Charles de Gaulle's pro-Kremlin grandson says he wants Russian citizenship

A grandson of French war hero and former president Charles de Gaulle said Thursday he wanted Russian citizenship, saying Russia offered “great possibilities”.

Pierre de Gaulle is little known in France, but Russian state media have heralded his pro-Kremlin statements as proof that leading Western voices support Moscow’s assault in Ukraine.

“It would be an honour for me to acquire Russian citizenship,” he told a journalist at the Saint Petersburg Cultural Forum, Russian agencies said.

He also said that Russia was “fighting for traditional values, the family and spirituality” in Ukraine and that “NATO had lost”.

This is not the first time the previously obscure scion of France’s most famous political family has made waves.

Yves de Gaulle, his eldest brother, told Le Parisien daily in January that his sibling’s views “concern no one else other than himself – not me, not our family and even less the general.”

Charles de Gaulle headed the French resistance movement from London during World War II, before returning triumphantly to France.

General de Gaulle during the parade on the Champs Elysées the day after the liberation of France in Paris on August 26, 1944. © Ville de Paris

As president, he positioned France as a hinge between the US-dominated Western bloc and the Soviet Union during the Cold War – a position that his grandson claims to represent.

But historians agree de Gaulle also kept France firmly anchored in the Western alliance. His views are a source of debate in France, particularly when applied to contemporary events.

(AFP)