FAR-RIGHT AND POPULIST FORCES IN EUROPE: RISKS FOR REGIONAL STABILITY AND IMPLICATIONS FOR UKRAINE

Marianna Prysiazhniuk,

expert at the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation

SUMMARY

The paper was prepared as of July 20, 2026.

The rise of far-right and populist parties is usually explained ideologically: either as a “new wave of nationalism”, or as a “crisis of liberal democracy”, or even purely electorally, through percentages and demographics. None of these explanations answers a simple question: why do the very same themes – blocking sanctions, resisting the Green Deal, shielding state-owned companies from transparency – appear simultaneously in Budapest, Bratislava, Rome, and Warsaw? This article proposes an analytical approach based on the theory of state capture and classical elite theory.

The anti-European stance of the far right is treated here as a position that is functional rather than ideological – that is, as a defensive reaction of networks (built around control over strategic state-owned companies in energy, defense, and other sectors) to the supranational oversight of the European Union (EU).

INTRODUCTION

This study rests on the proposition that contemporary far-right movements in Europe and their Eurosceptic positioning perform a structural rather than an ideological function. Across the various countries where such political projects operate, this pattern is stable and serves a quite rational interest that is in fact concealed behind populist rhetoric: preserving opaque control over strategic state assets. The EU’s regulatory policy – its requirements for state subsidies (procurement and funds transparency rules, climate regulation) – poses a challenge to that interest and, accordingly, a threat to the networks of entrenched elites. And for this resistance, far-right populism supplies such projects with a ready-made electoral base.

For Ukraine, this storyline may prove critical. The very same decision-making mechanism in Brussels that the far right seeks to block for the sake of its own assets will, should their positions in the Council of the EU strengthen, also decide the fate of Ukraine’s accession to the EU. The same battle over the EU’s climate and energy regulatory framework – at first glance a purely intra-European affair – therefore directly determines how difficult Kyiv’s path to membership will be, and will also carry weight in the context of other decisions that require EU unanimity (such as the extension of sanctions against Russia).

The study is grounded in classical elite theory (Pareto, Mosca, Michels) and in the theory of state capture developed by World Bank economists to describe the phenomenon of far-right activity. The factual part and the forecast are built on an analysis of opinion polling on far-right party ratings and on the saturation curve (the so-called Verhulst equation) used to assess the potential electoral ceiling of such political projects at elections, which makes it possible to analyze electoral points in the pre-election context more broadly.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Elite theory and the iron law of oligarchy. According to this theory (Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca, and Robert Michels), in any society power is unevenly concentrated in the hands of an organized minority. Populist rhetoric about “the people versus the elites” often serves as an instrument that diverts attention from the true nature of such power and allows networks in power (or aspiring to it) to keep serving their own interest.

The theory of the captured state analyzes why it was in post-Soviet transformations that private actors acquired the ability to set the “rules of the game” themselves.

Four faces of one phenomenon and a shared pro-Russian orbit. The term “far right” is used in this article rather as a working interpretive template for a fairly heterogeneous field that should be distinguished along at least four categories.

1. Far-right projects that built their political capital on the legacy of interwar fascism and the elite networks of the postwar period. This group includes, for example, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (FdI), which upon coming to power softened its rhetoric, publicly condemned the crimes of the fascist regime, and has consistently condemned Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. ;
2. Radical right-wing populism without a direct ideological lineage, built on nativism and an anti-liberal cultural agenda – such as Alternative for Germany (AfD), National Rally (RN), and Reform UK – which build their agenda first and foremost on criticism of the EU (while also containing elements of the other categories);
3. Illiberal political forces that are likewise Eurosceptic but oppose not so much the EU as a supranational entity as the liberal agenda itself, replacing the “right–left” axis with a “people versus elite” axis. A case in point is Viktor Orbán’s Hungarian Fidesz up to its 2026 defeat.
4. Left-wing populism with xenophobic and openly pro-Russian elements – for example, Robert Fico’s Slovak Smer, which formally masquerades as a social democratic party.

