As the investigation into Donald Trump’s possible ties to Russia continues, we shouldn’t forget that the United States wasn’t the only target of Vladimir Putin’s ambitions. It has long been a goal of the former KGB agent to destabilize the Eurozone and, to that end, he has propped up France’s far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.

Le Pen is the head of the far-right party, the National Front. Founded by her father several decades ago, the National Front was largely considered a fringe movement due to her father’s frequent denial of the Holocaust. However, his daughter has managed to rebrand the party somewhat.

After kicking her father out of the party, Le Pen shifted the party’s focus onto protecting French identity. She is firmly anti-immigrant and anti-EU. It’s the anti-EU belief that likely motivated Putin to support Le Pen.

Obviously, Putin has not directly endorsed Le Pen, but we do know that her party took out a 10 million Euro loan from a Russian bank. While the bank is not directly owned by Putin, it has long been understood that the nation’s oligarchs answer to Putin.

For her part, Le Pen claims that the National Front has been forced to take Russian loans in order to survive because European and American banks won’t loan to them.

‘If any English or American bank would offer money I would gladly accept it. That is the absolute scandal of the situation. It is fundamentally unjust.’

It is true that the National Front has trouble securing funding in France due to its history of anti-Semitism and white supremacy.

It isn’t merely the anti-EU stance that has likely attracted Putin. Le Pen, like Trump, has made several comments calling for a closer relationship between the France and Russia.

‘We need a dialogue, a dialogue that is respectful, pacified, between these big nations. I’d like to energize an alliance between the U.S., France and Russia in the fight against Islamists, which is a gigantic menace to our respective democracies.’

Despite her victory in today’s first round of elections, it is unlikely that Le Pen will emerge as France’s president. Several of the losing candidates have endorsed Emmanuel Macron in order to ensure that Le Pen is defeated.

While surprising upsets have occurred before, such as Trump’s victory over Clinton, FiveThirtyEight pointed out that Le Pen could outperform her polls by 20 points and still lose the election.

Le Pen could beat her polls by as much as Trump and Brexit combined and still lose to Macron by almost 20 points. https://t.co/RoXic3AKA9 — FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) April 24, 2017

For right now, it appears that Putin’s support of Le Pen will not be enough to bring her victory. It should be noted that there is no evidence that Russia is interfering in the French elections, the way they did in the U.S.

Featured image via Getty Images.