The far-right French election candidate Marine Le Pen has met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, according to reports.
Russian media said Mr Putin told the Front National leader that the Kremlin has no intention of interfering with the election beginning in France next month.
Ms Le Pen's plan to visit Moscow on Friday was widely reported, with meetings set up with members of Russia's Duma, but there had been no word on whether the President would agree to meet her.
“We attach a lot of importance to our relations with France, trying to maintain smooth relations with both the acting power and the opposition representatives,” state-controlled Russian media reported Mr Putin as saying.
"We don't want to influence in any way the events going on [in France], but reserve our right to communicate with all representatives of the country's political powers, as our partners do in Europe and in the US."
Ms Le Pen reportedly called for closer French-Russian ties at a meeting in Russia's lower house of parliament this morning, and labelled sanctions over Russia's annexiation of Crimea "counterproductive."
"I believe that barring parliamentarians from speaking to each other, working together is an infringement of democratic rights," Interfax reported her as saying to Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin.
It comes just a month after she claimed Crimea “has always been Russian”, in a series of brazen denials that Moscow invaded Ukraine.
Ms Le Pen has also repeatedly called for sanctions against the Kremlin to be removed, calling them “completely stupid” and the cause of “major problems for the EU.”
On Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Ms Le Pen and Donald Trump are “realists, if you want, or anti-globalists,” and not representatives of fringe or “populist” views.
Ms Le Pen, along with independent centrist Emmanuel Macron, are expected to lead in the first round of the French presidential elections on 23 April. A new poll found with just a month to go, 43 per cent of voters are hesitant about who to vote for, underlining the uncertainty surrounding the volatile election campaign.
If Ms Le Pen and Mr Macron make it to the second round, Ms Macron is expected to win easily in the 7 May run-off.