At the same time, all four categories (with the possible exception of Ms Meloni’s party) gravitate toward a pro-Russian or at least anti-sanctions course, albeit for different reasons – and this difference matters. For the AfD it is a predominantly ideological-agent position: the party has no assets of its own linked to Russia, but it shares a geopolitical worldview in which the West and liberalism are the main enemy, and it receives Moscow’s support for this. For RN and part of Italy’s Lega it is rather a transactional logic: business contacts, loans, specific commercial schemes. For Orbán’s Fidesz it is a clan-based, “kleptocratic” dependence on energy contracts and state procurement tied to specific people in his inner circle. For Fico’s Smer it is a personal and transactional logic at once: personal gas supply contracts and the leader’s own diplomatic line. In other words, this is not a single ideology but, roughly, four different paths to a similar goal – resisting the EU’s supranational oversight and ensuring one’s own political survival.

Sovereigntism as a common language for different interests. Because the motives of the four categories differ while the political goal is effectively the same, such projects need a shared “rhetorical umbrella” capable of uniting heterogeneous projects into a single political force. In today’s geopolitical conditions, that role appears to be played by the rhetoric of “sovereigntism”. In far-right communications, such appeals mean above all the rejection of the primacy of supranational EU law wherever it becomes inconvenient. Sovereigntism thus allows these political actors to speak the language of “defending the nation” about things that in practice mean defending the specific interest of a particular network of influence (group).

Three competitors, one point of convergence. The most counterintuitive thesis of this article is that Russia, the administration of current US President Donald Trump with his MAGA electoral core, and domestic oligarchic networks act as competitors on most issues while remaining situational allies in preserving the EU’s dependence on the “old elites” – for example, by blocking the Green Deal and preserving Europe’s dependence on fossil fuels. RN Member of the European Parliament Mathilde Androuët described this quite frankly: behind closed doors, some MEPs from the European People’s Party (EPP) admit they would like to “kill” the Green Deal but are unwilling to take the blame, preferring that the far right play that role.

“IDEOLOGICAL” ARCHITECTURE: TWO COMPETING PROJECTS

These three vectors of influence (pro-Russian, American, and domestic-oligarchic) did not take shape simultaneously. The first phase of the formation of the “far-right club” can be roughly dated back to the 1990s. Only two decades later did the transition to the next, roughly American, phase occur.

Dugin and the Kremlin’s first steps in building a far-right project in Europe. The historian Anton Shekhovtsov identifies two distinctly different periods. The first, 1991–2004, was a time of purely private, almost chaotic initiative, when Moscow took little interest in contacts with the European far right and instead actively built relationships with mainstream Western politicians.

The second period, according to Shekhovtsov, began in 2005 and continues to this day. Its starting point was the so-called “color revolutions”. It was these mass pro-European mobilizations, the Ukrainian one in particular, that showed the Kremlin that popular movements could change governments even in countries Moscow considered its sphere of influence. From then on, contacts with the European far right turned from the private ideological project of Dugin and Zhirinovsky into an instrument of state policy. The following years brought concrete manifestations of this shift: the Russian loan to the National Front in 2014, at the height of the annexation of Crimea; invitations of the leaders of Austria’s Freedom Party (FPÖ) to Moscow; public praise of Putin from the leadership of Britain’s UK Independence Party.

Dugin’s personal ties remained an important channel at this stage as well. Another Russian figure and Dugin associate, Konstantin Malofeev began financing the World Congress of Families – a platform for spreading “traditional values”, notably in Moldova and Romania.

Twenty years on: Bannon’s competing American project. In 2018 a competitor from the opposite geopolitical pole tried to stake a claim on the same field. Steve Bannon, chief strategist of Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign, attempted to transplant the MAGA model onto European soil through The Movement.

His attempt failed: the leading figures, who by then already had their own, much older ties to Moscow, publicly distanced themselves from the new American curator.

