Rassemblement National (RN) leader Marine Le Pen brushed off claims that her party was carrying water for Russian aggression in Ukraine after a French parliamentary inquiry singled out the RN for ties to the Kremlin.
The party has been dragged over the coals in recent years for past financial dealings with Moscow and Le Pen underwent intense scrutiny before an investigative committee on foreign interference last month.
The report described the supposed existence of a “transmission belt” between RN leadership and the Kremlin and highlighted public support for the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea by RN leaders. It also referred to financial loans from a Czech-Russian bank to the party as evidence of its pro-Russian sympathy.
Le Pen denounced the report as “politicised” and factually untrue and claimed that the inquiry was originally called by her party to put to bed once and for all claims that the RN was aligned with Russia. The report was authored by Macronist MP Constance Le Grip, who stated that the alliance between the Kremlin and Le Pen is a long-term strategy to destabilise French liberalism.
It comes as opinion polls show a rise in public support for the RN with Le Pen leapfrogging the beleaguered incumbent Macron for the first time amid a backlash against his pension reforms.
The RN has shifted its previously nominally pro-Russian stance during the past year with Le Pen categorically denouncing the Russian invasion while defending past financial links because mainstream French banks refused the party access to their financial services.
Speaking to The European Conservative, RN MEP Jean-Paul Garraud slammed the inquiry as a politicised witch hunt against the nationalist party that was less concerned with routing out foreign interference than waging a campaign against the RN.
The director of the French domestic intelligence service (DGSI), who was himself interviewed, stated that he was not aware of any political party that was subject to organised and systematic foreign influence or interference. He even said that these attacks on the Rassemblement National, particularly by representatives of Macron, were “campaign rhetoric.”
Across Europe, right-wing populists have been eager to scale back previous sympathies for Russia. Attempts to smear populist parties as pro-Russian have been instrumentalised by many governments. The European Parliament recently debated potential legislation to sanction pro-Russian media outlets. In Austria, the FPÖ has seen off similar attacks with a chasm opening up among the European Right over the Ukraine issue.
