Le Pen wants to forget his closeness to Putin

"We could have screwed up" on Russia, admits a relative of the candidate of the National Rally.

Marine Le Pen was received with great fanfare by Russian President Vladimir Putin during the 2017 presidential campaign, and the photo of the meeting still appears on his campaign documents.

His party has also not finished repaying a loan of 9 million euros to a Russian creditor led by former soldiers.

Since the start of the invasion, she has played it safe.

The candidate first agrees with her team to "not play the president" of the Republic, because "we do not have the elements", according to this close friend.

An argument already put forward when she refused to join a text from her European allies in Madrid at the end of January, which expressed their "solidarity" with Ukraine against Russian "threats".

The day after the invasion, the candidate ordered a press release from her relatives, the drafting of which the Russophile MEP Thierry Mariani was not associated with.

When Mr. Mariani, also a spokesman, speaks of "poisoning operation" about the bombardment of the Mariupol theater, he is asked to "mute it", according to his entourage.

"Profit"

The far-right candidate then condemns the aggression and says that Ukrainian refugees must be welcomed, regardless of whether it distinguishes them from those from Afghanistan or Syria, all of whom are protected by the Geneva Convention.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with French presidential election candidate for the far-right Front National (FN) party Marine Le Pen at the Kremlin in Moscow on March 24, 2017. Mikhail KLIMENTYEV SPUTNIK/AFP/Archives

She thus marks her difference with her rival Eric Zemmour, who suggests "privileging" their reception in Poland, generating criticism.

Mrs Le Pen also evokes the conflict from the angle of its consequences on purchasing power, a major theme of her campaign, refusing to support the economic sanctions against Moscow in this respect.

Nor does it want an embargo on Russian gas or oil.

Mrs. Le Pen has "turned a disadvantage to her advantage, by making people forget everything else", underlines Nonna Mayer, specialist in the FN electorate.

The candidate is still calling for the lifting of sanctions against Russia for its annexation of Crimea in 2014, deemed illegal by the international community.

She also refuses to call Vladimir Putin a "war criminal" or "dictator".

But after the discovery of hundreds of bodies of civilians in the kyiv region, she admitted to "war crimes".

After saying that the Russian president could "of course" become an ally of France again, she clarified that she meant Russia.

"Authoritarian"

On her draft military "agreement" with Moscow, she also indicated that it was no longer possible "at the time we speak".

Marine Le Pen "is forced to carry out a small lustration operation to remove the last obstacle for the second round campaign" where "the candidates' ability to embody France abroad is at stake", underlines to AFP François Heisbourg, from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

"But if she really had problems with Vladimir Putin, she would have spoken earlier," notes the former diplomat.

Marine Le Pen proposes in her presidential project an "alliance" with Russia to include it "in a European security architecture which cannot be confused with NATO alone", considered as a "warmongering organization".

A choice that would amount to "breaking up the Atlantic alliance" as well as "closing our eyes to various forms of hybrid war" from Russia likely to penalize France, as in Mali with the Wagner company or in cyber matters, according to the Terra Nova think tank, listed on the left.

"The party of foreigners, as they say, is them," MEP Raphaël Glucksmann (Place Publique) slammed Wednesday during a debate in the European Parliament in Strasbourg on the links between the European far right and Vladimir Putin.

According to Ben Judah, of the Atlantic Council, Marine Le Pen, who is financing this campaign with a Hungarian loan, would be, if elected, a "second super-Orban seeking the same equivalence and equidistance with the Kremlin" and a "slow disintegration". of the EU, to move "towards a more authoritarian system" and "favorable to Putin".

© 2022 AFP