Yet the failure of US-led coordination attempts did not mean an absence of American influence. Instead of a centralized project, a decentralized ecosystem emerged: CPAC Hungary (since 2022), financed by Orbán through the Center for Fundamental Rights; the Heritage Foundation as an ideological think tank; and Elon Musk’s X as media infrastructure.

The Carnegie Endowment notes that a transnational far-right ideology took shape through contacts and mutual learning of tactics, with Orbán and Fidesz remaining a hub of this network with a powerful MAGA component. By the mid-2020s, then, two parallel networks of influence coexisted in Europe (the Kremlin’s and Trump’s), rarely intersecting directly but converging on one point – blocking the Green Deal and the strengthening of the EU.

The metapolitics of the “Great Replacement”. The third line of influence is neither Russian nor American but a purely European intellectual tradition. Alain de Benoist, founder of the French Nouvelle Droite, together with the Research and Study Group for European Civilization (GRECE), which he created in 1968, introduced the concept of the “right to difference”, which gives the far right an already ideological foundation – an “intellectual” alternative to open racism. This line was developed by Renaud Camus in his book Le Grand Remplacement (2011), which advanced the thesis of a demographic and cultural “replacement” of native Europeans allegedly abetted by the elites. The concept crossed French borders and became part of the discourse of the AfD (in the form of “Umvolkung”), of the British far right, and of the MAGA movement in the US, and also figured in the manifestos of the terrorist attacks in Christchurch (2019) and El Paso (2019), among others.

WAVES OF CRISES AS TRIGGER OF FAR-RIGHT RISE

Crises worth remembering. The growth of the far-right projects’ specifically electoral popularity in Europe coincides with the peaks of palpable crises. Thus the global financial crisis of 2008–2009 is one of the preconditions for the consolidation of networks around this course. Next came the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2022).

That said, the link between the far-right upsurge and the 2008–2009 financial crisis is traced far more convincingly. The study by Funke, Schularick, and Trebesch finds that after financial crises the far-right vote share rises by more than 30%, and that the effect is specific to financial crises rather than ordinary economic downturns.

This can be explained by the so-called “fear of falling” effect, whereby the middle class feels its property status threatened and turns to parties that promise “order” and personify the blame in the figure of the “outsider”. Thus the Hungarian scholars Gyöngyösi and Verner argue that after 2008 Jobbik attracted precisely mortgage-holding voters who “would not normally have voted far right” but found themselves under the threat of debt.

The year 2008 thus became the first impetus for consolidation, the 2015 migration crisis the second, and the pandemic the third – with each crisis layering onto the previous one rather than replacing it.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 had a contradictory effect on the far-right camp. In the first months of 2022, parties with close ties to Russia suffered reputational losses: RN and Austria’s FPÖ distanced themselves from Moscow or avoided direct accusations. In the medium term, however, the invasion handed the far-right camp a new mobilization resource in the form of so-called “war fatigue” and the rhetoric of “peace at any price”.

For example, an analysis of European Parliament votes on Ukraine resolutions reveals four phases of this transformation. First, unanimous support (February–June 2022). Then the first disagreements over sanctions (mid-2022 to early 2023). Next, growing “fatigue” and more consistent far-right opposition (2023–2024). And finally, a “mainstream contagion” is observed, as the rhetoric of a toxic “peace” seeps into the programs of other parties as well, such as the EPP or the European liberals (from late 2024). For the far right, Ukraine remains a mobilization instrument within the functional logic described in the theoretical section. It is notable, however, that in countries with a more palpable threat from Russia such parties still have to balance between openly pro-Russian sympathies and the anti-Russian sentiments of their voters.

COUNTRY ANALYSIS

Germany: how an opposition party of economists became a lobbyist for a foreign actor. The AfD was founded in 2013 as a party of Eurosceptic right-conservative economists. Two years later, in 2015–2016, during the mass influx of refugees, Angela Merkel’s then ruling Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) coalition adopted a course of admitting migrants – and the AfD capitalized on this.

