TOPIC OF THE 2026 FRANCOPHONE COPING OLYMPIADS TAKE-HOME EXAM

In mid-February, the Israeli-American war machine was set in motion following a late January phone conversation between Netanyahu and Putin, during which it is evident that the latter promised not to militarily aid his Iranian "strategic partner".

However, unlike the promises made to Armenians, Latin Americans, Transnistrians, Russians in general, and Syrians, Putin, quite obviously, keeps the promises made to his "partner" (or superior?) Bibi. Putin had also spoken on the phone with one of the "miraculous survivors" of the operation to decapitate the Iranian regime: the "reformist" Pezeshkian (who is ethnically Azeri, by the way).

So we have the modus operandi of the stab in the back, as well as the motive: the closure of the Strait of Hormuz breaks the stranglehold organized by Trump around the Russian oil industry. Ursula has already ordered Zelensky to repair the Druzhba oil pipeline "sabotaged by a Russian bombing" - which certainly corresponds to the demands of Budapest and Bratislava, but also (more discreetly) to those of Vienna (the MOL refinery in Bratislava working mainly for export), and no longer contravenes the interests of Zagreb (which, by now, has certainly lost all hope of selling MOL, via the ADRIA pipeline, oil that tankers, meanwhile blocked at sea, should unload in Rijeka).

Since the outright denial of the Kremlin's treachery will not work for much longer, I am already anticipating the sophisticated reasoning of our Coping artists from the illiberal conspisphere, who will certainly explain to us that this is a masterstroke by the 5D chess player Putin, who managed to "be led" to the brink of financial asphyxiation, "in order to" in extremis betray all his allies (Iran, but also China, and to a certain extent India - the latter having indeed asked for it, by shamefully exploiting the situation before the blockage).

I specify that the test is naturally also open to our French-speaking Swiss friends, whether or not they live in Brussels.