On the eve of the 2017 presidential election, Marine Le Pen went to Moscow to shake hands with Vladimir Putin, in a scene that resembled political approval. Five years later, the National Rally (RN) candidate has remarkably changed her tone from the Kremlin master, who has now invaded Ukraine:
“I have no friendship with Vladimir Putin, who I have ever met in my life, I don’t even have any financial ties with him. †
An attempt to hide a decade of political, ideological and financial closeness between Marine Le Pen and Vladimir Poutine.
Multiple statements of support or admiration
Since her accession in January 2011 to the presidency of the National Front (FN) – renamed National Rally in 2018 – Marine Le Pen has repeatedly expressed her admiration for Vladimir Putin and her support for his policies, despite the frequent violations of human rights and international law of the Russian regime. Things really started to change after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Trips to Moscow and an official reception
The president of the RN has visited Russia at least four times since 2013, each with awards from the regime.
- June 2013: received in the Duma on her first certified trip to Russia
A year after her first candidacy for presidential elections, Marine Le Pen made a ten-day trip to Crimea (then Ukrainian) and to Russia. In Moscow, together with Louis Aliot (then vice president of the FN), she was received by two important figures of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament: the president, Sergei Narychkine, a former KGB/FSB, and the president of the Committee on International Affairs, Alexei Pushkov. During this visit she denounces “a kind of cold war against Russia led by the European Union” [UE] †† “Russia is presented under demonized features” † I feel more in tune with this model of economic patriotism than with the EU’s”she insists for the cameras†
- April 2014: second visit to Russia, she is received again in the Duma
A few weeks after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and less than a year after her last visit to Moscow, Marine Le Pen is once again welcome with open arms by Sergei Naryshkin. This good friend of Putin, propelled to the top of power by his close ties to the Russian president, has himself been the target of EU and United States sanctions since the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula. The opportunity for the President of the RN to support him and remind him of his opposition to such measures:
“I have said from the beginning that sanctions and even threats of sanctions † were completely counterproductive. I maintain it. †
- May 2015: third trip to Moscow, always welcome in the Duma
For the third consecutive year, Marine Le Pen is received by Sergei Narychkine in the Duma. The latter compliments the far-right MEP extensively and qualifies the FN as a political formation “stable and persistent”† “Thanks to your personal influence, the new definitions of your party correspond to the times and the spirit of modern France”adds this close friend of Vladimir Putin.
“This treatment, Moscow does not favor everyone”† reminded the correspondent World then† Two days earlier, Karl-Georg Wellmann, deputy of the CDU, Angela Merkel’s conservative party, had been expelled from the area upon his arrival at Moscow airport on May 24 because of his ties to Ukraine, whose friendship group he chairs in the Bundestag. . †
- March 24, 2017: A first official reception by Vladimir Putin
Less than four weeks before the first round of the 2017 presidential election, the RN candidate travels to Moscow for the fourth time in five yearswhere the doors of the Kremlin are now open to him.
Vladimir Putin, for whom she never hid her admiration, receives her for an hour and a half. In the presence of the photographers, they exchange a warm handshake and sit around the same table. “I know you represent a fast-growing political spectrum in Europe”hands him over to the Russian president.
“We do not want to influence current events in any way”, launches Vladimir Putin, anticipating accusations of meddling in the presidential campaign. According to Marine Le Pen’s team, the main purpose of the meeting was to highlight the convergence of views, especially on the fight against terrorism and the migration crisis that hit Europe at the time. say to oneself ” totally agree “ with the French candidate on these issues, he assures us that: “Only by pooling our efforts can we effectively counter the terrorist threat”†
During this trip, Marine Le Pen also made a detour to the State Duma, where she was received by the new president, Viatcheslav Volodin, also close to the Russian president. She welcomes the intervention of Russian troops in Syria and reiterates her: “Position on Ukraine that coincides with that of Russia”reaffirming its desire to lift the international sanctions that weigh on Russian personalities.
Consistently votes in favor of Russia
The RN and Marine Le Pen’s support for Vladimir Putin goes beyond words. Through its members of the European Parliament, the far-right party almost systematically defended the Russian regime by voting against European Parliament resolutions condemning belligerent actions or violations of international law by the Kremlin ruler.
The RN-elected officials only began to change their position after the invasion of Ukraine, by agreeing to approve, on 1er March 2022, one of the sanctions packages decided by the EU.
Relatives with close ties to Russia
Like her father, Marine Le Pen has always had Russophile personalities with close ties to the Russian power close to her. Between 2010 and 2015, his international policy advisor, geopolitical scientist Aymeric Chauprade, frequent meetings with relatives of Vladimir Putin† If he has now broken with the RN, his close connection to the Kremlin was confirmed in 2019, with the recruitment as a trainee parliamentary assistant to Elizaveta Peskovathe daughter of the spokesman for the Russian president.
In 2014, Marine Le Pen relied on Jean-Luc Schaffhauser, an international consultant well known in Russia and FN MEP, to obtain financing from a Russian bank†
Today, the most important man in relations between the RN and Russia is MEP Thierry Mariani, a former minister of Nicolas Sarkozy, who is considering Marine Le Pen appointing minister in the event of a victory. Thierry Mariani is believed to be a Poutinophile and has been playing the representatives of the Russian regime in France for years. The war in Ukraine has not dampened his admiration for Vladimir Putin, whom he met in person in 2019: he holds the West responsible for the Ukrainian situation and questions the existence of war crimes committed by the Russian military.
In the European Parliament, Thierry Mariani and his colleagues can take advantage of the interpersonal skills of Tamara Volokhova: this former Franco-Russian top model, who is said to have heard the Kremlin, who has become political adviser to RN members, has organized or participated in several travel RN elected officials in Russia or the annexed Crimea.
Financial ties and the suspicion of counterparties
The RN was able to find financial support in Russia that France often lacked, due to the reluctance of banks to lend money to the far right.
In April 2014, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s microparty, Cotelec, received a 2 million euro loan from an obscure Cypriot offshore company, Vernonsia Holdings Ltd. If the identity of the owner of this business has never been clearly established, media part revealed that it was fueled by Russian funds and linked to Yuri Kudimov – a former KGB agent who headed Russia’s state-owned bank VTB and who is close to influential oligarch Konstantin Malofeev. The RN benefited indirectly from this loan, ashe borrowed money from Cotelec to fund the 2017 presidential campaign.
In 2014, the FN also took out a loan directly from a Russian bank, the First Czech Russian Bank, to fund its campaign for the 2015 regional and departmental elections. A loan of 9.4 million euros that the party must repay until 2028 from the creditors of the bank, which has since gone bankrupt.
These two loans raise questions. According to hacked conversations of Kremlin officials revealed in April 2015 by media partinterested people wonder how Marine Le Pen should be “thanks” for his support of the annexation of Crimea. Marine Le Pen, she, refutes the links between its positions vis-à-vis Russia and these financial facilities. She claims to have had no choice but to take advantage of foreign financing, due to the difficulties in obtaining loans from French banks.
With borrowing from non-European banks banned since 2017, Marine Le Pen turned to Hungary to fund her 2022 campaign.
