On the eve of the 2017 presidential election, Marine Le Pen, who was already running for president, went to Moscow to shake hands with Vladimir Putin, in a scene resembling an endorsement. Five years later, the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) candidate changed her tone toward the Kremlin's leader, who invaded Ukraine in the meantime:
"I don't have a bond of friendship with Vladimir Putin, whom I met once in my life, I don't even have financial ties with him."
On Wednesday April 20, during their only head-to-head confrontation before the second round of the presidential election, Emmanuel Macron tore into his far-right challenger for her ties to Russia. He was particularly mordant in his criticism of a loan taken out by Le Pen's party in 2014 from a Russian-Czech bank. He said that debt meant that, if elected president, Le Pen's hands would be tied when dealing with the Kremlin.
Multiple statements of support or admiration
Since January 2011, she became president of the Front National (FN) – renamed Rassemblement National in 2018 – Ms. Le Pen has repeatedly declared her admiration for Vladimir Putin and her support for his policies, despite the Russian regime's repeated violations of human rights and international law. She only truly began shifting her position after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
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