SHE is the makeover queen of the French hard right. For years presidential wannabe Marine Le Pen has been softening her image – if not always her chauvinistic politics – as she tries to get in to the Élysée Palace.

She has rebranded the xenophobic party whose leadership she inherited from her now estranged father.

Jean-Marie Le Pen’s old National Front is now called National Rally. Le Pen fille has set a course for what she sees as a more electable brand of ultra-conservatism.

So much so that this week she turned up in Poland at a summit of arguably more mainstream eurosceptics and rightists, including those in power in Warsaw. It did not go very well.

That is because Le Pen decided to back Russian President Vladimir Putin as his army massed on the borders of Ukraine.

READ MORE: Putin's Muscular Unionism

In remarks quickly picked up by Kremlin media, the French presidential candidate decided to blame the EU for the standoff.

The bloc was a “firefighter-pyromaniac”, she said. “You can say whatever you want, but Ukraine belongs to Russia's sphere of influence.” The EU, Le Pen was essentially saying, should not be meddling in Putin’s backyard.

The nationalist added that she does not think Putin is set to launch yet another invasion of his neighbour. She is hopefully right on that.

But the damage was done to her attempts to woo regional conservatives.

Polish, Estonian and other politicians who had parlayed with the National Rally leader came under huge pressure to distance themselves from her. A proposed formal alliance of ultraconservatives was put on hold.

READ MORE: Respect Ukraine's independence call

Why? In eastern and central Europe the idea that the “spheres of influence” of great powers trump national sovereignty does not go down well. And quite rightly too.

It should not be needed to be said that the people of Ukraine are entitled to choose whichever political course they want.

They overwhelmingly endorsed the nation’s independence from the former Soviet Union exactly three decades ago this month.

The Yes vote was over 92%.

Yet in the West there are still those who cling to a vision of world order based on the “spheres of influence” of strong nations over weaker ones.

Supporters of this kind of thinking usually like to see themselves as realistic, rather than unethical. And to be fair, powers divvied up the planet in their own patches from the days of empire right through the Cold War.

The United States had its Monroe Doctrine. Ostensibly a warning for European colonists to stay out of the western hemisphere, this stance eventually became understood as Washington declaring the Americas, and especially central America, to be its backyard. Think of how successive White Houses fretted about Cuba’s revolution and subsequent embrace of the Soviet Union.

Post Cold War, US administrations have denounced “sphere of influence” politics, even, cynics might wish to point out, while using violence to project power.

Only under Barack Obama was the “Monroe Doctrine era” officially declared to be over. Does that mean that the US no longer twists the arms of Latin American leaders? No. But it does signal that even the world’s most powerful states know they can no longer put up “keep out” signs in other countries.

Le Pen is not the only reactionary to back Putin’s posturing.

American cable TV demagogue Tucker Carlson this week said Putin was just trying to “secure” his borders. Indeed, he even resurrected the Monroe Doctrine to defend the Russian leader.

“Imagine how we would feel if Mexico and Canada became satellites of China,” he told his Fox News viewers. “We wouldn’t like that at all.”

Carlson blames the US, rather than the EU, for the crisis between Russia and Ukraine. A “hot war” with Russia, he declared, was not impossible.

America’s wacko right is all over the place on this issue. A Republican lawmaker this week refused to rule out a nuclear first strike against Russia while a former Trump official declared Ukraine was “not really a country” because many of its citizens speak Russian. Wait till he finds out he lives in an English-speaking former British colony.

But it is not just the hard right taking Putin’s side. There are anti-imperialists who champion Cuba’s sovereignty but not Ukraine’s, and who bristle at the eastward expansion of Nato and the EU.

There are even some old school Scottish nationalists – albeit well out of the mainstream of SNP multilateralism – who buy this line.

READ MORE: Sillars backs Russia

For example, a few years back former SNP deputy leader Jim Sillars, wrote to this paper to say Ukraine was in Russia’s ‘sphere of influence”.

This is strange analysis for a Scottish nationalist. The very basis of the self-determination movement in Scotland is that our nation, our people, should have agency. How can a supporter of independence for Scotland deny the same to another country? Putin is not just trying to secure his orders or push back against the very distant prospect of EU or Nato membership. At least that is not what he is saying: for some time he has been arguing that Ukraine and neighbouring Belarus are essentially Russia.

This is why there is an ongoing bloody crisis over Ukraine: there are people in the Kremlin who resent the country’s independence, and fear its fledgling democracy.

I do not know how Ukraine and its friends and allies can or should protect the country’s sovereignty. But democrats, of whatever hue, should treat those peddling the “spheres of influence” theory in the way Eastern European leaders regard Marine Le Pen. Why? Because it is naked, chauvinistic imperialism.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald.