France should recognize Crimea as part of Russia – Le Pen

Published time: February 17, 2015 03:00

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France's National Front political party head Marine Le Pen gestures as she speaks during a news conference at the party headquarters in Nanterre near Paris February 6, 2015. (Reuters / Charles Platiau)

The leader of the French National Front Party, Marine Le Pen has urged the French government to recognize Crimea as part of Russia’s territory and to restore ties with Moscow, a “natural ally of Europe.”
There is no alternative, but to recognize the legality of Crimea’s ascension into the Russian Federation, Le Pen told the Polish Do Rzeczy in an interview. The French politician says that Paris must accept Crimea’s choice, as it became part of Russia in the time of lawlessness following an orchestrated “coup” last year, when “Neo-Nazi militants organized a revolution in Ukraine.”
Le Pen says the Peninsula had no other choice as “power in Kiev was illegal,” at that time. “The authorities [in Kiev] started to make decisions that would lead to civil war,” she added.
The leader of the French National Front emphasized that “Russia is a natural ally of Europe.”
“We are pawns in the game of influence between the United States and Russia. Russia is a great country, a great people, with which Europe has many common strategic interests. We need to talk with Russia,” she said.
Le Pen has been a strong critic of EU policies towards Russia and US influence in European geopolitics from the very beginning of the Ukrainian conflict. In March, speaking about the results of the referendum in Crimea, Le Pen said that on the peninsula, the people’s choice was to be expected.
"This was to be expected," Le Pen said. "And the people [of Crimea], who lived in fear, rushed into the arms of the country where they were from: as you know it, Crimea is part of Ukraine only for 60 years."
Earlier this month, Le Pen voiced her disapproval of Washington’s stake in Europe.
“Regarding Ukraine, we behave like American lackeys,” she said, before warning that “the aim of the Americans is to start a war in Europe to push NATO to the Russian border.”
She went on to accuse European leaders of turning a blind eye to the Ukrainian government’s “bombing of civilians,” adding that both those in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine believed the country should be federalized.
Equally critical of the EU role in Ukraine, in September, she told Le Monde that the ongoing crisis in Ukraine is “all the European Union’s fault,” saying Brussels had “blackmailed the country to choose between Europe and Russia.”
To resolve the conflict, Le Pen has more than once called on necessity to conduct negotiations on federalization and constitutional reforms to decentralize the power, rather than to try solve the issue by military means.