STRASBOURG, France — From the top floor of the house he shares here with a senior Russian diplomat — to whom he rents the apartment below — the man who helped bankroll the French presidential bid of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen has been working on plans to propel pro-Moscow politicians to power.
“We have to change all the governments. … All the governments in Western Europe will be changed,” Jean-Luc Schaffhauser, a former member of the European Parliament for Le Pen’s party, said in an interview. “We have to control this. Take the leadership of this.”

For Schaffhauser, such ambitions are part of a decades-long effort to forge an alliance between Russia and Europe, the prospects of which, however distant, were shattered by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But now, as Kyiv’s counteroffensive — and Western funding for it — falters and as governments in Europe battle rising living costs, plunging approval ratings and the rise of far-right populists, Schaffhauser and his Russian associates see fresh opportunity.

Russia has been increasing its efforts to undermine French support for Kyiv — a hidden propaganda front in Western Europe that is part of the war against Ukraine, according to Kremlin documents and interviews with European security officials and far-right political figures.
The maneuvering, and Kremlin connections with a host of far-right parties across Europe, including in France, are worrying some European officials ahead of European Parliament elections in June. Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, warned at a conference this month that those elections could be “as dangerous as the American ones,” driven by “fear” in response to growing inequality and security threats. “Europe is in danger,” he said.

The Kremlin documents, obtained by a European security service and reviewed by The Washington Post, show that Sergei Kiriyenko, the first deputy chief of staff in President Vladimir Putin’s administration, has tasked Kremlin political strategists with promoting political discord in France through social media and French political figures, opinion leaders and activists. Those figures were not identified by name in the documents seen by The Post. Moscow’s goal is to undermine support for Ukraine and weaken NATO resolve, the documents show. The effort parallels similar interference in Germany, where the Kremlin has attempted to marry the far right and the far left in an antiwar alliance, The Post previously reported.

The talking points to be amplified by the Kremlin’s strategists included arguing that Western sanctions against Russia have damaged the French economy through a decline in trade, leaving the country at risk of falling into “the deepest social and economic crisis of recent years,” as well as asserting that the supply of arms to Ukraine has left France without the weapons to defend itself.