内容摘要：German Chancellor Merz’s recent comments cause speculation Berlin will finally send the weapons to Ukraine.

German Chancellor Merz’s recent comments cause speculation Berlin will finally send the weapons to Ukraine.

L'Occitane's former subsidiary receives its cosmetics almost exclusively via one company, Smart Beauty LLC - a contrast from the typical scenario involving parallel imports, where numerous small suppliers are involved.Smart Beauty LLC was registered in Dubai in June 2022 - the same month L’Occitane announced its exit from Russia - and has shipped more than 900 tonnes of cosmetics to Russia, according to customs data.

Dubai’s business registry does not show the identity of Smart Beauty’s owner. L’Occitane did not reply to Al Jazeera’s questions about whether it was aware of the importation of its products by its former subsidiary.Tracing the supply chains of goods from a factory where they are produced to the shelf in Russia can be challenging as importers may use numerous intermediary companies across multiple countries.The owner of a Russian wholesale supplier of electronics who spoke on condition of anonymity told Al Jazeera that many front companies have been established in third countries specifically to organise parallel imports, sometimes by Russian importers and sometimes even by the brands themselves.

“Front companies established by brands would hardly speak to a new player whom they don’t know or answer an email inquiry,” he said.“But the relationships between brands and retailers have been developed through years. It’s very tempting to use proxies and continue business.”

Western brands that have distanced themselves from Russia can be broadly categorised into three groups, said Mikhail Burmistrov, the director of the Russian think tank Infoline Analytics.

“There are those who left and actively try to prevent parallel imports,” Burmistrov told Al Jazeera.Pakistan, in turn, cast India as a fascist state: led by a majoritarian regime, obsessed with humiliation, eager to erase Muslims from history. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the aggressor. India was the occupier. Their strikes were framed not as counterterrorism but as religious war.

In each case, the enemy wasn’t just a threat. The enemy was an idea — and an idea cannot be reasoned with.This is the danger of media-driven identity construction. Once the Other becomes a caricature, dialogue dies. Diplomacy becomes weakness. Compromise becomes betrayal. And war becomes not just possible, but desirable.

The image of the Other also determined who was considered a victim and who was not.While missiles flew, people died. Civilians in Kashmir, on both sides, were killed. Border villages were shelled. Religious sites damaged. Innocent people displaced. But these stories, the human stories, were buried beneath the rubble of rhetoric.