[LINK] "Russia's new European friend"

[rfmcdonald]

Al Jazeera's Leonid Ragozin writes about the Russian government's funding of and support for far-right groups in Europe. I wonder if this, like other initiatives, will backfire. I also find it amusing that, this time, it will be the far right not the far left that will be compromised by Russian support.

Former State Duma deputy Konstantin Rykov has 133,000 followers on Twitter. A prodigious web entrepreneur back in the pre-Twitter era, he is dubbed the father of Russian troll culture and the toxic, beyond-the-pale language that is still used by millions in the Russian-language sector of the world wide web. He later helped set up several pro-Kremlin news portals and the website of Russia's main TV channel.

Bashing Russian democrats, Barack Obama, Ukrainian and EU leaders is his main pastime on social networks, but there are two politicians he absolutely reveres. One is naturally Vladimir Putin, the other one is Marine Le Pen. While regularly posting fresh pictures of the National Front leader on his main feed @rykov, he also runs a separate French-themed account - @rykov_fr. The latter is almost entirely dedicated to her progress as a front runner in the next presidential election.

[. . .]

When in March Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine in a referendum hastily organised three weeks after the Russian occupation of the peninsula, Marine Le Pen said that the poll "raised no questions" and that Crimea was "historically a part of Russia". Her foreign policy adviser Aymeric Chauprade even travelled to Crimea during the referendum and announced that the vote was "legitimate", although not even Russia's closest allies - Belarus and Kazakhstan - have recognised it as such.

In response to Le Pen's endorsement, Rykov launched a campaign on Twitter, urging his followers to flood her feed with messages of gratitude. He led by example with a tweet that simply read: "Merci, Marine!" Thousands of Russians joined in.

The exchange of favours continued throughout the year. MEP Jean-Lux Schaffhauser, who represents a party affiliated with the National Front, travelled to the rebel-held Donetsk at the end of October to express support for the elections held by the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic. Clips from his press conference featured prominently on Russian TV channels which were keen to show that Europe is far from unanimous on the issue of Ukraine and that Kremlin is not completely isolated.

It was Schaffhauser who, according to the French investigative website Mediapart, has brokered a 9 million euro ($11m) loan provided to the National Front by the Russian-registered First Czech Bank - a little-known fiscal organisation once investigated by the Czech authorities on suspicion of being linked to Russian secret services.

Six days after the loan story broke, the deputy head of the Russian State Duma Andrey Isayev appeared as a guest star at the National Front's congress. In his address, he lamented that "the sovereignty of once mighty nations, such as Germany and France, […] is being eaten away by the so-called Trans-Atlantic integration", and that "the will of European countries is being suppressed by little known EU bureaucrats, who are in fact marionettes of the US". Isayev is a leading member of Putin's United Russia party, which has, in recent years, rebranded itself as a defender of "traditional Christian values" echoing the slogans of the European far right.

It would have shocked someone living in the USSR circa 1980s had they learned that Russian officials would be cozying up to the party created by Jean Marie Le Pen (Marine's father) - who was lambasted by Soviet TV as a "neo-fascist" and a "brown plague". But Putin's spin doctors and Soviet ideologues are about as similar as a MacBook and abacus. People who shape the political agenda in Moscow these days are happy to tap into any ideology as long as it serves their political goals.