Grandson of Soviet spy runs for French presidency
Grandson of Soviet spy runs for French presidency
Our Foreign StaffSun, August 23, 2026 at 10:32 PM UTC
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Raphael Glucksmann is a wealthy and well-connected member of the Parisian establishment - Christophe Archambault/AFP
The grandson of a Soviet spy has launched a bid to succeed Emmanuel Macron as France’s president.
Raphael Glucksmann hopes to challenge Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the hard-Left firebrand, to become the leading candidate of the Left in the race for the Elysee Palace.
Marine Le Pen, the leader of the hard-Right National Rally party, consistently tops first-round voting intentions.
Potential challengers from the political centre and left face an uphill battle to defeat her in a run-off, according to opinion polls.
“Yes, I am a candidate for the presidential election,” Mr Glucksmann told French TV channel TF1. “Are we going to hand our country over to the far Right? Faced with such a choice, I could not stand aside.”
Jean-Luc Mélenchon is the Left’s leading candidate for the French presidential election - Olivier Chassignole/AFP
Mr Glucksmann, a pro-European MEP who led the mainstream Left alliance in the 2024 European Parliament election to 14 per cent of the vote, is a wealthy and well-connected member of the Parisian establishment.
His grandfather is Rubin Glucksmann, who emigrated to Palestine in the 1920s before becoming a communist and being recruited by the Comintern, the body set up to carry Bolshevism around the world.
He worked as a Soviet spy in France, Germany and in Britain, where he pretended to be a businessman.
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Mr Glucksmann studied at Sciences Po, the higher education institute in Paris that is the breeding ground for the country’s future leaders, before embarking on a career as a journalist and documentary maker.
He trails Mr Mélenchon in opinion polls and a key question is whether he – or other potential centre-Left candidates – could unite moderate Left-wing forces.
“The Left can win the presidential election if it stands firm on its principles,” Mr Glucksmann said. “We must stop being afraid of Mélenchon.”
His candidacy comes as France’s political class returns from the summer break and gears up for what is expected to be a highly polarised presidential contest ahead of the vote in April and May 2027.
While being critical of some of Mr Macron’s pro-business policies, Mr Glucksmann has advocated a similar pro-European, pro-Ukraine line, positioning himself as a staunch defender of liberal democracy.
Yet it is not only his politics that have thrust him into the spotlight.
His relationship with Lea Salamé, the star presenter of France 2 TV’s flagship evening news programme, has become a recurring subject of media attention, with newspapers dubbing them one of France’s top “power couples”.
Over the summer, pictures of the couple on a beach in Corsica appeared in Paris Match, a celebrity magazine that has been a launchpad for presidential hopefuls over the past decades.
French media report Salamé will withdraw from anchoring duties on the public broadcaster during the presidential campaign to avoid any perception of a conflict of interest.
Source: “AOL Breaking”
