Exactly one year ago, in Anchorage (Alaska), Donald Trump welcomed Vladimir Putin with a red carpet in an attempt to stop the war in Ukraine. Six months earlier, on February 28, 2025, in an unusual reprimand broadcast live from the Oval Office of the White House, the US president had insisted to Volodymyr Zelensky that he had to accept a ceasefire, under draconian conditions imposed by Moscow. “You are not in a good position, you don’t have the cards,” Trump repeated to him again and again. A tense scene that history will remember.

Roya* speaks softly, in impeccable English that she says she learned by listening to American pop music, something she would never admit in front of her mother. The video call on Instagram cuts out for a moment. The sisters need a VPN, a virtual private network, to access social networks, as local operators restrict traffic from applications like Instagram and Facebook. The image returns. From a tidy room in Kabul province, the 23-year-old recalls what she calls “the worst day of my life.”

Right-wing radical patriots gladly ride the migratory waves. They are their preferred media shock, caused by the “invasion” of the external enemy, allowing hardline solutions and, for their leaders, to appear as the necessary saviors of the homeland in troubled times. They are…