At the time it probably felt like a good idea for Marine Le Pen’s campaign team. A photo of her shaking hands with Vladimir Putin, taken when she met the Russian president in Moscow in 2017, would emphasise to the electorate that she was a serious player on the world stage.
The photo was included in Le Pen’s campaign manifesto, over one million of which have been distributed the length and breadth of France. Now they are being hastily withdrawn by party members as Le Pen does her best to distance herself from the most despised man in the West.
Le Pen is not the only presidential candidate to have been embarrassed by events in Ukraine. Eric Zemmour, her right-wing rival, had started to see his campaign gather some momentum last month but he has now fallen back in the polls, losing three points in a week. ‘I dream of a French Putin,’ he gushed in 2018, in a
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