Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen poses for a photo at a campaign event in Stiring-Wendel, France, on Friday, April 1, 2022. (Andrea Mantovani/The New York Times)
President Joe Biden has described the world as locked in a “battle between democracy and autocracy,” and Ukraine has become the central front.
It was there that Vladimir Putin, the autocratic leader of Russia, launched a military invasion intended to destroy a democracy, and his military appear to be committing appalling atrocities in the process. A crucial part of Russia’s war effort is the economic aid it receives from another authoritarian government, China. On the other side of the battle, many democracies – including the US and much of Europe – have banded together to support Ukraine, supply it with arms and impose tough economic sanctions on Russia.
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But Ukraine is not the only place where the struggle between autocracy and democracy is taking place. It is also happening in several European democracies, through elections rather than military conflicts. In these countries, pro-Putin politicians who share his right-wing nationalist leanings are attempting to seize power.
Two of them seem to have been successful on Sunday. In both Hungary and Serbia, incumbent leaders who support Putin won re-election. A bigger test will take place this month in France, which will hold its own presidential election – and where a victory for the far-right candidate would be a geopolitical earthquake.
Here’s a look at all three countries.
Hungary
Viktor Orban, Hungary’s pro-Putin prime minister, appears to have won re-election there. “We won such a great victory that you might be able to see it from the moon and certainly from Brussels,” Orban told his supporters on Sunday evening, throwing a swipe at the European Union.
Hungary is the purest example of a democracy slipping towards autocracy. After seizing power with a legitimate election victory in 2010, Orban set out to change the rules to stay in power. He has showered the courts with allies and used lawsuits to stifle critical media coverage. He aggressively changed the voting rules.
The story goes on
In the last two national elections, Orban’s Fidesz party received less than half of the votes, but still won a two-thirds majority in parliament. After Sunday’s elections, Fidesz appears on track to win 135 seats in the 199-seat parliament.
Orban has led a government that combines cultural nationalism, economic populism and corruption at the highest levels. His policies have boosted the incomes of many Hungarians, including in the more rural areas that make up his base, while stoking fears of immigrants and, more recently, LGBTQ people.
All this connects him to Putin. In recent weeks, Orban has tried to portray himself as a neutral peacemaker in Ukraine, knowing full well that many Hungarians have long feared Russia. But he has mostly sided with Putin.
Hungary has not joined Western Europe’s efforts to arm Ukraine, and it has resisted efforts within the EU to ban Russian energy imports. On Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described Orban as “virtually the only one in Europe who openly supports Mr Putin”.
Hungary is the closest thing to a fifth column within NATO and the European Union. It’s officially a Western democracy – yet effectively a Putin ally.
Serbia
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has used both Putin and Orban as role models. After Vucic became president in 2017, he helped turn Serbia’s once-independent media into something of a propaganda machine. In recent months, it has spewed tirades from pro-Russian commentators and reinforced Putin’s lies that Ukraine is a Nazi nest.
Serbia is not a member of either NATO or the EU, and many of its citizens share Russia’s distrust of the West.
But the country is not strictly pro-Russia. Although Vucic has not imposed sanctions on Russia or suspended flights to Moscow, his government has voted in favor of a UN resolution condemning the invasion.
Turnout was high in Sunday’s election, but opposition politicians said they were concerned about a foul play. Vucic’s party is on course to retain parliament, but with a reduced majority, election polls showed.
France
French voters go to the polls on Sunday for the first round of the presidential elections. If no candidate wins a majority — and likely none — there will be a two-person runoff two weeks later, on April 24.
Favorite is incumbent Emmanuel Macron. But his lead in the polls isn’t huge, and the war in Ukraine seems to be hurting him. Inflation was already quite high in Europe, as in much of the world, due to the pandemic. The war has caused prices to rise even further, largely due to sanctions on Russian oil.
While Macron has focused on finding a diplomatic solution in Ukraine – and so far has failed – his leading adversary is instead focusing on the French economy. That opponent is Marine Le Pen, a right-wing candidate.
Roger Cohen of the New York Times writes: “Her patient focus on cost-of-living issues has resonated with millions of French struggling to make ends meet after gas prices rose by more than 53% last year. ”
Le Pen has a long history of being kind to Putin. Her party has taken out loans from a Russian bank and she met with him in 2017 to boost her political image. Up until the invasion, Le Pen largely supported Putin’s policies. Even now, she largely rejects an uncompromising policy towards Putin.
Le Pen is about 6 percentage points behind in the polls – a margin small enough to make an upset conceivable. If she wins, the pro-autocracy caucus within European democracies would become much larger than it already is.
“A victory by her,” writes Cohen, “would threaten European unity, alarm French allies from Washington to Warsaw, and confront the European Union with its biggest crisis since Brexit.”
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