Edwy Plenel, president and co-founder of Mediapart, presented his new essay “The Ordeal and the Counter-Ordeal. From Yugoslavia to Ukraine” (orig.: “L’Épreuve et la Contre-épreuve. De la Yougoslavie à l’Ukraine”), at the public discussion on Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The presentation took place at the Town Hall in Lyon, and over 100 people, including journalists and politicians, attended the event. The meeting was organized by Collectif 69 in support of the Ukrainian people suffering from Russia’s war of aggression.
Edwy Plenel condemned Russian imperialism which “threatens the peace of the world”. According to the author, “this reality that the invasion of Ukraine forces us to face”, is “imperialism of mission, defending a conservative ideology in front of the democratic ideals assimilated to a Western decadence”.
World peace is threatened by Russian imperialism – Plenel
“A new imperialism threatens world peace, and it is Russian”, Edwy Plenel writes in the preface of his book. “It is this reality that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forces us to face. That of imperialism of revenge, driven by the resentment of fallen nations that turn their wounds into aggression against other nations. It is an imperialism of nuclear power at the mercy of a man and his oligarchic clan, having switched from authoritarianism to dictatorship.
In addition to its population, which this warlike headlong rush is diverting from its social aspirations and democratic demands, the first target of this imperialism is the free will of people to decide for themselves, their right to choose their destiny, and their freedom to invent their future.
This is the spring of the war in Ukraine since 2014. But it is also the reason for the Russian intervention in Syria, which came to the aid of one of the worst dictatorships in the Arab world in 2015, as it was for the second Chechen war in 1999 when Vladimir Putin asserted his power through violence by waging a war of extermination against the pro-independence wishes of a Caucasian people.
We still have to understand why, for the most part, our leaders, politicians, diplomats, businessmen, editorialists, and commentators, did not see the emergence of this specter born from the ruins of the USSR, offering an aggressive synthesis of communist Stalinism and Great Russian tsarism. This blindness is consubstantial with the rise, in our public debates, of nationalist and authoritarian, racist and anti-democratic ideologies.”
The book “L’Épreuve et la Contre-épreuve. De la Yougoslavie à l’Ukraine” is available on Amazon in paper and digital formats.
Who is Edwy Plenel
Edwy Plenel is a famous French political journalist. In 2008 Edwy Plenel co-founded Mediapart, an independent online media. Since that time, he has been running this online newspaper, as president of the publishing company and director of publication.
Mediapart is presented as a digital, participatory, and independent newspaper, without advertising or subsidies, and which lives only from the support of its readers. This French media has a model where the paid subscription guarantees the independence of the work of journalists while allowing access to a participatory club of quality whose contents are freely accessible.
Mediapart is known for its strong team of investigative journalists exposing many scandals in France and abroad, such as Football leaks, the Bettencourt family succession, links between Nicolas Sarkozy and Gaddafi, and Malta files.
