If I didn't believe that we had a chance of coming to power, then I would have focused on taking care of my three children or gardening.

I do not support Putin against Europe. This is a caricature. I support a federalist Ukraine. The EU poured fuel on the fire by proposing an economic partnership to a country known to look half to the East and half to the West.

Europe is war. Economic war. It is the increase of hostilities between the countries. Germans are denigrated as being cruel, the Greeks as fraudsters, the French as lazy. Ms. Merkel can't travel to any European country without being protected by hundreds of police. That is not brotherhood.

I know very well that the political classes have spread fear among the electorate: Without the euro, the sun will cease shining, the rivers will stop flowing, we will enter an ice age.

The crisis in Ukraine is all the European Union's fault. Its leaders negotiated a trade deal with Ukraine, which essentially blackmailed the country to choose between Europe and Russia.

People want their own laws to take precedence over those of the European Union. The French have understood that the EU does not live up to the utopia they were sold. It has distanced itself significantly from a democratic mode of operation.

France isn't burkinis on the beach. France is Brigitte Bardot. That's France.