A heavy silence. Marine Le Pen, usually so quick to react to the declarations of members of the government or the President of the Republic, is however silent on Thursday, the day after Emmanuel Macron’s speech on the Ukrainian issue. On his account X (ex-Twitter), no comment on the latter’s statements, which has declared, the day before, the entry into a “new era”, qualified Russia as “threat to France and Europe” and promised additional investments in European defense.
Instead, the far -right leader replied a photo of her meeting, the same morning, with her Hungarian ally, claimed as president Viktor Orbán. Strange Timing at a time when the national rally struggles to carry a clear line on the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, and the overthrow of alliances operated by Donald Trump. Jordan Bardella reacted, on X, to the words of Emmanuel Macron by calling … to the suspension of the Green Deal, without a word concerning the policy of the American president or that of Vladimir Putin.
It has been weeks since, on the question, the national rally seems to be taken short by the events. The day after the violent meeting on February 28 between the American and Ukrainian presidents, who resulted in an early departure from Volodymyr Zelensky from the White House, already Marine Le Pen had kicked in touch. Asked about the altercation during her visit to the agricultural show, she had qualified the incident as “friction”. “It is to be naive to think that the exchanges between presidents of nation do not sometimes take place in a brutal way […]she said. One cannot blame either one or the other for defending the interests of their nations and the vision they consider the most just for the world. I hope that this difficult moment will be the first step towards peace that I have been considering, for three years, inexorable. “
Jordan Bardella less voluble
Firmly opposed to any “European defense” project, as well as the sending of ground troops to Ukraine, the RN, when it is confronted with the subject, brandishes a rhetoric of “peace”. On February 20, however, neither Marine Le Pen nor Jordan Bardella had responded to the summons of party leaders at the Elysée by Emmanuel Macron. It was the party vice-president and mayor of Perpignan Louis Aliot who had replaced and brought the party line. Jordan Bardella himself, who had done everything to stand out on the question and detach himself from the Prorusian image that sticks to the Party, denouncing, in February 2023a “collective naivety with regard to the ambitions of Vladimir Putin”, and still repeated during the European campaign that he “would not let Russian imperialism absorb an allied state like Ukraine”, is now less voluble.
In the assembly, Monday, during her intervention, Marine Le Pen again called for the organization of a “Conference for Peace”, which would bring together the nations “without the supra national authorities”, and recalled his opposition to the establishment of a European defense, to send the ground troops to Ukraine and to the expansion of nuclear deterrence to allied countries. “It is indisputable that we must support Ukraine,” she said, “but we must do it realism by keeping in mind our own national interests. We cannot promise Ukraine a membership in NATO when this option has been a justification for Russian aggression and is clearly rejected by the United States. Likewise the membership of Ukraine to the European Union.”
“Flexibility and moving context”
Donald Trump’s turnaround is explained, according to Marine Le Pen, by “economic” reasons. “The deep inflection is nonetheless guided by the defense of the economic interests of the Americans, she assured. It is, in addition to the question of rare earths, of avoiding the consolidation of a Russia-China axis: consequence of Western intransigence vis-à-vis Russia.” A few hours later, in the columns of Figarothe frontist, however, corrected the shot, claiming that it condemned the “brutality” of Donald Trump’s decision to suspend aid to Ukraine.
No clear line, distilled elements of CI, from there. Among RN elected officials, we hesitate to approach the Ukrainian subject, described as “sensitive”, contenting himself with accusing the President of the Republic of instrumentalizing the conflict “for federalist ends”. The entourage of the chief, it praises a flexibility strategy in a “moving context”. “Everything is so changing and exogenous that it forces us to adapt to us,” we say in the marine ranks. The party had already returned, in March 2024, by the voice of Jordan Bardella, on his desire to get out of the integrated command of NATO, ensuring that we did not “change the treaties during war”. But the presidential program of Marine Le Pen in 2022 also planned to “seek an alliance with Russia on certain substantive subjects: European security which cannot exist without it, the fight against terrorism which it has ensured with more constancy than any other power, the convergence in the processing of major regional files impacting France”. Around Marine Le Pen, some executives are aware of the damage that it could cost her an overly vague positioning on the question, in the optics of 2027. And assure him: “What is certain is that by then, we will have to know where we live.”