Virginie Joron is a French politician. She is associated with the National Rally (RN), she was elected to the Regional Council of Grand Est in 2015. She was elected to the EU Parliament in 2019 and re-elected in 2024. At the EP she is a constituent of the Delegation to the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee and Delegation to the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly, among others. The RN supports and advocates for stronger relations with Russia. The party fights sanctions against Russia.
She is regarded as a pro-Russian MEP. In September 2019 Joron journeyed to Syria to meet Bashar al Asad. She is also one of the MEPs who refused to second The European Parliament resolution on declaring Russia a state “sponsor of terrorism” over its war in Ukraine.
She was one of the International experts at the 2020 All-Russian Voting in Crimea. It was controversial and illegitimate staged by Russia. To have a possibility to remain in power until 2036, Russian President Vladimir Putin chose, in January 2020, to revise the Constitution of the Russian Federation and legitimise its change through “all-Russian voting”. The vast majority of the world’s nations do not recognise Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Autonomous Republic of Crimea in 2014 and international institutions such as the OSCE ODIHR assume Russian elections held in Crimea as illegitimate.
On 23 March 2021, the president of Ukraine imposed personal special economic and other restrictive actions (sanctions) against almost 80 Russian companies, 23 Russian people and three Members of the European Parliament. Virginie Joron was also on the list as she visited Crimea in violation of the Ukrainian border regime.
Far-right European politicians including the members of National Rally (RN) have been employed by Russia since March 2014 to verify its annexation and continued occupation of Crimea. While the Kremlin tried to force a narrative about a supposed ‘far-right junta’ in Kyiv, it was lavishly supporting French and other far-right politicians to glorify any pseudo-electoral stunts as models of democracy. They have openly served as a mouthpiece for Russia concerning Crimea.
During one of the many Russian media discussions that were the real sense of the ‘delegation’, they heralded the Russian constitutional amendments that the so-called ‘referendum’ has been programmed to ‘overwhelmingly support’. They claimed that these would “finally” establish Crimea’s assumed status as part of Russia, and also quoted one of the authors of the amendments by arguing that they would make it impossible for Crimea’s ‘Russian status’ to be positioned in question.