In opposition, the party armed itself with the anti-migration theme, thereby taking deep root in the east German Länder (the territories of the former German Democratic Republic). The result was a steep electoral trajectory: 12.6% in the 2017 elections, then 20.8% and 152 seats in February 2025. As of July 2026, the party consistently leads the polls: Insa puts the AfD at 28–29% against 21–22% for the now-ruling CDU/CSU.

 In May 2025, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution definitively classified the AfD as a “confirmed right-wing extremist organization”. In October 2025, Thuringia’s interior minister reported that party parliamentary inquiries were being used to gather information on critical infrastructure in the Kremlin’s interests.

Unlike the other parties in this article’s sample, the AfD’s leaders – Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla – have no personal ties to state companies. Yet Moscow supported the party financially and politically to promote positions favorable to Russia, as demonstrated by the AfD’s consistent support for restarting Nord Stream. In the Bundestag, the AfD votes against weapons deliveries and sanctions and for “peace talks” in a reading favorable to Moscow, remaining the most consistent opponent of support for Ukraine.

The public debate over the unspoken “quarantine” around the AfD (in Germany it is called the “Brandmauer”) wobbled noticeably in 2026. The five state elections of 2026 will be the first practical test of whether this isolation withstands the pressure.

France: from the fringe party of Le Pen senior to the threshold of the Élysée Palace. The National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen was founded in 1972 and was perceived from the outset as marginal. The transformation of the party began in 2011, when his daughter Marine Le Pen took over its leadership. In 2014 (during the annexation of Crimea), the party received a 9 million euro loan from the First Czech-Russian Bank, though after 2022 there were also attempts to balance: public condemnations of the invasion, but no support for providing Ukraine with weapons or for imposing anti-Russian sanctions.

After the 2018 rebranding as Rassemblement National (RN), the party steadily built up its electoral ratings: 17.9% in the first round of the 2012 presidential election; reaching the 2017 runoff with 33.9%; 89 seats in the National Assembly in 2022; and finally 31.4% in the European Parliament elections and 33.2% in the first round of the 2024 parliamentary elections, when RN was already running as the opposition.

The Yellow Vest protests in France in 2018–2019 formed a new mobilization base in “peripheral France”. In the 2024 European Parliament elections, RN won 25% among voters under 25, up from 12% in 2022.

In April 2026, France 24 revealed a series of closed-door meetings between Le Pen, Bardella, and the corporate elite. Sciences Po analysts suggested that French business elites are not “falling in love” with RN but buying an “insurance policy”.

As of mid-2026, RN polls at 31–36% in the first round of the 2027 presidential race. Le Pen herself cannot currently run: in March 2025 a Paris court found her guilty of embezzling European Parliament funds which is why the polls test Bardella for RN. In a hypothetical runoff against the centrist Édouard Philippe an Odoxa-Mascaret poll for the first time gives victory to Bardella – 52% to 48%.

However, if RN comes to power in 2027, the consequences could be incomparable to the Hungarian precedent: France is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, a nuclear power, and one of the key sponsors of support for Ukraine.

United Kingdom: from Brexit to a fossil fuel donor model. The British wave has its own specifics, which manifested most loudly during Brexit in 2016. The flagship party of that era, Nigel Farage’s UKIP used dissatisfaction with EU membership to break out of the margins. After the 2016 referendum, which UKIP essentially won, the party lost its “raison d’être”, and Farage founded the Brexit Party (2019) and then Reform UK (2021).

In the 2024 general election, when power passed from the Conservatives to Keir Starmer’s Labour, Reform UK won 14.3% of the vote but only 5 seats owing to Britain’s first-past-the-post system. In the May 2026 elections to the Welsh Senedd, the party came second and won 34 seats – its first major breakthrough at the regional level. Polls in 2025–2026 consistently give the party 20–25%, already a challenge to the ratings of the ruling Labour Party.

