View from London: European populism has a little secret – Russophilia

Photo: The Telegraph

Many populist parties in France, Germany and Austria have an unsavoury sympathy with the Kremlin, The Telegraph stresses.

European populism has a little secret: Russophilia. Despite the cruel war of conquest waged in Ukraine, hard-Right nationalist parties are set on lifting sanctions against and rebuilding ties with Russia.

In Germany, France and Austria, pro-Russian populists are close to seizing power at both regional and national levels. Elsewhere, the Kremlin’s influence is less overt, but could still tip the scales against Ukraine.

The issue of restoring Russian relations will take centre stage on September 6, when Germans go to the polls in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt.

The hard-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is poised to win more than 40 per cent in regional elections, thereby humiliating the hitherto dominant Christian Democrats (CDU) and posing an unprecedented challenge from the Right to Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the national level.

A core part of the AfD’s manifesto is the reintroduction of Russian language lessons and student exchanges in German schools. Russian was compulsory during the Cold War, when the Soviet presence there overshadowed the East German communist regime. For the older generation, Ostalgie (“nostalgia for the East”) is based on memories of cheap Russian gas, plus a gut feeling of being more at home with Russia than the West.

Along with its core platform of “remigration” – repatriation of refugees, migrants and their descendants – the AfD rejects the severing of commercial and cultural links with Russia since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. These anti-Russian policies, along with Berlin’s military and economic aid to Ukraine, are “not in Germany’s interests”, the party claims.

This pro-Russian rhetoric on the populist Right is mirrored at the opposite end of the political spectrum. Both Die Linke (“The Left”), the successor party to the former communists, and the Left-wing populist Sahra Wagenknecht’s party (BSW) are just as keen on Moscow as the AfD.

Together, the far-Left parties can expect about 17 per cent of the vote. This means that pro-Russian parties of Left and Right in Saxony-Anhalt represent well over half of the electorate – as they do all over the former East Germany.

Across the Federal Republic, the populists have momentum. Whereas in the East the AfD leads the CDU by a massive 20 points, even in Western regions it is narrowly ahead by an average of four per cent.

If a general election were held now, the AfD could expect to be the largest party, with more than 200 seats in the 630-seat Bundestag. Though well short of a majority, winning one in three parliamentary seats would be by far the biggest breakthrough for German nationalism since 1945.

While much may yet occur in Germany before federal elections are due in 2029, France faces an imminent presidential election next April. There, too, the omens favour the populists: Marine Le Pen and her National Rally.

The last time that Mme Le Pen faced Emmanuel Macron in a crucial TV debate in 2022, the incumbent skewered his challenger by accusing her of being in Putin’s pocket. “You were one of the first European leaders to recognise the Russian annexation of Crimea,” Macron reminded viewers. Her reward, he added, was a large loan from a bank close to the Kremlin to fund her 2017 election campaign.

Since 2022, Mme Le Pen has said and done nothing to suggest that she has abandoned her pro-Russian sympathies. On the contrary: the National Rally candidate’s platform promotes a “privileged partnership” with Moscow, with an end to sanctions and the alleged “demonisation” of Russia by the EU and Nato.

A future President Le Pen would likely make common cause with other pro-Russian populists, including the most powerful of them all: Donald Trump. Despite France’s deep-seated anti-Americanism, Mme Le Pen would surely seek common ground with the US president by brokering a Moscow-friendly ceasefire.

A third West European country in which Russophile populists wield great influence is Austria. There the far-Right Freedom Party (FPÖ), under Herbert Kickl, has the largest parliamentary bloc, though it is excluded from office by a coalition of the other parties.

The FPÖ probably has the closest connections to the Kremlin of all. The former FPÖ-backed foreign minister, Karin Kneissel, went so far as to invite Putin to her wedding in 2018; she later emigrated to St Petersburg.

What about Britain’s “patriotic” parties? In 2014, Nigel Farage notoriously said that Putin was the world leader he admired most “as an operator”. He has also compared Nato’s policy towards Russia to “poking the bear with a stick”.

It is safe to say that if Nigel Farage were ever to take up residence in Downing Street, Britain would no longer lead the West in bolstering Ukraine, as it has done under every PM since Boris Johnson. A Reform government might curry favour with the Kremlin.

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