The National Rally declared “a cabal” on Tuesday after the investigation of Washington Post accusing him of persistent ties with Moscow to weaken support for Ukraine. The party, however, confirms its desire to reverse the sanctions targeting Russia. In the East, nothing new. Accused for years of serving the propaganda of the Russian regime, the RN is once again caught up in its privileged links with Moscow.
The controversy this time comes from across the Atlantic: in a survey published on Saturday, the Washington Post accuses the party of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella of playing a decisive role in the strategy orchestrated by Vladimir Putin’s entourage to destabilize Europe and “undermine support for Ukraine”. A vast enterprise of subversion combining social networks – oriented with the help of “troll farms” – and the cooperation of far-right parties, according to the American daily which relies in particular on “Kremlin documents obtained by a European security service.
“All governments in Western Europe will be changed”
This strategy particularly targets France, identified in 2022 by Moscow as “vulnerable to political agitation”, although Russian power is also closely interested in Germany and Italy. Ultimately, “all governments in Western Europe will be changed”, assures Jean-Luc Schaffhauser, former MEP under the banner of the Front and then the National Rally, quoted in the newspaper.
This key figure in Marine Le Pen’s party, who negotiated for her party the loan obtained in 2014 from a Czech-Russian bank, is implicated by the Washington Post, which reports its link with a representative of the Kremlin in France. According to the daily, Mr. Schaffhauser “rents a floor of his residence” in Strasbourg to the number two at the Russian embassy in France, Ilya Subbotin, who sat on the Council of Europe until his exclusion in March 2022 A simple “commercial arrangement” through an agency, tempers the former MEP.
“Drive belt”
In Emmanuel Macron’s camp, Renaissance sees it on the contrary as further proof that “the RN is indeed the spokesperson for the Kremlin in France”. It “plays a leading role in relaying Putin’s propaganda”, writes the party on which his party finally reimbursed last September.
The three-time presidential candidate also fueled criticism by meeting Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin in 2017, a month before the election. So many elements retained by the Macronist rapporteur of a parliamentary commission who qualified, in June, the RN as Russia’s “transmission belt”, even if the party has changed its discourse since the invasion of Ukraine at the beginning 2022 and recognizes that Moscow is the “aggressor”.
“If Russia had given us our language, I don’t think we would say that,” objected its spokesperson Laurent Jacobelli, insisting on Sud Radio that “there is no link between Russia and Russia. National gathering. “All of this is a cabal,” he insisted, assuring that for the RN “the final objective is peace” and that “Ukraine regains its independence, its sovereignty and its borders” through “the diplomatic route”.
“Useless embargoes”
But the party remains skeptical of Kiev’s “offensive weapons aid” and opposed to the “useless embargoes” imposed on Moscow, particularly on Russian gas and oil which “continue to arrive by indirect means” and that “the French paid more” in the end. An argument developed by “the Kremlin strategies”, according to the Washington Post, with the aim of discrediting the sanctions put in place by the European Union and which have been significantly strengthened since the invasion of Ukraine.
The expected breakthrough of the far right in several countries at the European elections in June could change the situation. The RN spokesperson did not hide it: “If tomorrow we have the majority in Brussels, that means a radical change, particularly in the sanctions imposed on certain countries because of their policies.”