If you think Russia isn’t winning from its invasion of Ukraine, consider this: Moscow’s monthly gas export receipts have tripled from a year ago; Marine Le Pen leads a Russian-sympathizing political bloc that is within reach of the French presidency; and from today, Western leaders will once again start arriving in Moscow to court President Vladimir Putin into a Ukraine settlement.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer is meeting Putin in Moscow today — the first Western leader to engage him in-person since he invaded Ukraine again. Nehammer met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv over the weekend.
Nehammer said Russia’s war “has to stop” and called for “humanitarian corridors, a ceasefire & full investigation of war crimes.” As POLITICO’s Power Matrix on Russia’s war makes clear, Austria is regarded as relatively close to Russia, with historic business ties.
President Joe Biden meets virtually with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi: The goal is to end India’s neutrality over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
FRENCH ELECTION
Marine Le Pen is the closest she has been to the French presidency: She scored her highest first-round presidential vote total Sunday, leading a solid far-right bloc that counts one-third of French voters as support. In head-to-head polls on her match-up with Emmanuel Macron, she hit a high of 49 percent (and an average 47 percent) over the past week.
Macron: too much president, not enough candidate: Macron finished first on Sunday, but has barely begun campaigning. Expect Le Pen to be slammed daily from here on in, culminating in France’s presidential candidates debate April 20.
Macron has a “a limited reservoir of votes he can further pull from,” said Eurasia Group’s Mujtaba Rahman, “but Le Pen's problems are bigger. She's a Putin-stooge. Her support for and financial support from Russia has barely been challenged. It will now. Her economic and EU program is an incoherent mess.”
IT’S THE COST OF LIVING, STUPID: Both candidates threw themselves into the middle of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — but in very different ways. Macron tried to cast himself as peace-maker in chief, to relatively little practical or political effect. Le Pen, on the other hand, made a stronger political bet: She saw that the invasion would create huge cost-of-living pressures in France no matter the outcome of Macron’s diplomacy.
By siding with those who would struggle to make ends meet amid higher inflation, Le Pen is creating a bigger base than her past Euroskeptic and immigration skeptic policies have allowed. She was able to do it quietly, far away from Russia headlines that dominate mainstream media, and achieve two other important political wins: blurring her dodgy relationships with Russian politicians and banks, while also skewering Macron on the existing impression millions of voters have of him — that he’s out-of-touch with working families. (Remember the violent Yellow Jackets protest movement his gas tax plans sparked?)