LE PEN RUSSIA. Marine Le Pen will most likely be called upon to explain her relations with Russia and with Vladimir Poutine, as well as their impact on her program during the debate between the two rounds of the presidential election this Wednesday, April 20, against Emmanuel Macron…
[Mis à jour le 20 avril 2022 à 21h47] The debate between the two rounds of the presidential election, this Wednesday, April 20, 2022, opposed Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron on the question of Ukraine and the sanctions taken against Russia. Sanctions that Marine Le Pen has paid lip service to, fearing that they will indirectly weigh on the French. Emmanuel Macron accused Marine Le Pen of being “under Russian influence”. An accusation that the person concerned denied.
A loan contracted with a Russian bank in 2014, a photograph alongside Vladimir Putin in March 2017 and proposals for an alliance with Russia or an exit from NATO’s integrated command today… Marine Le Pen has several times during his campaign faced accusations of collusion with the Russian regime which attacked Ukraine on February 24 and is still waging a war there of a violence not seen in Europe since the end of the Second World War.
This Wednesday, Russian opponent Alexei Navalny called for Emmanuel Macron to vote in the second round of the presidential election, accusing Marine Le Pen of “compromise with Vladimir Putin” on Twitter. He denounces in particular a loan of 9 million euros contracted in 2014 by the former National Front with a Russian bank. “This bank is a well-known money laundering agency that was created at the instigation of Putin. Would you like it if a French politician got a loan from Cosa Nostra?” he asked. The opportunity for a development in three acts.
Did Marine le Pen take out a loan from a Russian bank?
What there is to know : after the 2012 defeat in the presidential and legislative elections, the National Front is bloodless. In 2014, for the regional and departmental elections, the party which would later become “National Rally” used a loan of 9.14 million euros contracted with a Czech-Russian bank, the First Czech-Russian Bank (FCBR). But in 2016, the bank went bankrupt and was bought by the Russian aeronautics company Aviazapchast. The latter, who became a creditor of the FN, filed a complaint in early December 2019 against the formation of Marine Le Pen, for recovery of unpaid credit, “not seeing the repayment of the loan, which expired on September 23 of the same year, arrive”, writing the Liberation newspaper.
The RN finally obtains, in 2020, a “rescheduling” after an “amicable agreement”. According to AFP, which had access to arbitration, Marine Le Pen’s party must pay an amount of one million euros in five days, then 390,000 euros before September 20 the same year, then more than 8 million euros by the end of 2028. Even today, the RN therefore reimburses each quarter the sum of 322,000 euros to Aviazapchast.
For the 2022 presidential election, the far-right party turned to Hungary, as RTL revealed in early February, Marine Le Pen having obtained a loan of 10.6 million euros from a local bank.
“I have never managed to get a loan, neither in France so far, nor in Europe.” (Marine Le Pen on BFMTV)
What Marine Le Pen says: the National Rally candidate has repeatedly deplored in the media, before as during this 2022 presidential campaign, that her party was unable to obtain a loan from a French or even European bank. She evokes dozens of refusals. “I have never managed to obtain a loan, neither in France so far, nor in Europe. This situation is all the more scandalous since Emmanuel Macron, who was aware of it, had the creation of a bank of Democracy. But there is a misfortune, it is that he never, in reality, implemented it”, she declared in particular on BFMTV on April 13. As for the Russian loan that she would have been forced to accept for lack of anything better, Marine Le Pen assures that the RN reimburses it “without ever having missed a single monthly payment”. And to add: “if a French bank wishes to buy back this loan, it will of course be on the same very advantageous terms for the bank” (France Info, April 13).
Is Marine Le Pen close to Vladimir Putin?
What there is to know : Marine Le Pen has several times in the past, like other candidates for the 2022 presidential election, expressed a certain closeness to Vladimir Putin. In an interview at paustrian resse in 2014, the president of the FN considered that she had “common values” with the “patriotic” Russian president, including “the Christian heritage of European civilization”. In 2015, she estimated on Europe 1 that the denunciations of the Russian strikes in Syria were part of “American propaganda” intended to “discredit the action carried out by Vladimir Putin” alongside Bashar al-Assad against Daesh. In 2017, she also supported the Russian intervention in Crimea in an interview with the American channel CNN, ensuring that the inhabitants of the region “felt Russian” and relying on a pseudo-referendum. “There was no invasion of Crimea, we must stop!”, We even hear him exclaim in the video recently unearthed on social networks. A photograph of a meeting of the leader of the RN with Vladimir Putin, in March 2017, in Moscow, has been shared several times in this campaign (see above).
