The huge trove of hacked emails from Emmanuel Macron's campaign had barely been released online when the spotlight immediately fell on Russia hackers.

With as much as 9 gigabytes of data from the campaign having been dumped online, instant comparisons were made with the cyber attack on the Democratic National Committee and the chairman of Hillary Clinton's Democratic campaign.

US intelligence agencies said in January that Vladimir Putin, Russian President, had ordered those hacks to influence the election on behalf of Donald Trump, her Republican rival who went on to win the US presidency.

The Russian president has repeatedly denied the accusations and this week said "it has never occurred to us to interfere in other countries internal affairs".

While it was not known who was behind the attack on Mr Macron's campaign, which came two days before french election day, suspicion immediately fell on Moscow.