Gilbert D. 30 Nov : Europeans can take pleasure in the rare phenomenon these days of diametrically opposed narratives on major international issues being laid out... "the switch at Euronews was very obviously flicked in time for President Hollande’s visit to Moscow on Thursday, 26 November to agree on the terms of Russian-French military cooperation. In its coverage of the press conference which followed, Euronews gave equal time to the French and Russian presidents and chose the most important assertion from Putin’s statements for airing, his answer to a French journalist on why Assad’s remaining in power is not an impediment to combatting the Daesh, but is rather an essential precondition: as Putin explained, the Islamic State forces in Syria can only be defeated on the ground, and there is only one military force in existence today, the regular Syrian Army of President Assad. This very reasonable logic just happens to fly in the face of everything Washington, and official France as well, has been saying about the Syrian civil war."