Who are Russia’s friends abroad now? Judging by a recent congress of the International Movement of Russophiles, an event put together by conservative activists and held with great fanfare at a glass-enclosed hall at the Pushkin State Museum in Moscow, the answer is political marginals and conspiracy theorists.
Among them were the contentious American actor Steven Seagal, a grandson of Charles de Gaulle, and an Italian princess and scholar known for her Tolkien translations who fears European boys are being encouraged to marry their cows.
“I’m here to promote peace and friendship and I do believe that this conflict has been provoked and caused by Anglo-Saxon interests … I think it’s putting the world into deep danger, and I’m here to fight against that,” said Pierre de Gaulle, the French general’s grandson and a speaker at the conference, in an interview with the Guardian.
The younger de Gaulle has already attracted controversy. Last month, he told a French newspaper, Le Parisien, that the west had “unfortunately let [Volodymyr] Zelenskiy, his oligarchs and neo-Nazi military groups lock themselves into a spiral of war.”
Yves de Gaulle, Pierre’s older brother, told Le Parisien on 24 January his brother’s views “concern nobody other than himself – not me, not our family and even less the general”.
Pierre de Gaulle did not comment on his brother’s remarks and sidestepped a question on whether his family name might be used to legitimise the war in Ukraine as De Gaulle had proudly invoked his grandfather when asked on stage about the conflict.
“My grandfather had a very deep knowledge and intense knowledge about Russian leaders and people as well,” he told the conference. “So he was pretty aware of the interest, and the geographical necessity for Europe and France to ally with Russia.
“More and more people are becoming aware that this conflict was created to break the single bloc of Europe, to the benefit of the Americans,” he said.
It may also prove a lucrative opportunity. As a banker, he added, he was looking to find people of a “different opinion who have a different view for peace”, including those looking for “financial contracts, investment contracts”.
Europeans are in short supply when it comes to Russian propaganda and media outlets looking for foreign support for the war against Ukraine. But this week 90 delegates, including many conspiracy theorists, gathered willing to parrot the Moscow line.
Nikolay Malinov, a former member of the Bulgarian parliament who is now under US sanctions, opened the event saying it was time for the “forces of light to defeat the forces of darkness”.
On stage, dressed in black, was Steven Seagal, who has been named a special representative for Russia-US cultural links. “I am 100% Russophile and 1 million % Russian,” Seagal said during a press conference.
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, was also there, giving what would be seen as a fringe event an official imprimatur. He delivered a keynote speech along with a missive from Vladimir Putin. “We are not just seeing neo-nazism, we are seeing direct nazism, which is covering more and more European countries,” said Lavrov. “We see how history is being destroyed before our eyes, holy monuments are being destroyed.”
Among those on stage, Princess Vittoria Alliata di Villafranca stood out, a woman in her 70s with bright red hair, perhaps best known in Italy as the first translator into Italian of Tolkien. She claims she fought Opus Dei and the mafia in order to reclaim her family palace in Bagheria, where she said movie producers were filming a modern remake of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard.
In a speech she said that “Russophobia” was created for “new formulas of colonisation” and linked it to the US landing on Sicily during the second world war, which she called a pretext for Washington’s spread of influence.
Alliata said that she was at the conference representing the Deutsch-Arabaische Gesellschaft (German Arab Association), of which she is president, and said she was advocating a “message of peace.”
Asked how she came to be in Russia for a conference of Russophiles, she also said she was visiting the Russian royal family. “I am a cousin of the Romanovs,” she said, referring to the descendants of the last royal family of the Russian empire. “I know them very well, I came to the wedding … So it’s a tsarist connection.”
She said she was in Russia to show “there are other people in the world that share your opinion and view on the world … and that makes it easier for a village lady in Sicily who looks at some dismay at her son who wants to get married to a cow.”
She sought to avoid the subject of the war. Asked about it directly, she said: “I’m not an expert on that subject.”
“It’s my duty to explain how things stand,” she added about her speech. “It’s nothing to do with personal sympathies. I find Putin nicer than Biden, but I’m a great friend of Obama’s stepsister.”
