Image copyright AFP Image caption The meeting is a coup for Ms Le Pen

Russian president Vladimir Putin has met France's far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen in Moscow, saying she represents a "fast-growing element" of European politics.

Mr Putin defended the meeting - a coup for Ms Le Pen - saying that he was not seeking to influence France's election.

Ms Le Pen has garnered widespread support at home but her extreme views have deterred most foreign leaders.

Russia was accused of meddling in the US election in support of Donald Trump.

"Of course I know that the election campaign in France is actively developing," said Mr Putin.

"We do not want to influence events in any way, but we reserve the right to talk to representatives of all the country's political forces," he added.

Ms Le Pen, the leader of France's National Front (FN) party, called during her visit to Moscow for the lifting of EU sanctions against Russia, arguing that they were "counterproductive".

When Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014, the US and EU imposed travel bans and asset freezes on individuals and companies linked to Russia's ruling elite.

"I believe that barring parliamentarians from speaking to each other, working together is an infringement of democratic rights," Interfax quoted Ms Le Pen.

Speaking at Russia's lower house of parliament, the Duma, she vowed to push for the so-called "blacklists" of targeted individuals to be abolished.

Ms Le Pen has previously stated her approval of Russia's annexation of of Crimea.

She also said that Russia and France should work together to save the world from globalism and Islamic fundamentalism.

Moscow likes what Le Pen has to say: By Steven Rosenberg, BBC News, Moscow

Image copyright AP

Moscow likes what Marine Le Pen has to say. It likes her call for EU sanctions imposed on Russia to be scrapped. It likes her claim that "Crimea has always been Russian" and that "there was no Russian invasion of Crimea". It likes her commitment to forge a strong partnership with Moscow. Which explains why the Kremlin leader took the decision to meet her in Moscow.

It's rare for Vladimir Putin to receive a presidential candidate from abroad. I asked President Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov whether any Russian banks or financial institutions intend to provide financing for Ms Le Pen's campaign. "I don't have that information," he replied.

Coverage of her in the Russian state media has been favourable. There is little doubt Russia would be happy to deal with a President Le Pen.

However, today, the French far-right presidential candidate was less than happy to deal with the media. Journalists crowded into the lower house of parliament, the Duma, for a le Pen press briefing. She never showed up.

FN Treasurer Wallerand de Saint-Just has said Ms Le Pen's visit is not a cash-raising exercise, though party members have said they are seeking millions to fund the presidential and later the parliamentary election campaigns, the Associated Press news agency reports.

Recent opinion polls in France put Ms Le Pen neck-and-neck in the first round with centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron, with Mr Macron slated to win the run-off.</s>Kiev, Ukraine (CNN) A former Russian lawmaker and Kremlin critic who fled to Ukraine last year was shot dead Thursday in Kiev — a killing that Ukraine’s President called a “Russian state terrorist act.”

Denis Voronenkov, who’d been a Communist member of Russia’s lower legislative house before he left, was fatally shot outside a hotel in broad daylight, officials said.

Voronenkov becomes the latest in a string of Russian critics of President Vladimir Putin and the Russian government who were killed or injured in mysterious circumstances.

The suspect in his death died in the hospital after a shootout with Voronenkov’s bodyguard.

Denis Voronenkov, a former Communist legislator in Russia’s lower legislative house, was shot dead in Kiev on Thursday, Ukrainian authorities say.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called Thursday’s killing a “Russian state terrorist act” on Twitter, and described Voronenkov as “one of the key witnesses of the Russian aggression against Ukraine” — referring to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and a subsequent war with pro-Russian rebels

Poroshenko’s accusation drew a sharp rebuke from Moscow. Any claims that Russia is connected to the killing are “absurd,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to Russian state-run TASS news agency.

Details about the shooting weren’t immediately released. CNN video shows investigators standing over the bloodied body of Voronenkov, lying face-up on a Kiev sidewalk near the Premier Palace hotel.

