“Without our active engagement and tangible support for the European conservative parties, their popularity and influence in Europe will continue to wane,” stated an internal document created by Yakushev and circulated among Tsargrad’s officers.

The document cited the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown, problems with mass vaccination programs in Europe and stalled attempts to get European licenses for Russian vaccines as the reasons to “resume steps to restore contacts with Euroskeptic parties.”

“We believe that at the moment there is still a possibility of restoring contacts for systematic work with Euroskeptics to counter Brussels’ sanctions policy,” the Tsargrad text read. “However, the resumption of work with them requires a fundamentally different level of confidentiality in connection with the strengthening of opposition to Russian influence on the part of Western intelligence services.”

The connections between Malofeev and Europe’s far right are well attested and go back years.

“Malofeev has carried out the Kremlin’s tasks, which have included interfering in the Bosnian and Polish elections,” according to Kalev Stoicescu, a researcher of Russian affairs at the International Centre for Defence Studies, a think tank in Tallinn, Estonia. “He has organized the meetings of European far rightists. He has mediated an 11 million euro [$12 million] loan from Russian banks to Marine Le Pen’s party.”

Source: Exclusive: Russia Backs Europe’s Far Right – New Lines Magazine