The Kremlin has interpreted the victory of Marine Le Pen’s far-right nationalist Rassemblement National (RN) and its allies in the first round of France’s parliamentary elections as a clear sign of the will of voters.
“We are certainly following the elections very closely. What
we have seen this before in a number of European countries, including
France, these trends are confirmed,” a Kremlin spokesman said. Dmitry Peskov on Monday.
“But I think we will wait for the second round
it is quite clear to us what the French voters want,” Peskov added.
Rassemblement National has been repeatedly accused in the past of close ties to the Kremlin.
In 2014, the then-Front National party, renamed Rassemblement National in 2018, took out a multimillion-dollar loan from a Russian bank. Le Pen called Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Moscow that same year, Russian territory.
A report to the French parliament last year also noted that party officials had traveled to Crimea and the Donbass region, which was already occupied by Russian forces, before the outbreak of war in Ukraine.
Rassemblement National is divided over whether to condemn Russia’s war on Ukraine.