Russian links among many far-right MEPs are becoming more apparent

Seven EU countries have been investigating since the fall of 2023 in a Moscow-inspired operation aimed at destabilizing the European vote on June 9 and strengthening pro-Russian political forces within the European Parliament. These countries, including France, have mobilized their intelligence services, but for some also their judicial system to track down Moscow's agents, whether parliamentarians, businessmen or journalists who could, for a fee, transmit anti-Western and financially complicit diatribes. . Media. Among them are several figures from the French far right.

On May 29, Belgian and French police searched the home and offices of Guillaume Bradura, a French aide to Marcel de Graaf, the European representative of the Forum for Democracy, a Dutch party allied with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has held the same jobs with Nicholas Pye – a former National Rally (RN) executive and now a member of Reconquest! – In the European Parliament, before he was excluded from the National Rally party, in 2019, due to an anti-Semitic image, and then until 2022, with Maximilian Krah, a member of the European Parliament for the Alternative for Germany, the German far-right party.

The Belgian judiciary is moving within the framework of an investigation opened in April “Influence peddling, passive corruption and membership in a criminal organization”. According to the Federal Prosecutor's Office, members of the European Parliament were “Come closer and push” To spread Russian propaganda. Mr. Bradura could have facilitated exchanges between pro-Russian donors and various far-right lists in the European Parliament. Police confiscated a number of USB keys, computers, letters and photos from his home. Mr. Bradura has not yet been heard in this case.

The work of justice overlaps with the work of the intelligence services. In March, the Czech authorities denounced the activities of the media site Voice of Europe (VoE), registered in Prague, is accused of spreading Russian propaganda and corrupting elected European officials. Polish counterintelligence services (ABW) indicated on March 28 that they had confiscated nearly 100,000 euros during searches they carried out against pro-Putin networks.

The operation would have cost “more than a million euros.”

According to information collected by a media group that collects the worldCzech daily newspapers Denick Npolishing Gazeta Wyborcza And the Belgians, Evening And De MorgenGerman weekly Oil dies and the “Kontraste” program on the ARD channel. The operation also relied on two other media sites: Visegrad Post and Golos.eu. The first is a reference site for the French far right, founded in Hungary by two French identity activists, François Lavallo, known as Ferenc Almasy, and Nicolas de Lamberteri. In 2022, Mr. Almasi provided various services to the foundation created by Identity and Democracy (ID), the group to which the National Caucus in the European Parliament is linked. As for the second site, it was registered in Russia in 2018 “Fight for pro-Russian Ukrainians or Russian-born Ukrainians who are politically persecuted or exposed to ethnic hatred”. Golos.eu emails are directed to a server with a Russian IP address.

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