Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service

shortly on the program we'll be hearing about the widespread Russian

bombardment of Ukraine today as Kyiv's allies prepare for their NATO summit in

Washington.

I'm Paul Henley and I'm in the news hour studio in London today.

My colleague James Kumarasami is in Paris where the political landscape

of yesterday is dramatically different from today's. Snap elections have produced a win for a

left-wing coalition and a somewhat unexpected defeat for the far right.

But no party or group of parties has overall control and it isn't yet clear where the President

Macron's gamble of calling those elections in the first place has paid off.

Well Jamie joins me now, Jamie, tell us more about what's happened.

Well yes, Emmanuel Macron said he was calling these elections to achieve clarity.

He certainly hasn't got that.

If that's what he wanted, well the gamble hasn't paid off.

And it's actually pretty hard to judge who the real winners and losers are here because

none of the three main blocks

from the left the far right and the center have got anything like the number of

seats to form a government what is clear is the decision by parties on the left

and the center to join forces in the second round

of voting, scuppered the hopes of the far right national rally to former government, led by

its leader Jordan Bardella and that has left France in uncharted

in the modern era at least of having a hung parliament. The young

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