Russia's sarcasm on the European vote: 'Macron and Scholz deserved to lose'

They deserve it. It is from Valentina Matvienko, the powerful leader of the Federation Council - the upper house of the Russian parliament - one of the first reactions to the outcome of the European vote. Of which, of course, everything that is most useful to the Kremlin in its campaign against that part of Europe that is lined up behind Ukraine is emphasised with great satisfaction in Moscow.

"The crushing defeat of Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz," Matvienko said, quoted by the Ria Novosti agency, "confirms their inconsistency as politicians, both national and European. A deserved result, the result of the many years in which 'the real needs of the people, of society, have been ignored', giving up sovereignty to do Washington's bidding. "It really seems that the dangerous virus of illegitimacy is starting to spread across the European continent," argues the Russian Senate president.

According to the independent Russian website The Bell, the shift of the EU's centre of gravity to the right will not radically change the EU's foreign policy line for the time being, 'but for Vladimir Putin this is a very positive result: in Europe, parties that closely cooperate or have cooperated with Moscow win. One way or another, this will influence the divisions in the coalition supporting Ukraine'.

In the wake of Valentina Matvienko, Duma president Vjaceslav Volodin also commented on the European elections on his Telegram channel, focusing on the outcome in France and Germany. Where President Macron and Chancellor Scholz 'are clinging to power with all their might'. "This is the collapse of Macron's policy," writes Volodin, according to whom the results in France and Germany were predictable. "The stagnating economy, the migrant crisis - is his analysis -: in countries that, contrary to their national interests, are being dragged into the war in Ukraine." According to the Russian Duma president, Macron and Scholz should "spontaneously offer their resignations, and stop fooling the citizens".

Macron in particular is in the crosshairs of commentators hosted by Russian state agencies: among European leaders, the French president is the most determined to raise the level of involvement in supporting Kiev. Galvanised by the course of the vote in France, Rodion Miroshnik - Russian Foreign Ministry representative and former ambassador to Moscow from Luhansk, one of the occupied Ukrainian regions - spoke to the Rossija 24 TV channel of Macron's "co-responsibility" "in the crimes committed by Kiev". Miroshkin calls it 'totally admissible' to prosecute the French president, 'who in an attempt to indulge his own Napoleonic ambitions is striving to provoke an escalation in the territory and towards Russia'. Miroshkin regrets that the 'dysfunctional and rudimentary' International Tribunal in The Hague is unlikely to help investigate the French president.