Will Vladimir Putin Endorse Marine Le Pen? Russian Leader Holds Friendly Meeting With French Election Frontrunner

At a meeting between far-right leading French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen and Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin Friday, the Russian president embraced her calls for intelligence sharing and pointed to her party’s increased popularity — but stopped short of a formal endorsement of her candidacy.

“Of course, it would be very interesting to share our opinions about how our bilateral relations are doing, and about the situation that is developing in Europe,” he told Le Pen, the Guardian reported. “I know that you represent a European political force that is growing quickly.”

Read: Cold War Against Russia Is Threat To Europe, French Presidential Candidate Marine Le Pen Says

He also appeared to disavow suspicions that the Russian government had interfered in the French elections. En Marche!, the party of Le Pen’s center-left rival Emmanuel Macron, recently accused Russia of hacking campaign computers, which the Kremlin labeled “absurd.”

In recent polls for the April 23 first-round election, Le Pen and Macron were neck-and-neck, but polling for a hypothetical Le Pen-Macron pairing in the May 7 runoff showed him defeating her by a substantial margin.

“We do not want to influence events in any way, but we retain the right to meet with all the different political forces, just like our European and American partners do,” Putin reportedly said.

Although Putin hasn’t given Le Pen an explicit endorsement — nor has he given one to populist far-right President Donald Trump, whom he’s referred to as “bright,” “talented” and “colorful” — his government has a history of financing Le Pen’s party, the Front National.

Read: Will Marine Le Pen Hold Off Challenge Of Emmanuel Macron To Become France’s President?

As part of its effort to raise money for Le Pen’s campaign and those at the regional level, the Front National took a loan worth $11.7 million from the First Czech Russian Bank in Moscow. Le Pen’s father and the party’s founder, Jean-Marie — later ousted over his anti-Semitic comments — received a loan of $2.5 million from a former KGB agent’s holding company, the French online investigative site Mediapart found in 2014. The Front National’s treasurer, Wallerand de Saint-Just, reportedly defended the funding choice and suggested that the party might turn to Russia once more for financial help in the future.

In February 2016, the Front National did just that, soliciting the equivalent of about $29 million from First Czech Russian. Saint-Just justified the request, noting that the party had been seeking foreign banks’ assistance, “so why not Russian ones?” Le Figaro reported.