AUnlike in Germany, France’s Russia policy over the past few years has not been subjected to a critical reassessment. The new chairman of the Rassemblement National (RN), Jordan Bardella, is receiving all the more attention for his admission that he misjudged Putin’s “urge to expand”. Speaking to the newspaper L’Opinion on Thursday, the 27-year-old party leader said: “There was a collective naivety about Vladimir Putin’s intentions and ambitions.” received, the public could not have imagined what intentions the Kremlin ruler had towards Europe, said Bardella. It would be a “moral error not to admit it”.
The RN chairman explained that “reality has knocked on our doors”. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine came as a surprise to many. Bardella clearly distanced himself from his party’s previous pro-Russian course and spoke out in favor of arms deliveries to Ukraine. However, care must be taken to ensure that France does not contribute to an escalation. Macron was right when he said that Russia “must not be humiliated”.
Shortly before the war began, Marine Le Pen had denied that Putin could have warlike intentions. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she hastily destroyed campaign brochures that showed her with Putin. Le Pen had long praised the Russian head of state as the savior of Christian civilization. After the illegal annexation of crime, her party allowed itself to be harnessed to Kremlin propaganda and sent members of parliament to the referendum as “election observers”. On the 5th anniversary of Crimea’s annexation, RN MP Thierry Mariani visited Crimea with a delegation and claimed people were “happier” than before. “Crimea is Russian,” said the RN deputy.
Le Pen to dinner with the Ukrainian Speaker of Parliament
Le Pen also made her party dependent on Moscow financially. In 2014 she received a loan of nine million euros from the First Czech-Russian Bank. When it went bankrupt in 2016, the Russian defense company Aviazapchast took over the claim. The company is now on the EU sanctions list. “When you talk about Russia, then you’re talking about your financier,” Emmanuel Macron told Le Pen in the only televised duel before the presidential election.
Bardella obviously wants to cut ties with Moscow. “Being a patriot means being committed to defending the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” he said. The Ukrainian nation existed “a little bit more every day”. “Denying this reality was perhaps one of Vladimir Putin’s biggest mistakes,” he said. The MEP stood up to applaud the Ukrainian President in the European Parliament when he gave a speech there recently. “For me, moral, political and material support for Ukraine is a matter of course. The Ukrainian cause has moved the whole European public. And that is perhaps what Vladimir Putin underestimated. We have a cultural closeness to Ukraine,” said Bardella.
Marine Le Pen has also corrected her disapproval of the Ukrainian government. When Ruslan Stefanchuk recently visited Paris, Le Pen also came to dinner with the Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament at the Hôtel Lassay, the official palace of the President of the National Assembly. The RN parliamentary group leader is said to have initially caused a certain “discomfort” among those present, reported the magazine “L’Obs”. But then she politely joined the conversation over scallops and foie gras. She asked Stefanchuk about Russian gas supplies. At the end of the dinner, the Ukrainian received a chocolate Jack Russell Terrier, a nod to a mine detection dog that Zelenskyi had decorated.
Le Pen takes Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as a role model when it comes to Russia policy. RN MP Sébastien Chénu said the aim was to take government responsibility. Contacts with the Ukrainian government should therefore be established now. Not all RN MPs agree with this about-face. MP Mariani continued to defend Putin’s policies, claiming that Ukraine had an interest in dragging Europe into the war.