Description: Populist right – wing parties have experienced a surge in popularity and gained considerable political clout for the past couple of years. Far – right parties have received unconditional support in countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Austria, France and Sweden which grew concerns over significant influence from Russia. Most of these political entities have their party charters aligned with agendas that favored Russian political and geopolitical dominance. Top priorities for such political organizations were the negative sentiment towards migration, the war in Ukraine with internal intelligence security agencies constantly issuing warnings of high levels of Russian interference in policies that concerned the EU countries.
Impact: The European Parliament elections last year were a certain testament to the resurgence of the far – right political parties. Russian intelligence agencies have continuously exploited these entities to subdue European interests and manipulate public opinion in a direction which favored Russian geopolitical interests. The severe integration of these political parties into the internal and domestic policy landscapes within EU countries could pose a considerable threat towards independent interests of the countries within the EU bloc. Russia would further leverage the crisis in several countries such as Romania, Slovakia and Serbia to reinsert their geopolitical interests and eventually establish controlling policy making within the EU.