France Faces Russian Subversion, Boosts Defence Spending

The starkest item of the French day was an investigative disclosure. Documents obtained by Delfi Estonia and shared with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project showed Russian planners had mapped out provocations on French soil for 2025-2026: pig heads left near Paris mosques, the vandalism of a Holocaust museum, and the defacing of a monument to Charles de Gaulle, each engineered to be blamed on "Ukrainian nationalists." Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation, which publicized the files, tied the operations to the sanctioned Social Design Agency, said to answer to the Russian presidential administration, and pointed to a parallel effort pushing false claims about property supposedly owned by Volodymyr Zelensky.

The disclosure landed as the Senate moved to spend more on defence. Its foreign affairs and defence committee proposed adding 14 billion euros to the government's updated military programming law, lifting the 2024-2030 total to 450 billion euros. Committee president Cedric Perrin said the increase was needed to align French spending with NATO's 3.5%-of-GDP target by 2035 -- a level the current plan would miss -- and would raise defence outlays to 2.7% of GDP by 2030, against the government's projected 2.5%.

At home, the government turned to child protection. Education Minister Edouard Geffray announced that staff removed from schools for inappropriate behaviour toward minors would be placed on a blacklist barring re-employment in education even without a criminal conviction. The measure forms part of a broader bill presented by Health Minister Stephanie Rist and Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin that would also impose continuous background checks on everyone working with children.

The day's regulatory friction extended to the platforms. The medical NGO Medecins du Monde said Meta had permanently disabled two of its Instagram accounts in May, part of a wider pattern of restrictions on sexual-health and LGBTQIA+ groups. A coalition of Dutch and European rights organisations sent Meta a formal notice on 20 May invoking the EU Digital Services Act and alleging digital discrimination, while the group Repro Uncensored reported more than 130 complaints in April alone, with 2025 cases already exceeding the total for all of 2024.