It is appalling what is happening in Ukraine, Thierry Baudet said, last week, in a House debate on the Russian invasion. But to condemn the war? As the only party in the House of Representatives, Pudditz Democracy Forum did not want to do so. “The West caused this and that Russia is now responding is very predictable,” Bodet said in a video on the morning of the raid.

“Kremlin propaganda,” said Member of Parliament Shurd Shordsma (D66) during the debate. More parties fear that the Kremlin is backing Baudet. The entire Chamber of Deputies endorsed a proposal for possible financial support from Russia for Dutch political parties investigated by the SAI – the FVD also voted in favour. Baudette said his party had nothing to hide.

The question is whether the Kremlin needed the money to find an ally in Bodet – there is still no conclusive evidence of the payments. Baudi, along with many other radical right-wing politicians in Europe, see Putin’s Russia as relatively ideological and geopolitical in the struggle for Europe. Putin is increasingly showing himself as the leader of conservative Europe. Baudet tweeted When Russian troops were already lining up at the border. “handsome young man.”

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Putin and the far-right parties “share a superficial belief in Europe’s decline and belief in traditional values,” he says Alina Polyakova† The director of The Center for European Policy Analysis has done a lot of research on the connection between the radical right and Putin.

According to this belief, Europe became separated from its Christian roots. Putin once said that European countries “reject their roots, including Christian values ​​that are the basis of Western civilization.” Baudette shares this analysis. “Our historical convictions and roots are being dismantled, our national history is being blackened and our cities have become unrecognizable.” He said in 2020 to Norwegian Refugee Council†

Liberal Oikophobic

The blame for this uprooting lies with “anti-oil” liberalism. Liberalism is ‘obsolete’ Putin three years ago against financial times: The new system will be illiberal. He said that liberalism had conflicted with the interests of European citizens, and these citizens revolted.

In that battle, liberal Europe faces Putin’s Russia: Christian, anti-liberal, ultra-nationalist. Apologists claim that this state is rooted in this tradition and in its history: from that (Imperial) realization follows the war in Ukraine, a region belonging to the traditional Russian Empire. Traditional Europe can only be restored by getting rid of the supranational politics of liberal politicians.

In this struggle, the radical right and Putin see each other as allies, says Greek political scientist Antonis Klapsis, who has researched the relationships between the two. “Anti-liberal Russia is a geopolitical alternative to liberal Europe.” The idea is that Putin is only defending his national interest.

sabotage tactics

At the same time, pro-Russian parties are Putin’s geopolitical force. Supporting far-right and anti-European parties is a subversive tactic he uses in Europe, says Alina Polyakova. He created a “Trojan horse”. They don’t even have to have government power: to destabilize the peace by “selling the Russian novel” is enough, she says.

Baudette previously denied that Russian dissident Alexander Navalny had been poisoned by Russian intelligence. It was Navalny According to FVD A Western agent whose sole aim was to disrupt Russia through “anarchy and revolution”. In doing so, the party seized the Russian novel. The same thing happened last week in the debate in the House of Representatives. Baudy said Ukraine was “not a nation-state”, but “a conglomerate of at least two different peoples, one Russian and the other anti-Russian”. It thus invokes the same historical fiction that Putin uses to legitimize his war. Such historical revisionism denies not only the existence of the sovereign Ukrainian state, but also the Ukrainian state that has developed over the past centuries, with its people, language and culture.

With this speech, Baudette is almost alone in Europe: many parties and politicians have turned against the invasion. Polyakova hopes that the break will continue. „This must be waking up moment She: Russia does not support traditional values. The country is developing into a totalitarian state.”

Read also: The West is considering more sanctions against Russia over Ukraine

Klapsis: “The distance the parties take now is determined mainly by electoral considerations. Le Pen will lose votes if you go to the French presidential election where the candidate becomes friends with a leader who is waging war in Europe.” Last week, Le Pen removed 1.2 election flyers containing a picture of her shaking Putin’s hand.

Electoral considerations seem to play a lesser role in Baudet, three weeks before the municipal elections in which the FVD is participating in fifty municipalities. His supporters are smaller than when the FJP became the largest party in the 2019 provincial elections. But those who remained have tested the FVD’s ideology and the radical anti-coronavirus positions with which the party has isolated itself for the past two years. The war has reinforced that isolation.