Friends or Foes? The Italian Far-Right and Russia Before and After the War in Ukraine

The rise of far-right parties across Europe shows no sign of abating, and while research on this party family is growing extensively, a substantial focus on far-right parties’ foreign policy positions is still missing. One of the most important foreign policy issues in the current international environment concerns the bilateral relations with the Russian Federation in light of the war in Ukraine. To this regard, far-right parties are key actors, as they are known to have a history of direct relations with Russia and the Putin regime (Laruelle, 2015; Shekhovtsov, 2018), and in the past they endorsed a positive view of the country, and even considered it an ally (Carlotti, 2023). However, it seems that the war in Ukraine altered their positions on the matter, given that after the Russian invasion, many parties openly criticized Russia, and showed an overwhelming support for Ukraine (Carlotti, 2023; Wondreys, 2023; Bruno & Fazio, 2023). Furthermore, these parties appear to have no homogenous positions vis-à-vis NATO and the US, with some supporting cooperation with them in order to counter-balance Russia, while others do not (Liang, 2007; Mudde, 2019). In this context, key research questions are the following: what are the positions of these parties on the bilateral cooperation of their own country with the Russian Federation? How do they perceive Russia? Did these positions substantially change after the war? My paper proposes to tackle these questions by following a qualitative-based empirical observation and a comparative approach. My work specifically examines the Italian case and compares the ideological stances towards Russia of three political parties: the far-right Fratelli d’Italia (FdI, Brothers of Italy) and the Lega (League), and the center-right Forza Italia (FI, Go Italy). The Italian case is particularly relevant, because it represents a country that has always engaged in good diplomatic relations with Russia, and where rightwing leaders and parties have had direct relations with the Russian government (Morini, 2023). The case selection is supported by the fact that these parties have been representing the major rightwing forces in Italy for several years, and it also allows to determine whether being part of government affects far right parties’ stances and attitudes, given that currently these parties are all in government as part of a coalition led by Giorgia Meloni, the leader of FdI, which formed in Italy after the 2022 general elections, while in the period before the war they were not (in 2021 Lega and FI joined the coalition government of national unity led by Mario Draghi, while FdI remained the only opposition party). Furthermore, as FI is generally not considered a radical right party, the comparison with such party will also shed light on the way radicalism can impact on rightwing parties’ positions on such a specific issue. My work relies on a set of 30 interviews that were conducted with party members and partisans at the beginning of 2021, which will be complemented with a new set of interviews that will be completed by the end of 2024.