It’s still the dark side of many populist parties in France, Germany and Austria: an unsavoury sympathy with the Kremlin
Daniel Johnson
Published 27 August 2026
European populism has a dirty little secret: Russophilia. Despite the cruel war of conquest waged by Putin’s forces 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.
Next month the issue of restoring Russian relations will take centre stage, when Germans go to the polls in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt on September 6.
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.
Vladimir Putin, who was a KGB officer in Saxony when the Berlin Wall fell, must be relishing the AfD’s triumph in his old stamping ground.
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.
This bodes well for Putin. 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.
Volodymyr Zelensky’s only consolation is that losing French support would make little difference to the war: even under Macron, France has given far less to Ukraine than either Germany or Britain.
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.
Since the party signed a “friendship agreement” with Russia a decade ago, its financial nexus with Kremlin oligarchs has fuelled one Viennese scandal after another. But the FPÖ’s voters don’t care: Russophilia is their comfort zone.
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”.
Farage has noticeably toned down his pro-Russian rhetoric. Nathan Gill, his close ally in Strasbourg and Reform’s former leader in Wales, was jailed for 10 years after accepting cash bribes in exchange for pro-Russian statements.
While no evidence emerged connecting Farage to Gill’s bribery, the case did highlight his acolytes’ soft spot for Russia. This was perhaps also in evidence after Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk councils, now under Reform, took down the Ukrainian flags that had been flown since the 2022 invasion.
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, but I suspect the King (who cares deeply about Ukraine) would rather abdicate than endure a state visit by Putin.
Elsewhere in the DT, Dan Hannan is writing about Iceland’s new desire to join the EU. Extracts :
“Trump is single-handedly destroying global conservatism. The parties that have traditionally been pro-American are tainted by association, however much they distance themselves from him personally.
The most extreme example was Canada where, prior to his annexation threats, the Conservatives were 20 per cent ahead in the polls. Then came the demands that Canada become a US state, demands backed by trade sanctions. Trump apologists sometimes suggest that the whole “51st state” shtick is just a bit of banter, but that is not how it was or is seen by our Canadian allies. Trump tore up the USMCA trade deal – the deal he had insisted on negotiating to put in the place of NAFTA, the deal he had hailed as “the fairest, most balanced and beneficial trade agreement we have ever signed into law” – in order to apply tariffs to Canadian exports.”
“Trump’s impact is strongest on Western liberal democracies. He has created a sense that it is better to be America’s enemy than its friend, for it buys its enemies and sells its friends. Never once has he spoken about Vladimir Putin in the way he talks of Canadians, Norwegians, South Koreans and other old partners. Similarly, within those countries, the parties that stood shoulder to shoulder with the US through its many conflicts, and who were strongest in their support after 9/11, find themselves punished for that proximity.
Which brings us to the final irony. Having burned through decades of accumulated diplomatic goodwill and having needlessly pushed up the cost of living with his demented trade policies, Trump is now destroying the Right in the largest Western democracy of all: the US.”
Le Pen is described as “far right.”
Examining her policies, they are actually socialist; that is to say she is a National Socialist.
If her and the putinaZi hag that runs AfD both get power in their respective countries, the outcome for Ukraine would be devastating, since their world view is identical to Krasnov when it comes to pro-putler policies and anti-Ukraine hatred.