European Parliament, Brussels. CC BY-NC Sami Haidar / Flickr. Some rights reserved.The fact that many European far right parties has strong political links to some Kremlin circles and a strong pro-putinist agenda is a commonplace that everybody is aware of.
Sensationalist findings have played their own role. To name just a few: in France, Marine Le Pen received money from a bank close to the Kremlin to finance his campaign for the National Front (and asks for more). Béla Kovács, the Hungarian MEP for Jobbik nicknamed “KGBéla”, had his immunity suspended after being charged with espionage. Recently, a marginal Polish politician Mateusz Piskorski was arrested by Poland’s Internal Security Agency, allegedly on suspicion of spying for Moscow as well.
Among European far right parties’ we can find several others that are strong advocates of Putin’s Russia. In a 2014 study, we found that 15 out of the 24 far-right parties examined support Russia politically, and four more were rather open to the Russian regime. Among the most committed ones we can find not only Jobbik and Front National, but the Italian Lega Nord, the Flemish Vlaams Belang, FPÖ and Golden Dawn as well. Their pro-Russian stance is easy to explain on ideological grounds. Russia’s political system with a strongman leader, its anti-human rights agenda, constant references to family values and Christianity, and to “national interests” overriding free-market mechanisms, offer a good model for several European far-right parties.
