“We do not harbor any special hopes” for improving ties with France, Moscow said.
Russia’s hopes for smoothing over relations with France were dashed by the results of the French legislative election, a Kremlin spokesperson said Monday.
France’s far-right National Rally, which has been criticized for its Russia-friendly positions, was unexpectedly trounced at the second round of polls on Sunday, with a leftist alliance snatching the most seats in a hung parliament.
“The victory of political forces that would be supporters of efforts to restore our bilateral relations is definitely better for Russia, but so far we do not see such bright political will in anyone, so we do not harbor any special hopes or illusions in this regard,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Monday.
The link quotes him calling the Kiev regime a putsch, but that was back in 2014, and that was in fact a revolution. It’s not about Zelensky, but he does give all the current talking points (neonazis in Kiev, NATO provocations, Russia can’t have NATO at their doorstep…). BTW no one did anything about Russia stealing Crimea, either, everyone was still trying to justify not doing anything.
That was 10 years ago and he has been (very) slowly toning it down: when making the left alliance a few weeks ago, he finally relented on allowing weapons to be sent to Ukraine because the rest of the left made him, there’s still hope he’ll give up the anti-NATO talk… eventually. If he makes it to the government, when someone asks him about Russia bombing children’s hospitals, at some point he’ll have nowhere to run because he doesn’t actually support that. He shouts and curses quite violently at journalists who help out the far right, but on serious subjects in serious interviews, he actually has to be reasonable (and he is). On the last presidential elections, when he showed up to the round 1 left parties debates, he was all proper and serious and making his points properly and sensibly - and then he lost on round 1 and the next day in the street, he screamed his head off at the first journalist who put a microphone in his face.
Oh, and over this side of the world, no one claims Russia is socialist. But leftists do get mad at the EU and NATO for crushing the farmer class and playing the capitalist hand, that’s what that is about.