Reform UK is the only case in the sample with direct financing from a single industry. According to DeSmog, 67% of the party’s funding came from donors with financial interests in fossil fuels (more than 24 million pounds). The largest contribution came from Christopher Harborne (22 million pounds). While domestic industry interests define the party network, cases of Russia financing individual party members have also been documented. In November 2025, the former leader of Reform UK in Wales was sentenced to 10.5 years for bribes from a pro-Russian agent in exchange for pro-Russian speeches in the European Parliament. Overall, certain party positions effectively coincide with pro-Russian ones: skepticism toward the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), “Britain First” rhetoric, and Farage’s statements that “NATO enlargement provoked Russia”. While the party is in opposition this remains rhetoric, but should it come to power, the risk for support of Ukraine could become entirely real.

Slovakia: Fico’s three premierships and the first signs of fatigue with the man himself. Robert Fico and his Smer party are an atypical case. The party is social democratic in name, left-populist in rhetoric, and distinctly pro-Russian in foreign policy. The ECPS writes that Smer has always carried nationalist and Eurosceptic elements in its rhetoric.

Its leader Robert Fico headed the government twice in succession (2006–2010, 2012–2018) until, after the 2018 murder of journalist Ján Kuciak, he was forced to resign, and power passed to a pro-Western coalition. Voter fatigue with ineffective governance opened Fico’s path to a third premiership in 2023, when Smer won with 22.9%.

Having canceled military aid to Ukraine immediately after returning to power in October 2023, Fico simultaneously developed a personal gas diplomacy. The state gas supplier SPP retained its long-term contract with Gazprom until 2034, and remains one of the few EU companies buying pipeline gas directly via TurkStream. In September 2025, Fico met Putin in person in Beijing and publicly declared interest in Russian gas supplies. Moreover, after the transit agreement expired in early 2025, Fico threatened Kyiv with a lawsuit. And since Slovakia is the geographic and technical buffer between Ukraine and Central Europe, its blocking position has a disproportionately large impact on aid logistics.

As of July 2026, however, Fico’s own standing has wobbled noticeably. An AKO poll puts the opposition Progresívne Slovensko at 20.8% against 17.3% for the ruling Smer. The next parliamentary elections must be held no later than September 28, 2027: “Fico fatigue” could well replicate the logic of Hungary’s 2010 “Gyurcsány fatigue”, only in a pro-European direction.

Romania: from the surprise breakthrough of 2020 to a “new window of opportunity”. The Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) emerged practically from scratch in the December 2020 elections (the party was founded on December 1, 2019). It won 9.1%.

The pandemic provided a platform for the anti-vaccine narrative; the large Romanian diaspora voting online leaned toward ultranationalist positions. The party steadily built up its position, and in the December 2024 presidential election the surprise front-runner was one “independent” candidate, Călin Georgescu, linked both to AUR and to a pool of other, smaller far-right projects, as well as to pro-Russian networks.

The Constitutional Court annulled the results after the exposure of a TikTok influence operation, provoking a sharp diplomatic dispute with the Trump administration, whose representatives publicly came to Georgescu’s defense.

In the May 2025 rerun, George Simion won the first round with 40.96% but lost the runoff to the current president, Nicușor Dan – 53.6% to 46.4%. This is one of the few cases in the sample where the mobilization of the pro-European electorate stopped a far-right candidate at the final stage. AUR/Simion support stabilized at 25–30% in 2025–2026. Meanwhile, according to the findings of the Romanian Intelligence Service, the slogan of Georgescu’s TikTok campaign was “methodologically identical” to a previous TikTok campaign Russia had deployed in Ukraine.

Romania continues to play the role of a key transit corridor for weapons and humanitarian aid to Ukraine through the ports of Constanța and Galați and the Mihail Kogălniceanu air base. The next parliamentary elections must be held no later than November 30, 2028, but the recent fall of the Bolojan government, initiated by one of the ruling parties, the PSD, together with the far-right AUR – notably after his attempts to privatize a number of strategic enterprises – keeps the threat of early elections alive.

