News - Marine Le Pen's far-right party in France removes plans to deepen relations with Russia from its website

With the countdown to the snap election of the French National Assembly—the lower house of the parliament—underway, the far-right party National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen, has quietly removed part of its defense policy offering from its website, deleting sections that proposed deepening diplomatic ties with Russia, reports Politico. The deleted proposals hailed from Marine Le Pen's presidential run in 2022, in which her party had laid out 17 thematic booklets outlining its proposals across all policy areas.  In the manifesto, the National Rally had advocated distance from Washington while trying to engage with Moscow. Noting that Washington "does not always behave as an ally to France," Le Pen's program in 2022 proposed to seek "an alliance with Russia on certain issues," such as European security or combating terrorism. The withdrawn document also said that France should "immediately" leave NATO’s integrated military command. The deleted document also proposed "to put an end" to cooperation projects with Germany in the military sector, given "a deep and irreconcilable doctrinal, operational and industrial divergence with Berlin." Those include plans for jointly developed next-generation battle tanks and next-generation fighter jets. With the National Rally appearing set to make sizable parliamentary gains, opening the door to entering government, the party is seeking to shore up its credibility on the global stage before French voters head to the polls on June 30 and July 7.