The suspect was wounded and taken to a hospital where he later died, Kiev police Chief Andriy Krischenko said.

Details about the suspect’s identity and who injured him weren’t available. No motive for the attack was immediately known.

Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko said Voronenkov had given “extremely important testimony” to Ukraine’s military prosecutors.

Voronenkov’s killing was “a demonstrative execution of a witness,” Lutsenko said.

Voronenkov and his wife, former Russian lawmaker Maria Maksakova, sharply criticized Putin after they left Russia for Ukraine in October.

Voronenkov also alleged that although he was recorded as having voted for the annexation in Russia’s Duma, the vote was cast against his will. He was not at parliament that day, and another legislator used Voronenkov’s card to vote for him, he told Radio Free Europe.

The day after that interview, Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, denied Voronenkov’s claim.

Voronenkov said he thought his criticisms led Russian authorities to charge him in absentia with fraud in February, Radio Free Europe reported. He called the charges “fake” and “political,” the report said.

Voronenkov said he’d become a Ukrainian citizen. While he was a Communist Party member, his wife had belonged to the ruling United Russia party.

Yanukovych was Ukraine’s President when, in 2013, he suspended talks on what was to be a landmark political and trade deal with the European Union. Russia had opposed Ukraine forming closer ties with the European Union.

Tens of thousands of pro-Western protesters rallied in Kiev against Yanukovych’s decision, and in February 2014, a gunfight between protesters and police left dozens dead. Yanukovych soon fled, eventually for Russia, as his guards abandoned the presidential compound.

Russia’s parliament signed off on Putin’s request to send military forces into Crimea the next month. An uprising by pro-Russian rebels in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk ensued, a conflict that has left thousands of people dead and injured.

“I told (prosecutors) some details of what was going on. And I will give testimony in open court in the course of judicial inquiry held in Ukraine,” Voronenkov told Radio Free Europe.

Voronenkov is one of several Kremlin critics to die or be injured in mysterious circumstances.

Five suspects have been on trial in Moscow since October, with one accused of accepting cash to kill him. All have pleaded not guilty.

Putin blamed extremists and protesters who he said were trying to stir internal strife in Russia. But people close to Nemtsov have expressed concern that he was killed because of his opposition to the government.

It was the second time in two years Kara-Murza fell into a coma after a suspected poisoning.
• In 2013, Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky was found dead inside his house in Britain with a noose around his neck. His falling-out with the Russian government had left him self-exiled in the United Kingdom.

A coroner’s officer said it couldn’t say whether Berezovsky killed himself. That year, Putin said he could not rule out that foreign secret services had a role in Berezovsky’s death, but he added that there was no evidence of this.
• In July 2009, human rights activist Natalya Estemirova was kidnapped outside her home in the Russian republic of Chechnya and found shot to death in a neighboring republic the same day. She had spent years investigating human rights abuses in Chechnya.

The head of the group Estemirova worked for, Memorial, accused the Kremlin-backed Chechen leadership of ordering her killing. Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov denied involvement in her death, calling it a “monstrous crime” that was carried out to discredit his government.
• In 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist critical of Russia’s war in Chechnya, was gunned down at the entrance to her Moscow apartment.

The Kremlin has staunchly denied accusations that it or its agents are targeting political opponents or had anything to do with the deaths.</s>President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed Russia's support for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad on Friday and said he opposed external interference to try to end the conflict there.

Speaking at an economic conference in the city of St Petersburg, Putin also said Russia was concerned that fighting could worsen in Syria and come to resemble the conflict in Libya.</s>President Vladimir Putin met French far-right party leader Marine Le Pen in the Kremlin on Friday, handing her a potential boost to her campaign to win next month’s presidential election in France. Putin told Le Pen Moscow reserved the right to meet any French politician it wanted and that she represented “quite a fast-growing element of European political forces.” “Of course I know that the election campaign in France is actively developing,” said Putin. “We do not want to influence events in any way, but we reserve the right to talk to representatives of all the country’s political forces.”

