Tuesday July 11, 10 am: having just arrived in Vilnius for the NATO summit, Emmanuel Macron announces the delivery of long-range missiles to the Ukrainians. On Twitter, it’s unleashing: “Macron will end up dragging us into a war against Russia” (Sophia Chikirou, LFI); “I do not understand that Emmanuel Macron is not fully focused on the organization of a peace conference (Marine Le Pen); “As for Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, you are being lied to about Ukraine” (controversial essayist Idriss Aberkane); and even Fanny Ardant, who castigates the “American lackeys”.
We thought they had lost their luster after Vladimir Putin’s foolish decision to invade Ukraine. And that the Boutcha massacre, the destruction of the Kakhovka dam or the march on Moscow by Wagner’s mercenaries, which revealed the cracks in Russian power, at the end of June, would discourage them.
It is not so. The pro-Kremlin are still there. Certainly, they no longer boast. No more sensational declarations, like François Fillon assuring that Putin is an ally against jihadism. Or a Jacques Sapir, economist known for his anti-American sallies, who promised Europeans in October 2022 in Russia in Global Affairs, the newspaper of Muscovite elites, a “difficult, cold and dark” winter after the Russian gas cuts. “His articles distort the perception of France and give it a degraded view, as the Russian power wants to see it, protests a French researcher, who knows him well. It’s scandalous.”
“To sow doubt in the minds”
Without denying themselves, the poutinolâtres, including former soldiers, therefore took up their torch. “They have formed their own media ecosystem, observes Olivier Schmitt, professor of political science at the University of Southern Denmark. Even if they do not have a huge distribution, their discussion circles total several million views.” For Cécile Vaissié, director of the Russian department at Rennes-II University, “we don’t take them seriously enough. However, some of them convey conspiratorial theses on vaccines or feed hate speech during the riots, warns this researcher, author of Kremlin networks in France (The Little Mornings, 2016). There is a commonality between pro-Kremlin propagandists and other vectors of conspiratorial schemes. All are aimed at undermining trust in the state.”
Anti-Americanists, conspirators, supporters of the RN or LFI… Protean, the pro-Russian current seeks by all means to broaden its audience. “To undermine the – overwhelming – support of public opinion for Ukraine, they insist that the West is dragging us into World War III, continues Cécile Vaissié. An argument difficult to counter: each of us obviously prefers peace to war. But what these occasional “pacifists” are careful not to specify is that a ceasefire, in the current circumstances, would mean that Kiev cedes to the Russian aggressor the Ukrainian territories it has occupied for seventeen months.
Committed to this cause, the pro-Kremlin and other useful idiots have only one objective: “To sow doubt in people’s minds and spread the idea that the Ukrainians are, basically, responsible for their misfortune, believes Marie Dumoulin, director of the ‘Wider Europe’ program at the European Council for International Relations. This is why their discourse has become more insidious, more subtle and therefore more difficult to counter.” And it is for this very reason that Westerners must not fall into the trap of weariness. Because Putin and his cronies are just waiting for that.
Find all the episodes of our series
EPISODE 1 – Between Russia and the French far right, lasting support and a facade of distrust
EPISODE 2 – War in Ukraine: when Russophiles insist on boasting of a “powerful Russia”
EPISODE 3 – Idriss Aberkane, Silvano Trotta… When the conspiracy joins the pro-Kremlin argument
EPISODE 4 – War in Ukraine: when pacifism plays into the Kremlin’s game
EPISODE 5 – “Putinophiles in the army”: these French officers who lean for Russia
EPISODE 6 – From Michel Onfray to Emmanuel Todd: anti-Americanism, a hyphen of pro-Russian discourse
EPISODE 7 – Business lawyers, bankers, intermediaries… In the workings of Franco-Russian business