The Kremlin couldn't ask for a better ally than Marine Le Pen

It started out as your average tragicomic week in the France of May 2014. 

The armed forces' chief of staff, backed by his generals in charge of the army, navy and air force, threatened to quit over planned cuts in military budgets. A government agency, debunking a presidential promise to reverse the country's jobless trend, said unemployment would rise this year and next. And the national railroad acknowledged that 2,000 new trains it had ordered for $20.5 billion were too wide to fit into about 1,600 stations.