Russia & the far-right: Kremlin says paying close attention to EU political trends

Now there's political uncertainty in France after the rise of the far right in European elections and the dissolving of parliament By Emmanuel Macron. Vladimir Putin spokesperson says the Kremlin is closely monitoring the situation as the next French government will have the potential to change a country's stance on the conflict in Ukraine. Russian state media, too, is watching. We can now bring in Tom Kennedy from our news desk, who's here with more. Tom, good to see you. Russian state media pays particular attention to far right parties, doesn't it? That's right. So there's this really interesting study called Anything that Causes Chaos, The Organizational Behaviour of Russia Today. And the title of that study really speaks for itself because what it explores is the editorial line of Russia Today, otherwise known as RT, Russia's State Controlled Media, and how it's shifted over the last 20 years. So it's found two major things. Firstly, It's Russia Today Now focuses on stories coming out of Russia rather than within, and secondly, the content which it is producing has gone from propping up far left ideas to, over the last decade more recently propagating far right ideology. So RT heavily covers anything to do with Donald Trump, whether that's some sort of shocking statement he might make or legal troubles or other right wing leaders like Javier Malay in Argentina with his chainsaw during the election campaign, for example. And especially events that appear to undermine democracies or democratic institutions like the EU. Now, Russia Today is, of course, controlled by the government. So how does this editorial line tend to benefit the Kremlin exactly? So Russia is ranked 136 in the world in terms of democratic rankings. So by flooding its population with news about the far right in the West, you know, stuff like the January 6th storming with the capital or Bolsonaro trying to overturn election results in, in in Brazil, it's trying to tell its population that Western democracies don't work. Look at all this chaos unfolding. In turn, what that does is it prevents its population from demanding more democracy within Russia over things like, you know, the treatment of opposition leaders and dissidents. One name comes to mind there, corruption within the government or freedom of press. And what that does is it allows Putin and his government to pursue political or military projects with less resistance and projects like the current conflict in Ukraine, which, you know, he justified with this narrative of de Nazification, which was a narrative propagated by IT for years before the invasion by flooding their site with stories about the Azov brigade, for example, and trying to make it seem as this, as if the far right might be more important than it actually was in some situations. So to summarize the the Kremlin exploits the far right to distort Russians views of other democracies like Ukraine, the US, and now with these elections, France. What does a rise in the far right here in Europe mean for that war in Ukraine, Russia's invasion of Ukraine? So it's interesting because in France, Macron has actually been one of the most hawkish Western leaders in terms of his military support for Ukraine and the National Rally have had varying views on on NATO and Ukraine depending on, you know, when we're talking about it. It's changed a bit. But it is likely that if Jordan Bardella was to become Prime Minister and even later down the line whether Marine Le Pen was to become president, that they would offer less resistance to Putin than Macron has been trying to. But other far right parties in Europe, such as the Afd in Germany have actually been outwardly pro Kremlin. So it depends which far right government we're we're we're talking about in terms of of foreign policy. But the main point is that the Kremlin uses these often antagonistic political parties who might make shocking statements that appear to undermine democratic values as fuel for its propaganda machine within its own country. Tom, thank you very much for that. Tom Kennedy there.