Even if the information was already known by the general public and frequently commented on by the major media, its dissemination through a parliamentary report had the effect of a bomb.
Marine Le Pen and her party, the National Rally (RN), are accused of being a transmission belt for Vladimir Putin in France, even an instrument of influence for Russian propaganda in Paris.
This observation made by a parliamentary commission of inquiry was both felt by the far right as an icy cold shower and by the opposition, left and right, as a feeling of relief. The cause of what may look like a low-intensity political scandal, a gigantic loan granted by a Russian bank in 2014 to Marine Le Pen to be able to finance her electoral campaign.
Marine Le Pen shouted in vain during her numerous interviews as well as during her parliamentary hearing that there was no political lift to be returned to Vladimir Poutine in exchange for this bank loan, but she was preaching in the desert. His speech was not believable. Everyone knew that Vladimir Putin was not a man to practice humanitarian volunteering or political patronage. If he had given his green light and his blessing to the strategy of financially helping what was still called the Front National, it was because he was necessarily expecting a return on investment.
And so far he has not been disappointed. While the war between Ukraine and Russia was raging, and the international community, the United States and the European Union were struggling to help the Ukrainian army militarily and to imagine the toughest arsenal of sanctions against the machine of Russian war, only the extreme right in France showed a weak enthusiasm to denounce this Russian offensive in Ukrainian territory, condemned by international law.
The extreme right, and to a lesser extent the extreme left, dragged their feet in joining this almost unanimous condemnation of the Russian operation, causing internal fissures and making the decisions of state institutions in the matter , debatable.
Both for informed political observers and for French public opinion, it was almost impossible not to make the link between the financial dependence of the far right on Vladimir Putin and this political understanding of his military strategy. Some far-right icons have gone so far as to display their ostentatious admiration for the style and personality of the Russian president.
This scandal will not fail to have political consequences. In the absence of Emmanuel Macron who cannot, due to constitutional rule, claim a third term, in the absence for the moment of a right or left candidate capable of taking up the challenge of Macron’s succession , Marine Le Pen seemed certain of winning the Elysée in 2027. Like a ripe fruit and for lack of a serious competitor, power was going to fall into her hands. For her, it was a question of holding the pace of the demonization until its end.
However, the bomb of Russian financing has just splattered it and marked it forever and institutionally. Not only will this be an electoral argument that her adversaries will not fail to use against her, but in the eyes of both French public opinion and her Deep State, this nagging question will arise: How to entrust the power to a party? Who risks tomorrow being obliged, even a toy, in the hands of a foreign power known for its military aggressiveness and its political pyromania?
Barring a miracle, Marine Le Pen will find it difficult to get rid of these accusations and these suspicions. The Russian curse will be tenacious and will constitute blessed bread for the opposition, too happy to nail its presidential ambitions to the ground.
Everything that Marine Le Pen will say from now on will be tainted by her dangerous financial and political intimacy with the Russian authorities. The enjoyment with which both the presidential majority and the opposition reveled in this parliamentary report, an indictment against Marine Le Pen, shows to what extent the far right has received a significant, even paralyzing, amount of lead in the wings . These new political and media facts are likely to move away the nightmare scenario of Marine Le Pen at the Élysée.