to disqualify Trump as a politician, treating him as an ignoramus who represents nothing beyond social media propaganda. But when media outlets of various persuasions ask Robert Kaplan whether he sees a tyrant in the US president, the analyst and reporter says that perhaps Trump doesn't respect the judiciary, but then seems to exonerate him: "Trump isn't serious enough to be a fascist. A fascist has devised a plan, and Trump doesn't have one." Kaplan ignores or obviates statements about Trump's fascism expressed by historian Robert Paxton and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman.

Vladimir Putin's profile since his expansionist drive – starting with the annexation of Crimea and Donbas in 2014 – He was presented as a calculating, devious, and unpredictable autocrat who never gives any clues about his plans, and if he's a woman, they're false. A dictator, yes, as some media outlets are beginning to point out, he has demonstrated how he uses confusion and falsehoods in the attack on Iran. Surprise. Seeing and experiencing what has happened, I'm tempted to ask: to what extent does the improvised calculation of the American autocratic businessman surpass the systematic rigidity of calculation of the old Russian kagebist? Ukraine. But beware: Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz – thanks, let's not forget, to Trump's attack – could raise the price of oil, And this would benefit Russia. It's a possibility that must be maintained. Let's go back to 2004, when Putin's regime consolidated thanks precisely to the rise in crude oil prices. It should not be forgotten that the Russian dictator wrote a doctoral thesis on the use of oil as a geostrategic tool necessary for Russia's imperial rise. Between 2000 and 2004, the Kremlin took advantage of the rise in crude oil prices and nationalized companies that had been privatized. The result was a production of between 9 and 11 million barrels per day, of which 4 million are exported.

Henarrow arrival of ultraconservative Karol Nawrocki In the Polish presidency, he proposes a cohabitation with Prime Minister Donald Tusk that could interrupt the relief and optimism of the EU, especially after the respite that it represented Victory of the pro-European Nicusor Dan in the Romanian presidential electionsThe emerging cohabitation—almost coexistence—expresses that Poland has fallen far short of being the EU's most solid pillar in the east, as Brussels desired. In Poland, the votes have maintained the format of social and geopolitical polarization, with large sectors of the middle classes betting on ultranationalism: now for Nawrocki, an admirer of Trump and MAGA, just as they had previously opted for Kaczynski's PiS. It doesn't matter.

The ballot boxes continue to test the European Union, telling it that it has had enough doubts, and it must go all out and resist the joint assault of Trump and Putin.has been left in a shock, a parody mounted by the ultra-right candidate George Simion, declaring himself the winner when the exit poll estimates indicated that the president would be the pro-European Nicusor Dana. Relief and hope in the EU, coexisting with fears, and all of this surrounded by great uncertainty that will cost him to leave, even if on Sunday, June 1, the liberal Rafal Trzaskowski becomes president of Poland.

I couldn't help but borrow from the American writer Siri Hustvedt the substance of the article she published a month ago in the newspaper Le Monde. Inevitable, because what I have not stopped asking myself for months, she has also been asking herself, and she has answered it clearly with "Fascism in the United States", a writing where Hustvedt -widow of the novelist Paul Auster- assures that she lives in "a routine tinged with fear", that she faces a reality where in the press there is a list of the 199 words to be avoided by the Trump government: black, diverse, gay and women.

Vladimir Putin maintains the desire to conquer or control territories that belonged to the Soviet Union, but reality tells him that, three decades after the collapse of the empire, The Russian Baltic community loses rights, while the Russian language is in decline, especially in Central Asia. The wind has finally blown in favor of languages labeled as regional—considered second-class—that are now taught in schools and are happily studied by people in their forties and fifties: the generation that didn't have access and now enjoys literature, media, and social networks in their own language.

The global crisis caused by the rise to power of Donald Trump has intensified the debate on how to label, ideologically, the spheres controlled by the extreme right. A controversy that is apparently causing considerable reluctance among historians, political scientists, analysts, and journalists when it comes to presenting facts and ideas in black and white. Because it's not just a question of how to use the terminology: far right, extreme right, far right, populist far right? Or simply right-wing populism or ultra populism? It might seem like we're dealing with a handful of euphemisms and substitutes to choose from when talking about Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, Orbán, or Le Pen. Some warn of the risk of falling into a certain "banalization" of fascism. And the signals emitted by reality invite us to delve deeper into the issue.

Europe in 2025, after The EU has put 800 billion euros on the table to articulate defense, seems to be rapidly moving away from the shadow of the Europe of 1939, which surrendered to Hitler at the hands of Chamberlain and Daladier. Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron represent a limit for both Trump and Putin, beyond their weaknesses and short-sightedness. And NATO? What will become of the increasingly distant Alliance between the US and Europe? I would say that NATO is gradually moving from an anxious impulse to an agonizing one, despite the insistence of its Secretary General, Mark Rutte, to convince Donald Trump of the EU's effort "to put 800 billion euros at the service of NATO." This while Rutte laughed at the US president's insinuations of annexing Greenland.But is Mark Rutte really convinced that the 800 billion euros will go to a NATO controlled both logistically and technically by Trump's US?