‘Take oligarchs’ Riviera villas’: Ukraine war hijacks French presidential campaign
The Communist nominee in France’s April presidential election has suggested storming Russian oligarchs’ winter palaces on the French Riviera and handing them over to Ukrainian refugees as candidates scramble to adjust their pitches in a campaign hijacked by the war in Ukraine. The Ukrainian flag and anti-Putin messages painted on the gate of a villa belonging to the Russian president’s former wife in Anglet, near Biarritz, on February 27, 2022 With the first round of France’s presidential election less than six weeks away, a lacklustre campaign already overshadowed by the lingering Covid-19 pandemic has been thrown further off course by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Foreign policy is typically a sideshow in French presidential campaigns, but Europe’s biggest military invasion since World War II has left France’s presidential hopefuls with no option but to venture into geopolitics and test their credentials as future commanders-in-chief. With a few notable exceptions, ca...