Moment a woman is thrown to the ground and dragged away by Marine Le Pen’s security guards for holding up a sign showing far-right leader and Putin in a heart
- A Green councillor held up a heart-shaped sign of Putin and Marine Le Pen
- Le Pen has been forced to distance herself from previous support of Russia
- She visited the Kremlin in 2017 and accepted Russian loan to fund her party
A protester has been dragged across the floor at a Marine Le Pen press conference after holding up a heart-shaped sign showing the presidential candidate with Vladimir Putin.
The Green councillor was tackled to the floor after interrupting the event in Paris with the photo of the National Rally leader meeting the Russian strongman in Moscow in 2017.
The woman was immediately pinned to the ground by Le Pen’s security and dragged by her hands and legs out of the room.
A protester has been dragged across the floor at a Marine Le Pen press conference after holding up a heart-shaped sign showing the presidential candidate with Vladimir Putin
After she was ejected, the protester said: ‘We just wanted to make visible the fact that Marine Le Pen’s diplomacy is forgiving of dictators and remind you that she had been a strong partner of Vladimir Putin.
‘We wanted to remind you that Marine Le Pen as president would not have the same position with regard to Ukraine, to Russia. We need to remember the danger that is the National Front.’
A leaflet in the form of a love letter from Putin to Le Pen was also distributed by another activist from the so-called Ibiza Collective, founded by elected leftists in the wake of the education minister’s holiday to the Balearics after closing schools during Covid.
The mock letter said: ‘My dear Marine, I am trying one last time to contact you. You have not responded to me for weeks and I do not understand your silence.
The Green councillor was tackled to the floor after interrupting the event in Paris with the photo of the National Rally leader
The woman was immediately pinned to the ground by Le Pen’s security and dragged by her hands and legs out of the room
‘You say that our interests are no longer the same and I do not understand how, after all I have done for you, you can end our relationship without an explanation.’
The letter mentions how her political party received €9million from a Kremlin-linked bank after French banks refused to provide credit.
It concludes: ‘I am sending you this beautiful photo of the two of us, I heard you threw away all the leaflets it was printed on.
‘But you were so proud of formalising our relationship. I do not understand it. With love, Vladimir.’
Le Pen reacted furiously to the protest and said people should be outraged that election press conferences can be disrupted.
She said: ‘What people should be outraged about is that we can’t hold a second-round campaign without press conferences being disrupted, without us being attacked, without us being threatened.’
Le Pen reacted furiously to the protest and said people should be outraged that election press conferences can be disrupted
A security officer blocks journalists at the press conference yesterday while the protester was being detained
Le Pen has been forced to distance herself from previous supportive comments of Putin and Russia since their savage invasion of Ukraine.
She said: ‘Until the triggering of the war in Ukraine, I actually believed that it was in the interest of France to have closer ties with Russia again, and prevent Russia from building such a solid alliance with China.’
The controversial politician visited the Kremlin in 2017 and praised Putin’s ‘new vision’ for the world and accepted their loans to fund her party.
Last month, she had to discard a million election leaflets emblazoned with a photo of her and the Russian leader.
The right-wing leader also said a police officer who manhandled the protester got injured in the process.
She claimed: ‘It was a policeman who challenged that woman and who got hurt in the process. He got injured while detaining her and couldn’t complete the job of removing her.’
But French media later identified the man who initially tackled the protester as one of the National Rally’s security team.
Interior minister Gérald Darmanin called on her to apologise to the police, saying: ‘Have the honesty to admit the individual who drags the protester along the floor is a member of your own security detail.’
It comes amid an increasingly hostile election between Le Pen and the incumbent president Emmanuel Macron.
After being accused of being ‘authoritarian’, Le Pen said she has never seen as authoritarian a president as Macron for his handling of the gilets jaunes protests.
A protester holds a photo of Le Pen shaking hands with Putin and reading ‘Marine Le Pen: friend of war criminals’
‘This (criticism) makes me smile because we have never had a president who showed more signs of extremism than Emmanuel Macron,’ Le Pen told broadcaster France 2.
In the interview Le Pen reiterated that, if elected, she thought it conceivable to hold a public referendum on reintroducing the death penalty. She had previously said that personally she would vote against such a step.
Yesterday, the candidate warned against sending any more weapons to Ukraine, and called for a rapprochement between NATO and Russia once Moscow’s war in Ukraine winds down.
She also confirmed will pull France out of NATO’s military command and dial back French support for the whole European Union.
Macron, a pro-EU centrist, is facing a harder-than-expected fight to stay in power, in part because the economic impact of the war is hitting poor households the hardest.
France’s European partners are worried that a possible Le Pen presidency could undermine Western unity as the US and Europe seek to support Ukraine and end Russia’s ruinous war on its neighbor.
Asked about military aid to Ukraine, Le Pen said she would continue defence and intelligence support.
‘(But) I’m more reserved about direct arms deliveries. Why? Because … the line is thin between aid and becoming a co-belligerent,’ the far-right leader said, citing concerns about an ‘escalation of this conflict that could bring a whole number of countries into a military commitment.’
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