Vladimir Poutine, five years ago, was not exactly that of today. Today Vladimir Putin is an adversary. Yesterday, when he was fighting Islamist fundamentalism, he was an ally.” (Marine Le Pen on BFMTV)
What Marine Le Pen says: the RN candidate, who condemned “with the greatest firmness” the war launched against Ukraine at the start of the year, admitted on March 22 on BFMTV to have expressed in the past “a form of admiration for Vladimir Putin , simply because Russia was emerging from 70 years of communism”. “Vladimir Putin, five years ago, was not exactly who he is today. Today, Vladimir Putin is an adversary. Yesterday, when he was fighting Islamist fundamentalism, he was an ally,” he said. -she repeated in several media to justify the 2017 interview, “the only appointment I could have with him”. Recalling that Emmanuel Macron himself received Putin at Versailles (2017) then at Brégançon (2019) during his term of office, she said that she had acted “in the same way as all the Presidents of the French Republic, who sought not to sever relations with Russia”. And this “for a very simple reason […] : if Russia has no connection with Europe, then Russia will turn to China. However, that is a major danger for the future.” “When you want to become President of the French Republic, you have to be able to talk to everyone, including Vladimir Putin,” she also justified.
Still, Marine Le Pen has also been criticized for having judged publicly, on March 31, on France 2, that once the war is over, Vladimir Putin could “of course” become an ally of France again, arguing that “the Russia was not going to move”. The candidate will be forced to explain herself and to attenuate her remarks, while the atrocities committed by the Russian army will be revealed in the same period. “In my mind, it’s Russia I was talking about” and not the Russian president, she nuanced on France Inter a few days later.
Does Marine Le Pen want to leave NATO?
What there is to know : in this context, Marine Le Pen has been accused of wanting to break France’s alliances, in particular with NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, hated by Vladimir Putin, but also with certain key partners of the European Union starting with Germany. A rapprochement with Russia or a diplomacy under Russian influence have several times been feared by its adversaries.
What Marine Le Pen says: Marine Le Pen has repeatedly recalled that she did not want to leave NATO, but her “integrated command”, as Charles De Gaulle had decided in 1966, to restore the autonomy of French military strategy. But in her program, Marine Le Pen still makes a few foot calls to Russia. In his “defense booklet”, on his campaign websiteshe thus formulates her first proposal on “France as a power” and on the “truly sovereign defense diplomacy” that she intends to lead: “withdrawal of the integrated command of NATO, discussion of a new strategic agreement (sic) with the United States, dialogue with Russia on major common issues termination of structural cooperation with Germany (weapon aircraft and combat tanks in particular), new phase of dialogue on cordial understanding with the British (nuclear, capacity and operational) after their participation in the AUKUS pact which eliminated France from a strategic contract, strengthening of strategic partnerships in the world, reinforced support for defense exports, an integral component of defense diplomacy “…
“An alliance with Russia will be sought on certain fundamental subjects: European security, which cannot exist without it, the fight against terrorism, which it has ensured with more consistency than any other power.” (Marine Le Pen program)
Russia rather than Germany? We can also read in Marine Le Pen’s program that “in parallel and without fear of American sanctions, an alliance with Russia will be sought on certain fundamental subjects: European security, which cannot exist without it, the fight against terrorism that it has ensured with more consistency than any other power, convergence in the treatment of major regional issues impacting France (Eastern Mediterranean, North & Central Africa, Gulf/Middle East and Asia in particular)”. Conversely, “the relationship with Germany will be significantly overhauled: starting from the observation of a deep and irremediable divergence of doctrinal, operational and industrial views with Berlin, particularly in the field of nuclear deterrence and the export of armaments, Paris will put an end to the structural cooperation undertaken since 2017 which does not correspond to its vision of sovereign defense and will withdraw its support for Germany’s claim for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council”.