Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen during a meeting in the Kremlin in Moscow on Friday. Putin told Le Pen that she represented "quite a fast-growing element of European political forces". The meeting with Putin is a coup for Le Pen and could help her burnish her foreign policy credentials. Russia’s First Czech-Russian Bank helped Le Pen finance an earlier campaign with a 9-million-euro loan in 2014. Earlier on Friday, Le Pen had cut short a schedule of events in the Russian parliament to meet Putin.

Source: Bangkok Post March 24, 2017 13:30 UTC