"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth"
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Kremlin campaign spread conspiracies to destabilise France
A relentless Kremlin campaign of disinformation and destabilisation aimed at bringing Marine Le Pen’s pro-Putin extreme right party to power in France has failed - for the moment.
The upset result in the snap legislative elections placing the Rassemblement National (RN) in third place among parliamentary parties is a significant blow to Russian interests.
Even the Russian propaganda press conceded defeat, despite the RN still having managed to top the popular vote with 37.05 percent of ballots nationally.
“French election results: Russia supporters lost,” said the unusually accurate headline on Tsargrad TV’s website. The channel is funded by Konstantin Malofeev. The oligarch has financed Le Pen’s RN, and has been accused of funding the war in Donbass in 2014. Malofeev cheers the deportations of Ukrainian children to Russia. The infamous antisemite conspiracy theorist Aleksandr Dugin is his editor-in-chief at Tsargard TV.
Fury over the extreme right loss was in evidence among Kremlin sycophants and agents across social networks. On Telegram and X, they fumed about electoral manipulation and the hand of “Zionists, Nato, secret societies, transhumanists and the apocalypse”. The Voice of Russia in France account on X offered followers the chance to obtain a Russian passport and leave their country. It also attacked the fiercely pro-Ukraine Socialist Raphael Glucksmann who surveys show is the preferred prime ministerial option on the left.
Some observers suggested Le Pen and her 28 year-old prime ministerial hopeful Jordan Bardella, keen to obscure their Russian ties for electoral ends, were not helped by Moscow a few days before the final ballot. For the first time the Russian diplomatic corps openly expressed its support for the RN. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia posted on X, declaring that “the people of France are seeking a sovereign foreign policy that serves their national interests and a break from the dictates of Washington & Brussels”. The post was accompanied by a photograph of Le Pen looking triumphant with her slogan about the changeover of power.
On election eve, Associated Press reported on the plethora of disinformation campaigns “orchestrated out of Russia and targeting France” that escalated during the legislative elections and in the lead-up to the Paris Olympics. The report cited French officials and cybersecurity experts in Europe and the United States.
Viginum, the French Government’s body responsible for tracking and protecting against foreign digital interference, published a report in June on "Matryoshka". This pro-Russian influence operation targeting the media and the fact-checking community, used Telegram accounts and bots on X to plant fake news and sow confusion among decoders and fact-checkers. Kremlin media and social network accounts have also aided the widespread demonisation of President Emmanuel Macron in France as an extremist ‘Nazi’.
Russian destabilisation operations in France have not only consisted of media and social network manipulation. They have also involved direct interference in fomenting civil strife. Some of the hate acts and chaos in the discord campaign have been directly engineered by Kremlin operatives. Blue Stars of David daubed on the facades of buildings in a Paris suburb after the Hamas pogrom of October 7, 2023 were revealed by the French government to have been painted by Moldovan agents of Moscow. It was an apparent attempt to both encourage antisemitism and to blame it on Muslims. Terrorist symbols of bloodied red hands painted at the Shoah Memorial in Paris this spring were similarly traced by French intelligence to the Kremlin.
Online bots and manipulation have been extensively employed by the Moscow cyber machine since Macron’s June 9 dissolution announcement. The drive was already evident during the European elections to campaign to elect Le Pen’s National Rally before June 9. A new study by disinformation system experts at the French National Research Council warned that Russia was manifestly interfering in the French parliamentary elections, with the aim of fracturing political and social consensus. The aim: to bring the National Rally to power in France. In recent months Bardella's popularity has exploded, much more than his opponents. The French have been sold Bardella as a TikTok phenomenon, but the new research shows this was helped by Russian bots and disinformation tactics, which propel the aspiring prime minister on TikTok. The report says Kremlin strategists have been instructed by Putin’s inner circle to promote discord in France by all means in order to undermine support for Ukraine.
Naivety about the Kremlin's electoral destabilization strategies is no longer an option, said the academic researcher and historian of propaganda David Colon.
“The Kremlin has been manipulating opinion in democratic nations for ten years, and this has intensified considerably since the war in Ukraine. France has become a priority target since President Macron declared in January that Russia must not prevail in Ukraine and put on the table the option of sending French troops and supplying combat aircraft,” he said.
The bitterness of the Putin machine and its sycophants on social media following the RN defeat is understandable. Many of the most flagrant Moscow apologists and anti-Ukraine figures on Le Pen and Bardella’s ticket were eliminated in the run-off election - despite being well placed in the first round on June 30. MPs for French citizens living outside of France, notably in Europe closer to Ukraine, fought off challenges from pro-Moscow RN candidates.
Pierre Gentillet was one of the most notorious Putinophiles running for election, in a sensitive constituency in the Berry area of the Loire Valley, with multiple defence contractors. On the radar of French intelligence for his closeness to Moscow, the regular commentator on France's hard right Fox News-style CNews, was beaten by the centrist candidate from the Ensemble party of President Emmanuel Macron and his outgoing Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.
As reported by Conspiracy Watch, Gentillet is prone to making tendentious statements including about George Soros. He is a close ally of Bardella’s. Alongside a group of more than a dozen other RN candidates, he has been paid to travel to Moscow as an “international observer” of sham elections. He praises Putin’s governing style and foreign policy, founded the Pushkin Circle, a pro-Russian think tank, and has encouraged denial of the Russian army's responsability in the Bucha massacre in 2022. Another candidate tipped to win, yet defeated in the second round was Andréa Kotarac. He travelled to Crimea in 2019 for an international forum, and attended a major pro-Putin event there attended by the niece of Le Pen, Marion Maréchal. A former member of the extreme left La France Insoumise (LFI, France Unsubmissive) Kotarac has also voyaged to Syria on several occasions to meet Bashar Al-Assad.
Another notable loss for the extreme right and its Kremlin bankers, who financed Marine Le Pen’s 2017 presidential campaign and only got paid back last year, was her sister Marie-Caroline Le Pen. The less known member of the extreme right dynasty has met Konstantin Malofeev, accused of playing a key role in Russia's annexation of Crimea. She was parachuted into the Sarthe region and was a favourite to take the seat. However, after a strong campaign and tactical voting, she was vanquished by the centrist Macron-Attal candidate. Other aspiring Moscow-friendly MPs who lost included Russia election “observers” Virginie Joron, and Jacques Myard, who is part of a pro-Russian policy institute called CF2R. The far right conspiracist and RN-sympathetic Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, another slavish disciple of Putin, was also defeated.
Despite the shock loss of a swath of RN candidates, the party has significantly increased its representation in the French National Assembly from 89 deputies to 143.
And as uncertainty and the prospect of ungovernability looms amid a hung parliament, Le Pen and Bardella remain well placed for the next French presidential election in 2027. The spectre of the extreme left Jean-Luc Mélenchon, known for his Putin apologies and calls for Kiev to stop fighting against the aggressor, is still hovering over the divided left coalition that has the highest number of seats.
Having failed to win government, the RN is now on the offensive at European level. It went mostly unnoticed on election night, but Bardella confirmed in his speech that the extreme right party was joining the new parliamentary group created by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán: the "Patriots for Europe". The RN had not wanted to announce this before the second round, for fear of reigniting suspicions of pro-Russian sympathies.
Victory over Moscow is nonetheless, being savoured. “Today, in France, Putin has lost,” said the political philosopher and Russia expert Nicolas Tenzer. “Freedom, rule of law and dignity have won.”
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