The Debate

• When does Putin feel the pinch?

  It has been a long seven days — even by Russia-Ukraine standards. Last week at this time, the talk was of Tomahawk cruise missiles. But instead of delivering missiles, Donald Trump gave a closed-door earful at the White House to Volodymyr Zelensky. Then came talk of a mano à mano U.S.–Russia summit in Budapest.   Now the tide has turned again. No summit—just U.S. sanctions on Russia’s top two oil companies, an announcement coinciding with China and India reviewing their orders of Russian imports and the price of crude is soaring. Why the sudden about-face? And is Vladimir Putin actually feeling the pinch? Ordinary Russians are grappling with inflation and shortages, a well-documented reality. But do the elites of Moscow and Saint Petersburg even realize they are under economic pressure? We’ll ask about the current mindset there. Finally, on the frontlines, Europe’s bloodiest war in living memory continues to grind on, accompanied by a steady stream of populist rhetoric and nuclear threats.     Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Ilayda Habip and Daniel Whittington

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• France's Heist of the Century

  The Louvre is reopening for the first time since Sunday’s heist of the century. We will follow leads in a daylight robbery now estimated at 88 million euros and check security at the world’s most visited museum. For now, the shuttering on the getaway window looks as tenuous as the standing of under-pressure authorities, the president of the Louvre answering earlier to a French senate panel said. Beyond security lapses, is the 800-year-old fortress-turned-palace-turned museum simply too big to deal with the age of overtourism and shrinking public funding? And after the 2019 fire at Notre Dame Cathedral, it is another cherished landmark making world news for all the wrong reasons. How much can a jewelry caper fuel the general feeling of citizens that they are being ripped off by elected leaders who do not deliver?     Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Ilayda Habip and Daniel Whittington

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• Nicolas Sarkozy behind bars: Is jail time justified for former French president?

  Sometimes former presidents do go to jail. Nicolas Sarkozy has begun his five-year sentence over the illicit financing of his 2007 presidential campaign by Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya. Is this proof that justice is truly blind? Or, as his supporters contend, are we seeing revenge by magistrates who were often maligned by the 70-year-old conservative when he was in power? France is split on that debate. Meanwhile, Emmanuel Macron welcomed Sarkozy to the presidential palace last week ahead of his incarceration and his justice minister says he'll go visit the former leader at Paris's La Santé prison. So does jailing a former head of state really erode faith in institutions, which are already put to the test with the current showdown between a lame-duck president and a splintered parliament? Or should it be about the facts of the case, the dealings with Gaddafi and his head of intelligence Abdullah Senussi, seen as the mastermind of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and the 1989 downing of a French passenger plane over Niger? That all depends on which echo chamber you live in. Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Ilayda Habip and Jean-Vincent Russo

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• Gunning for Maduro? Trump targets vessels off Venezuela, Colombia

  Why is the United States suddenly in the business of blowing boats out of the water in the Caribbean? And why without summation? More than 30 people have been killed in seven strikes that started in early September, all under the orders of the same Donald Trump who wants a Nobel Peace Prize and who questions 80 years of US military presence in Europe, Korea and Japan. He's now gone beyond a war on drug trafficking in the Caribbean with not-so veiled threats to overthrow Venezuela’s regime. We ask about the operation and the resignation of the head of the US Southern Command that's in charge. This regional policy harks back to Trump's Inauguration Day nostalgia for William McKinley, his predecessor who started the 1898 war that wiped out Spain’s foothold in the Americas. Is all this really to please anti-leftist Latino voters in his secretary of state’s native Florida?  We also ask what’s next for Venezuela, a nation whose leader by all accounts stole the last presidential poll. How much support can Nicolas Maduro garner in this showdown, both at home and abroad? Produced by Delphine Liou, Rebecca Gnignatti, Ilayda Habip and Jean-Vincent Russo

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• The Tomahawks are coming? As Trump sours on Putin, Ukraine asks for missiles

  Whenever Donald Trump boasts of solving eight wars in eight months, the US president always adds a sigh of regret and repeats that he thought Ukraine and Russia would be the easiest one to solve. He did it again at Monday's signing in Egypt of the plan to end the war in Gaza. So if rolling out the red carpet in Alaska and bringing Vladimir Putin in from the cold didn't work, what will? More pressure on Russia, it seems, with NATO allies like Germany pledging to purchase military hardware for Ukraine that's made in the USA. We ask about those Tomahawk long-range missiles that will figure top of Volodymyr Zelensky's wish list when he travels to the White House on Friday. The Oval Office dumpster fire that was their first encounter back in February is now a fading memory. And since Trump divides the world into winners and losers, could his calculus be shifting, what with Ukraine resisting Russia's summer onslaught and hurting Moscow's pocketbook with successful long-range drone strikes against oil installations deep inside enemy territory? We ask about momentum and prospects for what's already a very, very long war. Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Daniel Whittington, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip, Charles Wente.

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