In the lead-up to the European elections, the Kremlin poured vast amounts of resources into attempting to tilt the results in favour of far-Right, pro-Russian politicians. All the familiar tactics were seen in the wild. Moscow hardly bothers to cover its tracks any longer: viral stories on TikTok and Instagram pumped out lurid claims about the opposition, hackers caused disruption, and, behind the scenes, Russian agents were hard at work within NGOs and political structures across the continent.
At first glance, Vladimir Putin seems to have won an enormous victory. Sympathetic far-Right parties, including openly neo-fascist outfits in Slovakia and Bulgaria, won seats across Central and Eastern Europe. Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National performed so well — clocking 31.5% of the vote in France — that Emmanuel Macron was moved to call a national election in response.
Russian politicians have been cock-a-hoop, declaring with confidence that the parliamentary results are a turning point in a broader war against the West. On X, an increasingly combative Dmitry Medvedev declared in his broken English that the results “come as a reflection of your inept policy of providing support to the bandera authorities in the f. Ukraine at the cost of your own citizens, your idiotic economic and migration policy!” A swathe of Russian media pundits followed his lead, proclaiming that the electoral results would lead to a definitive weakening in support for Kyiv and that “Russian culture and traditions are gaining more and more recognition in the West”.
These leading commentators are assuring a Russian public, struggling with the economic and human costs of the country’s war against Ukraine, that a long-promised goal — one enshrined in official doctrine for close to two decades — is about to be realised: the creation of a “multipolar world” led by Moscow, and the rebuilding of a lost empire.
Source link : https://unherd.com/2024/06/the-failure-of-moscows-global-revolution/
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Publish date : 2024-06-16 20:02:13
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