Kremlin sees ‘trend’ in French election

French voters on Sunday “confirmed the trend” seen across the EU in recent ballots, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s bloc ended in third place in the first round of his country’s snap parliamentary elections. The right-wing National Rally (RN) party led the vote, while the newly-created left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) trailed in second. French media have described the results as Macron shooting himself in the foot with his decision to dissolve the parliament last month.

The Russian government “certainly pays great attention” to the French elections, Peskov told journalists during a regular briefing on Monday.

“The trends that have emerged earlier in several European nations, including France, have been confirmed,” he added. “We’ll wait for the second round, but the preferences of the French voters are more or less clear to us.”

Moscow considers the Macron government hostile to Russia and as occasionally setting the tone of the West’s confrontation with the country. The French president was the first to declare that it should not be ruled out that NATO nations may eventually send troops to Ukraine to prevent a Russian victory.

Macron has argued that he wants to maintain “strategic ambiguity” regarding Ukraine, supposedly keeping Moscow guessing as to how far NATO would go. Considering that many NATO member states, including the US, responded to Macron’s February remarks by ruling out sending troops to fight for Kiev, critics of the French leader claim he has achieved the opposite of his intentions.

Macron dissolved the National Assembly on June 9, following a European Parliament election in which RN won 30 of the 81 French seats in the EU legislature. Experts have called the move a gamble which has backfired, after left-wing French political groups overcame their differences and campaigned as a single force.

The second round is scheduled for July 7. According to Le Figaro sources, Macron is considering whether to dissolve the freshly-elected parliament.