PARIS—The National Front, a far-right French political party with financial backing from Moscow, won the first round of France’s regional elections, taking the lead in six of France’s 13 regions and reaping 28 percent of the overall vote.
The anti-EU, anti-immigration party’s electoral breakout upheaved France’s political order, and its success Sunday was not universally well received.
The following day, National Front campaign posters along Boulevard Saint Germain in central Paris were in tatters. Some were torn down. Others were covered in graffiti, including devil’s horns drawn on candidates’ heads in black marker.
One vandalized poster was yards away from a newsstand. Within the stacks of periodicals and newspapers on sale was the Dec. 3 issue of the weekly news magazine Le Point. The title of the cover story was “Putin. Our New Friend.”
The reference was to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The article, citing the terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 130, read: “Since Nov. 13, Putin is almost France’s best friend. Ukraine? The unconditional support for [Syrian dictator] Bashar al-Assad? Anti-European rhetoric? Elysée forgot about all of that in the name of the war against terrorism[.] … The war against Daesh has reshuffled the deck.”
Daesh is a pejorative Arabic acronym for the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL.
