Putin and the Kremlin’s new strategy: In this chilling prospective analysis set in early 2026, Françoise Thom dissects the Kremlin's survival strategy facing the new geopolitical reality imposed by the return of Donald Trump. While the American president sparks a major crisis by seeking to annex Greenland, Putin is playing a perverse double game. On one hand, he supports Trump’s imperial ambitions to validate the principle that "might makes right" and, through a mirror effect, legitimize his own conquests in Ukraine. On the other, his propagandists are executing a 180-degree turn: yesterday’s fierce critics of Western rules are now posing as hypocritical defenders of international law to seduce a stunned Europe and pry it away from the American orbit.

However, hiding behind this diplomatic offensive is a desperate Russia whose economy is collapsing and which is selling off its resources to China to bankroll its war. The historian demonstrates that Putin is locked in a race against the clock: he must crush Ukraine quickly to then vassalize European elites by exploiting their rejection of Trump. The conclusion is unequivocal: faced with this trap, Europe must choose neither the plague nor the cholera, but stand united against the "two gangsters" by continuing to support Kyiv.