A meeting with Putin is a coup for Le Pen and could help her burnish her foreign policy credentials. While increasingly popular in France, she has struggled to get any backing abroad apart from support offered by other far-right parties.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, told reporters on a conference call that Putin and Le Pen had not discussed the possibility of Russia offering any financial help to her political party. Le Pen, who has said she admires the Russian leader, was visiting Russia at the invitation of Leonid Slutsky, head of the lower house of parliament’s foreign affairs committee.

Earlier on Friday, Le Pen had cut short a schedule of events in the Russian parliament to meet Putin. Reporters had been told she would give a news conference at the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, after meeting Russian lawmakers, but she did not turn up for the event at the designated time.

On Friday morning, Le Pen explained to Russian parliamentarians why she opposed European Union sanctions imposed on Moscow over its role in the Ukraine crisis.

She also said that Russia and France needed to unite to fight global terrorism, a sentiment later echoed by Putin who has long advocated teaming up with the West to take on the Islamic State group.

For all the latest World News, download Indian Express App now</s>Russian president Vladimir Putin has met France’s far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen in Moscow, saying she represents a “fast-growing element” of European politics.

Mr Putin defended the meeting – a coup for Ms Le Pen – saying that he was not seeking to influence France’s election.

Moscow likes what Marine Le Pen has to say. It likes her call for EU sanctions imposed on Russia to be scrapped. It likes her claim that “Crimea has always been Russian” and that “there was no Russian invasion of Crimea”. It likes her commitment to forge a strong partnership with Moscow. Which explains why the Kremlin leader took the decision to meet her in Moscow.

It’s rare for Vladimir Putin to receive a presidential candidate from abroad. I asked President Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov whether any Russian banks or financial institutions intend to provide financing for Ms Le Pen’s campaign. “I don’t have that information,” he replied.

Coverage of her in the Russian state media has been favourable. There is little doubt Russia would be happy to deal with a President Le Pen.

FN Treasurer Wallerand de Saint-Just has said Ms Le Pen’s visit is not a cash-raising exercise, though party members have said they are seeking millions to fund the presidential and later the parliamentary election campaigns, the Associated Press news agency reports.</s>MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin made his preferences in the French presidential election clear Friday by hosting far-right candidate Marine Le Pen at the Kremlin, but analysts are skeptical about Russia’s ability to sway the outcome of the vote.

Embracing Le Pen is part of Russia’s efforts to reach out to nationalist and anti-globalist forces to build up its influence in the West and help overcome the strains in relations with the U.S. and the European Union.

Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential vote has emboldened the Kremlin, even though the ongoing U.S. Congressional scrutiny of his campaign ties with Russia has all but dashed Moscow’s hopes for a quick detente. U.S. intelligence agencies have accused Moscow of hacking to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election.

During Friday’s meeting with National Front leader Le Pen, Putin insisted that Russia has no intention of meddling in the French election and only wants to have a dialogue with a variety of politicians. He praised Le Pen, saying she represents part of a “quickly developing spectrum of European political forces.”

Le Pen’s anti-immigration and anti-EU platform appeals to the Kremlin, which has postured as a defender of conservative national values against Western globalization. She also has called for strong security ties with Moscow to jointly combat radical Islamic groups, promised to work to repeal the EU sanctions on Moscow over its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and pledged to recognize Crimea as part of Russia if she’s elected.

“I long have spoken for Russia and France to restore their cultural, economic and strategic ties, especially now, when we face a serious terror threat,” Le Pen told Putin on Friday. The meeting was a surprise addition to her meeting with Russian lawmakers, which was announced earlier this week.

A Russia-friendly approach to geopolitics runs in the Le Pen family. Jean-Marie Le Pen, the National Front’s co-founder, his daughter Marine and her niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen have all made numerous visits to Moscow over the years.

