President Emmanuel Macron’s call for Europe not to rule out sending troops to Ukraine to defeat Russia marks a turning point in France's decades-long "unhealthy fascination" with the country and its strongmen, argues journalist Elisa Vidal. So what's been driving the charm?
“Yes I admire Vladimir Putin,” announced far-right leader Marine Le Pen in 2017 as she posed alongside the Russian president in the Kremlin.
Four years later, the leader of the hard-left France Unbowed party Jean-Luc Melenchon said Russia was not an adversary but a “partner” for France.
But fascination for Russia goes beyond populist would-be leaders – most of the governments of the Fifth Republic, whether right or left, have been Russophile.
General de Gaulle spoke of "eternal Russia", Jacques Chirac described himself as a "lover of Russia" and Emmanuel Macron spent most of his first term in office trying to woo Putin.
Nostalgia for the empire
In her book La Fascination Russe (Fascination with Russia) journalist Elsa Vidal argues that France's diplomatic and military elites, as well as its politicians, have developed an "unhealthy" fascination for Russia. It has led to three decades of complacency towards Moscow, obscuring the reality of Putin's regime.
The fascination is partly based on shared nostalgia for lost glory after the French colonial empire was dismantled twice, whereas the Russian empire twice rose from the ashes.
“French politicians and military sometimes feel sympathy towards Russia, because Russia crumbled twice – in 1917 and then after the collapse of the USSR – but was then reborn.
“Vladimir Putin is promoting a new vision of Russia, which has a lot to do with imperialism. It’s attractive to part of the French that are still nostalgic about the time France was an empire, and at the centre of a colony.”
Vidal also noted resentment and envy among some French military top brass who’ve had to swallow big cuts in military spending – down from five percent of GDP in 1960 to less than two percent in 2022. Although the budget is set to increase from 2025, it will still be a far cry from the six percent of GDP that Moscow claims to be spending on defence this year.
Listen to a conversation with Elsa Vidal in the Spotlight on France podcast
Anti-Americanism
But the biggest driver behind this fascination with Russia turns out be a shared antipathy for the United States, which Vidal discovered when interviewing elites for the book.
Before answering questions on Russian foreign policy, interviewees insisted on talking about US war crimes and "the evil influence of the US on world current affairs".
"'What about the US? What about Afghanistan? Guantanamo?' they would say. That's how I understood that anti-Americanism is a very powerful force and [means of] political leverage in France."
The sentiment has its roots in two world wars.
“There's a sort of resentment among the French that the Americans saved them twice”, notes Vidal. “It’s quite embarrassing for those in France who think that we have to be recognised as a great power in the political game, and those who long for the empire that we lost."
Such resentment may appear churlish, but it was fed by the US administration's disdain for France's war-time hero General de Gaulle.
"De Gaulle is out to achieve one-man government in France. I can't imagine a man I would distrust more," US President Franklin D. Roosevelt is quoted as saying in the book As He Saw It.
Vidal says the French were also angered over US attempts to build an alternative administration that they would control after the war.
In the end it didn't happen. "But we still seem to be quite concerned with the US wanting to dominate us," she says. "We are still being advised or governed by people whose minds were moulded immediately after the Second World War."
Blinded by a fantasy
Vidal spent much of her adult life living and working in Moscow and other parts of the Russian Federation, before becoming head of RFI's Russian-language service.
She maintains that those who see Russia as the guardian of Christian and traditional family values are under an illusion.
While Putin's regime has repressed the LGBTQ community, “it’s not a champion for family values and is not conservative," she insists, pointing to high divorce rates and long-authorised commercial GPA.
Neither is it deeply religious. “Russia is a very secular society and only 2 percent of Russians go to church,” she adds.
While most of France's leaders since 1958 have leaned more towards the USSR and the Russian Federation than to the US, François Hollande – Socialist president from 2012 to 2017 – was a notable exception.
In 2014, in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, he suspended a €1.2bn deal to sell Moscow two Mistral missile launchers.
Hollande told Vidal he hadn’t fallen for the Putin cocktail – one third seduction, one third brutality, one third surprise and a few lies – because he’d "seen it being prepared in front of him".
Her own theory is that since France's Socialist party had been active in fighting totalitarian regimes, especially the USSR, this may have "served as a counter poison".
“For a president that was sometimes bashed for being too normal, he took the only decision that was historically necessary, and that France’s allies had been asking for, especially after Crimea had been annexed.”
The long march to Ukraine
The Putin cocktail worked well on Emmanuel Macron.
In May 2017, just days after being elected as France's youngest ever president, Putin got the star treatment at Versailles – the first step in several attempts to win over the Russian leader.
France supported Russian reintegration into G7 during an August 2019 summit, and that same month Macron welcomed Putin at his summer residence of Brégancon. He described Russia as "profoundly European" and said France believed in a Europe "from Lisbon to Vladivostock".
Putin was not convinced, remarking that this vision of big Europe was "not theirs, but that of de Gaulle".
Vidal confirms that Moscow had not appreciated being told it had a "European destiny" and such comments reflected a misunderstanding of both Russia and its president.
As it became clear Moscow was preparing to invade Ukraine, Macron nonetheless continued to push for dialogue, meeting Putin in Moscow in February 2022. The photo of the two leaders at opposite ends of a 4m-long white table put Macron in his place.
In May 2022, having condemned the massacres in Bucha and Irpin, Macron refused to give up on the idea he could bring Putin to reason, warning against the "temptation of humiliation and spirit of revenge" towards Russia.
It was like "dropping a bomb", Vidal says. “It was very difficult in the wake of the Bucha and Irpin war crimes, to hear the consistency with which the French president was still trying to maintain good relations with the aggressor.”
It was a year before France began to switch sides, when in May 2023 Macron and Ukrainian President Volodomy Zelensky issued a joint declaration condemning Russia's ongoing war of aggression.
And then, in February this year, Macron did a full U-turn urging Europe not to rule out sending troops “to help Ukraine win the war and defeat Russia”.
Regime change
Once again his comments caused consternation among EU member states, and left the French confused.
“We are used to being the last one willing to oppose Russia, now we are leading the way," says Vidal. "Emmanuel Macron seems to enjoy being the disruptive element.
"So we are back in our favourite position. Now we have to build a consensus around us.”
She admits it won‘t be easy, but insists France is not esclalating tensions. "We are just putting ourselves in a position that allows us to defend our interests.”
That means working towards securing a democratic Russia. Not just by talking tough, but through action, since “only deeds count” for the Kremlin.
“It’s dangerous for us all, but there are good chances that the regime will disappear if it loses the war, so I think it gives us very clear objectives," Vidal concludes.
“If we want to have a sovereign, stable and peaceful Europe, there is no better ally for France than a democratic Russia in Europe, and that means supporting the opposition.”
This story appeared in the Spotlight on France podcast, episode #109
