The study of how M.N. Katkov was perceived by his French contemporaries is particularly significant in view of the major role this publicist played in promoting Russo-French rapprochement in the late 1880s. What image did Katkov have among his colleagues in France, and were any of them willing to regard him as a Francophile? This is the question addressed in the article, which seeks to fill a corresponding gap in both Russian and international historiography. The article argues that the framework through which Katkov was perceived in France had already taken shape during the Second Empire. His calls for the ruthless suppression of the Polish uprising of 1863 and for a more active Russian policy in the Balkans had, by 1870, earned him a reputation as the leader of the “ultra-Muscovite party” and an “apostle of Pan-Slavism”. His critical commentary on political developments in France in the 1870s, his gloomy predictions regarding the fragility of the Third Republic, and his reflections on the “insignificance” of its authority and the decline of its international standing likewise shaped his image among French liberal and republican journalists. Nevertheless, for a broad range of French newspapers and journals — from the republican La Nouvelle Revue and Le Matin to the Bonapartist Le Pays and the socialist L’Intransigeant — the anti-German tone of the later Katkov’s journalism was sufficient to proclaim him a “friend of France”, in accordance with the logic that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. Newspapers close to government circles, such as Journal des Débats, Le Temps, and République française, treated Katkov’s alleged Francophilia with still greater scepticism, while also reacting anxiously to the rising tide of Boulangism. The radical republican newspaper La Justice and the socialist press viewed Katkov in sharply negative terms, portraying him in an entirely hostile light. Yet by the 1890s, the image of Katkov as a “forerunner” of the Russo-French alliance and a “friend of France” had prevailed.