Very interesting development in France: Putin-Russia, which saw a central possibility in the Front National to destroy the EU, Franco-German axis, the euro and to permanently weaken NATO and the West, is now apparently suffering from a Eurasian axis fracture.

„Rassemblement National : Le Pen’s party turns its back on Putin

Marine Le Pen’s party turns its back on Moscow. The head of the Rassemblement National speaks of „collective naivety“ towards Putin’s intentions and ambitions. Unlike in Germany, France’s Russia policy over the past few years has not been subjected to a critical reassessment. The new chairman of the Rassemblement National (RN), Jordan Bardella, is receiving all the more attention for his admission that he misjudged Putin’s „urge to expand“. Speaking to the newspaper L’Opinion on Thursday, the 27-year-old party leader said: „There was a collective naivety about Vladimir Putin’s intentions and ambitions.“ received, the public could not have imagined what intentions the Kremlin ruler had towards Europe, said Bardella. It would be a „moral error not to admit it“.

The RN chairman explained that „reality has knocked on our doors“. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine came as a surprise to many. Bardella clearly distanced himself from his party’s previous pro-Russian course and spoke out in favor of arms deliveries to Ukraine. However, care must be taken to ensure that France does not contribute to an escalation. Macron was right when he said that Russia „must not be humiliated“. Shortly before the war began, Marine Le Pen had denied that Putin could have warlike intentions. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she hastily destroyed campaign brochures that showed her with Putin. Le Pen had long praised the Russian head of state as the savior of Christian civilization. After the illegal annexation of crime, her party allowed itself to be harnessed to Kremlin propaganda and sent members of parliament to the referendum as “election observers”. On the 5th anniversary of Crimea’s annexation, RN MP Thierry Mariani visited Crimea with a delegation and claimed people were „happier“ than before. “Crimea is Russian,” said the RN deputy.

Le Pen to dinner with the Ukrainian Speaker of Parliament

Le Pen also made her party dependent on Moscow financially. In 2014 she received a loan of nine million euros from the First Czech-Russian Bank. When it went bankrupt in 2016, the Russian defense company Aviazapchast took over the claim. The company is now on the EU sanctions list. „When you talk about Russia, then you’re talking about your financier,“ Emmanuel Macron told Le Pen in the only televised duel before the presidential election. Bardella obviously wants to cut ties with Moscow. „Being a patriot means being committed to defending the territorial integrity of Ukraine,“ he said. The Ukrainian nation existed “a little bit more every day”. „Denying this reality was perhaps one of Vladimir Putin’s biggest mistakes,“ he said. The MEP stood up to applaud the Ukrainian President in the European Parliament when he gave a speech there recently. “For me, moral, political and material support for Ukraine is a matter of course. The Ukrainian cause has moved the whole European public. And that is perhaps what Vladimir Putin underestimated. We have a cultural closeness to Ukraine,” said Bardella.

Marine Le Pen has also corrected her disapproval of the Ukrainian government. When Ruslan Stefanchuk recently visited Paris, Le Pen also came to dinner with the Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament at the Hôtel Lassay, the official palace of the President of the National Assembly. The RN parliamentary group leader is said to have initially caused a certain „discomfort“ among those present, reported the magazine „L’Obs“. But then she politely joined the conversation over scallops and foie gras. She asked Stefanchuk about Russian gas supplies. At the end of the dinner, the Ukrainian received a chocolate Jack Russell Terrier, a nod to a mine detection dog that Zelenskyi had decorated. Le Pen takes Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as a role model when it comes to Russia policy. RN MP Sébastien Chénu said the aim was to take government responsibility. Contacts with the Ukrainian government should therefore be established now. Not all RN MPs agree with this about-face. MP Mariani continued to defend Putin’s policies, claiming that Ukraine had an interest in dragging Europe into the war.“

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/le-pen-wendet-sich-von-moskau-ab-18700735.html

The idea of Eurasian axes has a longer tradition – China’s republic founder Sun Yatsen already called for an alliance between China-Soviet Union and Germany as the losing alliance of the First World War, just as Lenin hoped for a German-Soviet axis of communism or Hitler’s axis Germany-Italy -Japan may serve as a vivid example here. Such a Eurasian axis, as demanded by Marine Le Pen, would then be a policy that would no longer be neutralist ala de Gaulle (who, after all, was the first European politician to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China), but a consciously anti-American coalition. Jean-Marine Le Pen’s German ally Schönhuber acted in 1988 in the founding speech of the Republican University Association (RHV) against the „Anglo-Saxon Front“. He met with Jean-Marine Le Pen for the purpose of an anti-Anglo-Saxon alliance. Even before the crime annexation by the then „green men“, Putin, through a Russian oligarch, sent 40 million euros to the Front National of  Marine Le Pen in the hope that Marine Le Pen would seize power and destroy and (Fr)exit the euro, the EU, NATO, the Franco-German axis and thus the engine of the EU would be destroyed and ultimately France would enter into a Eurasian alliance with Russia.

