Three months after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we spoke to French historian Antoine Arjakovsky, a specialist on Ukraine and Russia. He told us that the conflict is a "war of civilisation" between two different visions of the world: Russia, a state that wants to become a "21st-century empire", and the "nation state" of Ukraine. Back before the Russian invasion, when Moscow already controlled Crimea, Arjakovsky gathered with 200 experts. They produced a report in 2019 explaining their fears that Russia would indeed invade the rest of Ukraine – but this warning fell on deaf ears in the West.

He was the last surviving member of the Companions of the Liberation, an elite group of Resistance fighters hand-picked by Charles de Gaulle. Hubert Germain passed away in October at the age of 101. Today, he will be laid to rest at the Mont-Valérien war memorial outside Paris. For many, the passing of Germain marks the end of a chapter in French history and opens a new debate on how to keep the memory of the French Resistance alive. Historian Guillaume Piketty joined us on Perspective to tell us more.

Who are we, and where did we come from? These are the questions Yuval Noah Harari, historian and philosopher, attempts to answer in the first volume of the graphic edition of his bestselling book: “Sapiens, the birth of human kind”. If our guest goes back in time, it’s to help his readers understand the challenges of our present: against the backdrop of the ongoing crisis, the world community needs come up with a global response, and urgently keep its trust in the scientific truth.