THE RISE OF KREMLIN-FRIENDLY POPULISM IN THE NETHERLANDS

However, in April 2013, Wilders made the first overtures toward the French Front National and in November of that year he invited Marine Le Pen to The Hague, initiating a collaboration between the two parties in the 2014 election campaign for the European Parliament. [...] The PVV was now in the same group as the Front National, the Austrian Freedom Party, the Italian Lega Nord, The Polish New Right, and the Belgian Vlaams Belang. [...] (3) THE UKRAINE REFERENDUM: A BONE FOR PRO-KREMLIN POPULISTS This pro-Moscow alignment of the populist PVV party is not the only sign of the Kremlin’s growing influence in the Netherlands. [...] During the Ukraine referendum in 2016 the same Vorontsova would participate in a rally for the ‘no’ vote in Amsterdam alongside Harry van Bommel, an MP of the left populist Socialist Party.(8) 6 THIERRY BAUDET’S FORUM FOR DEMOCRACY: A NEW PRO-KREMLIN POPULIST OFFSHOOT After the referendum, Thierry Baudet, the leader of Forum voor Democratie, transformed his group into a political party of the same. [...] (15) And in September 2016 the regional paper De Gelderlander published a press conference given by a spokesman of Almaz-Antey, the producer of the BUK missile, in which he repeated the Russian narrative that the MH17 was downed by the Ukrainian army, a version of the facts which was completely at odds with the results of the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team.