“Front National to receive 40 million euros from Russia

At first there was talk of a nine million loan. But the campaign aid from Moscow for the right-wing extremist Front National from France could be much higher. November 27, 2014, 2:01 p.m. Source: ZEIT ONLINE

The far-right Front National (FN) will receive a million-euro loan from Russia for the upcoming election campaigns in France. Over the weekend, the internet portal Mediapart reported that Marine Le Pen’s party received a loan of 9 million euros from the First Czech Russian Bank. Now it turns out that this is probably just the first tranche of a 40 million euro loan. Le Pen has already confirmed the payment of nine million euros. However, other sums were completely out of thin air, said the party leader. However, its financial adviser, Bernard Monot, said the party needed 45 million euros to fund it up until the 2017 presidential and general election year, Mediapart writes.

Treasurer Wallerand Saint-Just also believes it is possible that his party will receive more money. According to his knowledge, up to 10 million euros. Le Pen has repeatedly spoken out against European sanctions against Russia and publicly stated that she admires Russian President Vladimir Putin. Le Pen is said to have personally negotiated credit According to Mediapart, the party leader personally negotiated the million-euro loan during a trip to Russia in February. It is said that there was also a meeting with the politician Alexander Babakov, who helped arrange the loan. Babakov is on the EU sanctions list. The First Czech Russian Bank is based in Moscow and is owned by the former CFO of the gas company Stroytransgaz, Roman Popov. Gas magnate Gennady Timchenko also has a stake in the bank. Both are considered confidants of the Kremlin.“

https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2014-11/front-national-frankreich-kredit-russland

Such ideas were in vogue in France, as shown in French philosopher Emmanuel Todd’s bestseller World Power USA—An Obituary, in which Todd calls for a Eurasian axis between Europe and Russia. So Todd—quoting Putin and agreeing with him—writes:

“ Vladimir Putin was able to announce in Berlin: “No one doubts the great value of Europe to the United States. But I believe that Europe will only strengthen its reputation as a powerful and independent center of world politics in the long term if it combines its own potential with Russia’s human, territorial and natural resources, as well as with Russia’s economic, cultural and defense potentials.“ I can just agree with it:“ (Emmanuel Todd: World Power USA—An Obituary / Piper-Verlag, Munich-Zurich 2002, p.209).

For this purpose, too, Putin keeps the propaganda think tank Institute for Peace and Development in Paris, while the same attempt using Yakunin’s Dialog der Kulturen/Dialogue of Civilizations in Germany failed. Here he relies on the AFD as the destroyer of the EU and NATO, as the German fascists have already openly included the goal of a Dexit in their party program. Gerasimov’s hybrid war is also meant politically and not just militarily. John Mearsheimer, father of offensive realism, repeatedly emphasizes that Putin’s Russia poses no threat to the EU and NATO, since Russia’s economy is just the size of Portugal and Texas and moreover, was not in a position militarily to occupy the whole of Europe. Admittedly correct in this respect, but also a misjudgment that Putin does not intend to invade the whole of Europe, but instead hybrid war means weakening, blocking, paralyzing and ultimately destroying the EU and NATO from within by using nationalistic politicians such as Le Pen, Trump, Berlusconi, Orban, Erdogan, AfD, FPÖ and others who are promoting Frexit, Dexit after the Brexit, as well as the withdrawal of US troops, for example as now demanded by the AfD and the removal of US nuclear protection for Europe including Eurasian military alliances. In addition, a Sino-American conflict or even a war between the USA and Putin’s ally Xi-China could overtax the USA’s capacity to fight simultaneously in Europe and the Indo-Pacific and could help the hoped-for new Russian-Chinese world order to achieve a breakthrough, although Russia increasingly becoming a Chinese appendage.

While other radical right-wing parties such as Orban´s Fidesz, the AfD and FPÖ cling to Putin, after the post-MSI fascist Giorgia Meloni´s Fratelli d Italia, the new RN party leader of the former FN, Jordan Bardella, is now also committed to Ukrainian nationalism and its defense as defender of Christian Europe. Democracy, human rights, liberalism will probably not be what fascinates the RN about the Ukrainians, rather suspected ethnic-authoritarian-conservative-nationalist soul ties, which one previously saw in Putin. But one does not want to be accused of being a 5th column of Moscow, a traitor, an anti-national puppet by the grace and mercy of Moscow, especially as this is also well documented by the millions in credit from a Putin oligarch to the then bankrupt Front National. Instead, there is now talk of „collective naivety“, which also includes the other parties and Macron, i.e. national purification and awakening in the face of a French Zeitenwende/turning point – the Grand Nation is awakening. Now Putin’s Russia is also seen as a threat and competitor to France in terms of hegemony over Europe, especially as a competing nuclear power. But the question is to what extent this is meant seriously, sustainably and strategically, especially since Marine Le Pen is still the grand dame and eminence grise in the background and many RN supporters are still mourning the hoped-for Eurasian Putin axis. The RN is also likely to stick to Frexit and NATO exit as well as hostility towards democratic Germany and the EU, which in turn would play into Putin’s arms. Especially since the RN now wants to form the next French government and this could only be a tactical feint. So let’s see if this is really a Eurasian axis break.