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Is it still possible to collaborate with Putin in the future, after the images of the Boutcha massacre? On Tuesday, RN presidential candidate Marine Le Pen amended her remarks on Vladimir Putin and his project of “understanding” with Russia, the war in Ukraine preventing at this stage, according to her, “cooperation in the fight against Islamist fundamentalism”, defended in the past.
“In my mind, it’s Russia I was talking about” and not the Russian president, said on France Inter the one who had been received in 2017 by Vladimir Putin and whose party continues to repay a loan of around nine million dollars. euros to a Russian creditor. The RN candidate had estimated last Thursday on France 2 that once the war was over, Vladimir Putin could “of course” become an ally of France again, arguing that “Russia was not going to move”.
This back-pedalling comes after the discovery of more than 300 corpses in the city of Boutcha, some on their bikes, or even with their hands tied. Arousing a huge outcry, these scenes put the candidate in embarrassment.
Before the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, she defended a project of “understanding” with Russia. In oblivion: “We are not in circumstances to be able to set up cooperation in the fight against Islamist fundamentalism, as we speak, with Russia”, she concluded.
The “understanding” imagined was to go through the inclusion of Russia “in a European security architecture which cannot be confused with NATO alone”, considered as a “warmongering organization”. “Until recently, I considered Russia to be an ally in the fight against Islamic fundamentalism, and that is how I referred to the security of Europe,” she explained on Tuesday.
“War crimes”
Marine Le Pen also spoke Monday on BFMTV and RMC of “war crimes” in Ukraine after the discovery of the bodies of civilians in the kyiv region. She called for an investigation by the UN and the International Criminal Court (ICC). Here again, her posture is changing: she had refused at the end of March to qualify Vladimir Putin as a “war criminal”, arguing that one cannot negotiate peace “by insulting one of the two parties.
“People who (…) would be convicted of having committed war crimes cannot rejoin the concert of nations”, while “countries, one day or another, must be the subject of a discussion” she said on Tuesday. A firmness displayed while the candidate best placed after Emmanuel Macron to access the second round is regularly singled out for her proximity to Vladimir Putin.
In 2017, less than four weeks before the presidential election, Marine Le Pen had met Vladimir Poutine in person. A way to make the candidate visible, the only one to have been received in this way. The autocrat had denied wanting to influence the French elections. He had dubbed Le Pen’s positions, particularly on the response to terrorism.
At the time, Russia was intensely involved in strikes against Daesh in Syria, not hesitating to raze entire villages and to use particularly powerful cruise missiles. Heavy, imprecise attacks, which would have mainly benefited his ally, Bashar al-Assad, according to several actors in international diplomacy, including the United States. But at the time also, French public opinion was far from being so attentive to Putin’s abuses.