‘A great pro-Russian politician": the investigation revealed the connections of Le Pen's party with the Russian oligarch Malofeev

The head of Marine Le Pen's French far-right National Rally party, 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, who could become prime minister of France if Le Pen's party wins the parliamentary elections, has ties to Russian ‘Orthodox’ oligarch Konstantin Malofeev.

Source. This is stated in the investigation of the Dossier publication.

While Bardella now declares his support for Ukraine and condemns the war, a few years ago he urged French politicians ‘not to teach Putin democracy’ and met with people close to Malofeev, a pro-Kremlin oligarch who has spent more than a decade building relationships with Western far-right parties in an effort to strengthen Putin's influence abroad.

After the meeting, Malofeev's people described him as ‘a great politician with pro-Russian views,’ the newspaper writes.

Until Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Jordan Bardella had an openly pro-Kremlin stance. In 2014, he criticised French Prime Minister Francois Hollande for ‘teaching Putin democracy’, even though Hollande himself has a low rating.

In 2018, he congratulated Putin on his re-election: ‘In a multipolar world, Russia is a partner, not an adversary.’

Soon, the young politician was noticed in the structures of Malofeev, the owner of the TsarGrad channel, who has been campaigning to spread Russian influence among European far-right movements for many years.

‘23 years old. Since 16 June 2019, he has been the vice-president of the party, before that he was the head of the National Union youth organisation. An excellent politician of conservative and pro-Russian views, he is fully committed to Marine Le Pen, being her official spokesperson. During the entire European campaign, he did not make a single mistake,’ – this is how Jordan Bardella was described by Malofeev's propagandist's employees in the summer of 2019.

The Dossier has a report compiled by the oligarch's associates based on the results of the European Parliament elections. In it, they analysed the attitudes of the new MEPs towards Russia, apparently trying to find points of influence on EU policy. They had the opportunity to learn about Bardella's ‘pro-Russian’ views firsthand: two months before the elections, a whole team of Malofeev's employees met with the young politician.

On 29 March 2019, Jordan Bardella organised a meeting in Rome for the youth movements of far-right European parties, to which a 'United Russia' delegation was invited.

In January 2024, Mediapart published a photo of Bardella surrounded by several people, taken during a flight to Rome. Behind the participants is the logo of the General Union of Labour, an Italian trade union with neo-fascist roots, and next to Bardella is Gianluigi Ferretti, head of the International Relations Department of the General Union of Labour.

Bardella and Ferretti are surrounded by Konstantin Malofeev's son Kirill, TsarGrad TV presenter Andrei Afanasyev, wife of Grand Duke Georgy Romanov Rebecca Bettarini, and director of the Katechon think tank Mikhail Yakushev.

All of them are connected to Malofeev.

Konstantin Malofeev himself has long been known as a conductor of the Kremlin's interests abroad. In 2014, he was sanctioned by the United States and Canada for his ties to pro-Kremlin separatists in Ukraine and his sponsorship of so called 'Donetsk People's Republic'.

Although Bardella is not mentioned in the list of the most pro-Russian members of the European Parliament, at least two of his votes on Russia in 2021, when Moscow was massing troops to the Ukrainian border, can be illustrated.

Bardella voted against the resolution ‘Situation on the Ukrainian border and in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine’ and against the resolution ‘Russia, the case of Alexei Navalny, the military build-up on the border of Ukraine and Russia's attack in the Czech Republic’.

And in April 2021, he refused to ‘interfere in the life of a foreign state’ and call for the release of Alexei Navalny when asked publicly by France 2.

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Bardella and other members of his party have regularly voted against European Parliament resolutions calling for European independence from Russian oil and gas.

He supports a more limited format of assistance to Ukraine than French President Emmanuel Macron. During a teledebate before the parliamentary elections, Bardella opposed sending French military instructors and long-range missiles to Ukraine.

He also refused to discuss Tamara Volokhova, a member of the European Parliament who is considered an agent of Russian influence.

Numerous investigations have shown that his party's relations with the Kremlin have been developing for almost a decade, and even the invasion of Ukraine has not changed his position on some issues. In particular, in September 2022, Bardella stated that Crimea is historically Russian. However, he promised that he would support Ukraine if elected prime minister by providing weapons ‘for defence only’.

Background. In the French parliamentary elections in the second round, Le Pen's National Rally party took only third place – the first went to the left-wing bloc of the New People's Front, and the second to Macron's presidential alliance. This means that the far right cannot claim to form a government.

As reported, Le Pen and Orban have created a far-right fraction in the European Parliament – the fraction will be headed by Jordan Bardella.