Le Pen herself has repeatedly visited Russia, and her party borrowed 9 million euros in 2014 from the small First Czech Russian Bank, but the bank’s license was later revoked.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the prospect that Russian banks could offer Le Pen more loans to help fund her campaign.

Polls show Le Pen as the likely winner of the first round of France’s presidential vote on April 23, but indicate that she would lose presidential runoff on May 7 to centrist independent candidate Emmanuel Macron.

Once considered the front-runner in the French race, conservative candidate Francois Fillon has fallen behind Le Pen and Macron after facing preliminary charges in a probe of taxpayer-funded jobs his wife and children received but allegedly never performed.

Over the years, Putin has frequently met with Fillon, the French prime minister from 2007-2012. An unconfirmed report this week said Fillon was paid 50,000 euros ($54,000) to arrange a meeting between Putin and a Lebanese magnate, a claim rejected by the Kremlin as “fake news.” Fillon also called it a “shameful lie.”

Russian state-controlled television stations and other media have offered extensive, friendly coverage of Le Pen and Fillon while casting Macron in a more negative light, presenting him as a puppet of outgoing Socialist President Francois Hollande.

Fillon on Thursday claimed that Hollande was manipulating the French justice system to discredit political rivals — a charge that Hollande vigorously denied.

Dmitry Kiselyov, the anchor of the main weekly news program on Russian state TV, has echoed that theme, saying that the French judiciary was working “as swiftly as a guillotine during the bloody French Revolution” to undermine Fillon and Le Pen.

Le Pen is also facing legal investigations around party finances.

“There is an impression that they are bluntly clearing the political field for Emmanuel Macron, the project of Francois Hollande,” Kiselyov said,

Gleb Pavlovsky, a political strategist who consulted for Kremlin in the past, said the coverage of the French campaign by Russian television stations reflects Putin’s view that nationalist forces will increasingly shape the global agenda.

“The Kremlin keeps persuading itself and the population that it is right, its policy is shaping the future and its vision of the world will win,” he said. “The Kremlin has made more than one bet (in the French vote), but the question is if these bets are real. I believe it’s a delusion.”

While Russian TV stations use the French election to buttress the Kremlin view of the world in domestic public opinion, Moscow appears to have little ability to influence the French agenda.

The Russian state-run Sputnik news agency and the TV network RT have French-language websites, but they are mostly aimed at those who already have a pro-Russia worldview. It’s unclear if they have any impact on a broader French audience.

“It is clear that at the moment the direct audience for Russian media in France is very marginal,” said Christophe Deloire, head of Reporters Without Borders media rights watchdog.

He added, however, that Russian influence via social media networks could be more difficult to measure.

Macron’s aides claimed in February that Russian groups were interfering with his campaign soon after a spike in social media claims that Macron is gay.

The married Macron denied the claims and within days his campaign officials blamed Russian media and Russian hackers for attempting to sway the French election, but did not provide proof of Russian hacking.

Macron’s cybersecurity chief Mounir Mahjoubi told The Associated Press at the time that his campaign website was briefly knocked offline but that hackers had failed to “open the door” to its databases. He said the campaign registered thousands of attempted attacks from an IP address in Ukraine suspected to be part of a coordinated campaign from Russia.

Maria Katasonova, a pro-Kremlin political activist who admires Le Pen, dismissed talk about alleged Russian meddling in the French vote as “utterly stupid.”

“We have seen how intensively they have played the Russian theme in the U.S. presidential campaign, and we now can see Le Pen’s rivals trying to exploit this theme in the French campaign,” she said. “We are witnessing an agony of the liberal clans after Trump’s victory in the U.S., and we are seeing them publicly declaring a war on Marine Le Pen.”</s>At a meeting between far-right leading French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen and Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin Friday, the Russian president embraced her calls for intelligence sharing and pointed to her party’s increased popularity — but stopped short of a formal endorsement of her candidacy. “Of course, it would be very interesting to share our…</s>Russian President Vladimir Putin granted an audience to French far-right party leader Marine Le Pen in the Kremlin on Friday, bestowing a level of international recognition that has so far eluded her in the countdown to France’s presidential election.

