The Spiral of the Void What Françoise Thom highlights in this masterful text is the definitive end of our illusions regarding the nature of the Russian regime. For a long time, we believed we were dealing with a State guided by rational interests, negotiable red lines, and classical diplomacy. This was a fatal error. The article demonstrates that Putinism has entered its terminal phase: that of "total war." It is no longer a strategy; it is a physiology. The regime now survives only through destruction—that of Ukraine, of course, but also that of Russia itself, transformed into a prison-barracks where the economy, culture, and minds are sacrificed to the military Moloch. The message is terrifying but salutary: there is no turning back. Putin has burned his bridges. To hope for a compromise, a "gray peace," or a return to business as usual is to fail to understand that we are facing a nihilistic machine that requires perpetual conflict to avoid collapsing upon itself. The conclusion is self-evident: one does not negotiate with a metastasizing cancer. Faced with a Russia that has chosen collective suicide as long as it drags the West down with it, our only option is absolute firmness. Any weakness, any hesitation to name this totalitarianism for what it is, will not be perceived as an outstretched hand, but as an invitation to destroy us. The war is total because the enemy does not seek our defeat; he seeks our disappearance.