Russia Campaigns for the French Presidency

Several leaders and governments around the world have accused Moscow of coordinating disinformation campaigns to influence other countries' political affairs over the past year. The Kremlin quadrupled its spending on media activities abroad in its latest federal budget, and since half its projected expenditures are labeled confidential, Moscow may well be devoting hundreds of millions more to the cause. Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia's legislature and a top political strategist, has been stumping across the European Union this campaign season, meeting with representatives of nationalist parties such as Alternative for Germany. And now Moscow has turned its focus toward France as the country gears up for two months of presidential and legislative elections.

Rumors of Russia's meddling in the run-up to the vote, mostly through disinformation campaigns on social media, have been swirling for months. The allegations are not terribly surprising; given its interest in deepening the divides in the European Union as a whole, Russia is likely trying to amplify the political discord in one of the bloc's core member states. But as much as Moscow hopes to sway the outcome of the upcoming votes, or at least disrupt the subsequent political transition, it knows from recent experience that its electoral interventions can only do so much.

For the Kremlin, the stakes are high in the French elections. Moscow sees France as a potential counterweight not only against Germany in the European Union, but also against the United States in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). France, moreover, is critical to the negotiations over the conflict in eastern Ukraine as one of four members of the so-called Normandy Group. The run-up to the elections offers the Russian government a chance to either help usher a more sympathetic figure into power in Paris or to create enough chaos to keep France focused on its own problems for the near future. The country is already deeply divided, making it all the more vulnerable to Russian influence. Source: Stratfor, more in: https://goo.gl/MZPQkC