ELECTORAL CYCLES 2026–2029: ASSESSING TRAJECTORIES

The next three years contain at least five points at which far-right and populist dynamics could shift the balance of support for Ukraine at the EU level: five state elections in Germany in 2026; possible early elections in Slovakia (by September 2027); parliamentary elections in Romania (by November 2028, with the risk of an early scenario after the fall of the Bolojan government); presidential and parliamentary elections in France (April–May and June 2027); and the next Bundestag elections (early 2029).

Calendar of key electoral points:

How the forecast is built

The forecast uses a formula that estimates the “ceiling” of rating growth (the Verhulst equation).

Germany, AfD. The projection for the next Bundestag elections (early 2029) is around 32%.

France, RN. The projection for the first round of the presidential election in April 2027 is 36–37%, the upper bound of current polling.

United Kingdom, Reform UK. The only case where the rating has already passed its maximum of around 29% in 2025 and rolled back to 23–26% as of mid-2026. A sound estimate for the 2029 elections is in the range of 24–30%.

Slovakia, Smer. The dynamic is the reverse of the rest of the sample: 22.9% in the 2023 elections against 17.3% in July 2026; extending this pace yields 14–15% for September 2027.

Romania, AUR. The projection for the parliamentary elections due by November 2028 is 38–39%, with a plateau reached already during 2027.

IMPLICATIONS FOR UKRAINE

The current support framework and its fragility. As of June 2026, the Council of the EU had adopted the 20th sanctions package against Russia and approved a 90 billion euro loan to Ukraine for 2026–2027 (December 2025). The EU accession negotiation process continues: in March 2026 Ukraine received an invitation to open negotiating clusters. The decision on the 90 billion euro loan was taken in “enhanced cooperation” mode without Hungary, Czechia, and Slovakia – a precedent that attests to the real possibility of EU unity splitting.

The most obvious risk lies in the blocking of sanctions packages and financial assistance by veto. Decisions requiring unanimity are especially vulnerable: sanctions packages, new aid tranches, Common Foreign and Security Policy decisions on weapons supplies. If RN comes to power in France in 2027, or the AfD becomes part of a coalition government in Germany, there will be enough blocking votes to paralyze such decisions.

The far right in Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania systematically exploits the issue of EU enlargement for domestic mobilization, portraying Ukraine’s accession as a threat to local farmers and subsidies. Since accession requires the unanimity of all members, every “problem” country can turn out to be that very “no”. Romania and Slovakia are key transit corridors for weapons, so their obstruction would have a disproportionately large impact on the logistics of support.

Indirect risks and the role of partners whose position is more complex than it seems. The far right has a stake in preserving dependence on fossil fuels: every euro the EU spends on Russian energy indirectly finances Russia’s army, its influence operations, and the support of the far right itself. Dismantling the Green Deal would mean preserving these revenues for Russia. If RN wins in France in 2027 and the AfD sets the agenda in Germany, the Franco-German engine of Euro-Atlantic support for Ukraine will weaken markedly.

The more insidious long-term risk is the slow drift of mainstream parties toward far-right positions, recorded by European Parliament researchers as the “fourth phase” (which we are currently observing in Romania): the penetration of “peace at any price” rhetoric into the programs of the EPP and the liberals. This is not outright blocking but a gradual normalization of escapism. Under this trend, the dominant form of pressure becomes not direct pro-Russian propaganda but a “realist” discourse around the themes of peace, the burden of costs, farmers’ rights, market protection, and the “sovereign right to decide” – a discourse that can masquerade as pragmatism and is hard to refute head-on.

The publication is prepared under the project “Strengthening the Analytical Capabilities of the Foreign Policy Decision-Making with the Civil Society” of the Centre for International Security with the support of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Ukraine.

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