Member-only story
None of the 12 candidates won over 50% of the vote in the recent (4/10/22) election for Presidency of France.
So the top 2 vote getters, Emmanuel Macron, a centrist, and Marine Le Pen, with far right leanings, will face each other in a runoff on 4/24/22.
Given their stark political differences, one can be reasonably sure the Russians take more than a little interest in the outcome.
Just as the Russians’ acknowledged favored candidate in the 2016 and 2020 POTUS elections was Donald Trump, their favored candidate in France’s may have been Le Pen.
(There were other candidates, including someone to the right of Le Pen, but none was a major contender).
That she did as well as she did may have been due to Russian interference.
Of course we’ll never know, which may be just as well.
There is enough stuff in the daily news to frighten most of us.
Russia’s involvement (whatever it was) in the 2020 POTUS election made no difference in the eventual outcome: Joe Biden was elected POTUS.
As Biden tightens the screws on Russia by increasingly onerous sanctions, some Russians may be kicking themselves as they view dimly lit screens in darkened rooms: “If only we’d tried a little harder,” they may be thinking.