Opinion polls show Le Pen getting through to the second, decisive round of the French presidential election on May 7 but then losing to centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron.

Le Pen, who has said she admires Putin, reiterated her call for a lifting of the European Union’s economic sanctions imposed on Russia over its role in the Ukraine conflict.

READ MORE: Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort had plan to benefit Putin

“We attach great importance to our relations with France, but at the same time we try to maintain equal relations both with the current authorities and with representatives of the opposition,” said Putin ahead of his talks with Le Pen.

“Of course I know that the election campaign in France is actively developing,” said Putin. “We do not want to influence events in any way, but we reserve the right to talk to representatives of all the country’s political forces, just as our partners in Europe and the United States do.”

Le Pen told reporters after the talks that the aim of her visit to Russia was not to boost her election chances, though her meeting with Putin is likely to go down well with her core supporters in France, many of whom admire the Russian leader’s conservative stance on social and moral issues.

Other French voters, however, may be put off by her association with a leader widely seen in the West as autocratic.

The meeting also shows that the Kremlin is not shying away from actions that could influence foreign elections, even after the storm over U.S. intelligence agencies’ allegations that Russia tried to interfere in the U.S. presidential election to help Donald Trump win the White House.

READ MORE: Why is Canada’s top diplomat, Chrystia Freeland, banned from Russia?

Russia has denied trying to influence the U.S. vote, and has also dismissed allegations that Kremlin-funded media outlets are spreading “fake news” in an attempt to interfere in the French presidential race.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, told reporters on a conference call that Putin and Le Pen had not discussed the possibility of Russia offering any financial help to her political party.

Her party took a 9-million-euro loan from a Moscow-based bank in 2014, and is actively seeking new sources of funding.</s>France's far-right presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen met Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Friday, just one month before the first round of France's presidential elections.

Until Russian state television announced the meeting, it was unclear whether Le Pen would meet the Russian president during the right-wing candidate's visit to Moscow.



“Russia does not want to influence the French election but reserves the right to meet with any French politician it wants,” Putin told Le Pen, in reference to allegations that Russia is attempting to influence the election's outcome.

France's Front National leader first held talks with Russian Parliament Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin and the Russian parliament's International Relations Committee on Friday. 



Both the Russian and French sides said the visit was the result of a “personal invitation” from Leonid Slutsky, the committee's chairman who is a member of Russia's nationalist Liberal Democratic Party.

“We do not believe in the EU's diplomacy of threats, sanctions, and blackmail against Russia," Le Pen told the Duma committee. "Sanctions are stupid.”

“The Russian role in saving the world from Islamic fundamentalism needs to be praised,” she added.

Slutsky and other Russian parliamentarians greeted her with open arms in the Duma.</s>Russian President Vladimir Putin made his preferences in the French presidential election clear Friday by hosting far-right candidate Marine Le Pen at the Kremlin, but analysts are skeptical about Russia’s ability to sway the outcome of the vote.

Embracing Le Pen is part of Russia’s efforts to reach out to nationalist and anti-globalist forces to build up its influence in the West and help overcome the strains in relations with the U.S. and the European Union.

Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential vote has emboldened the Kremlin, even though the ongoing U.S. Congressional scrutiny of his campaign ties with Russia has all but dashed Moscow’s hopes for a quick detente.

Le Pen’s anti-immigration and anti-EU platform appeals to the Kremlin, which has postured as a defender of conservative national values against Western globalization. She also has called for strong security ties with Moscow to jointly combat radical Islamic groups, promised to work to repeal the EU sanctions on Moscow over its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and pledged to recognize Crimea as part of Russia if she’s elected.
French National Front presidential candidate Marine Le Pen meets with Russian president Vladimir Putin and afterwards urges that European Union sanctions on Russia be lifted.