Congratulations poured in from all over the world for Donald Trump’s unexpectedly clear electoral triumph. However, one of the world leaders remained remarkably silent for a long time. Only after two days did he join, although initially his spokesman announced that there would be no congratulations this time.
Vladimir Putin is not going to congratulate the newly elected US president, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed on Wednesday and added a rationale. “Let’s not forget that we are talking about an enemy country that is directly and indirectly involved in a war against our state,” the agency quoted him as saying. TASS.
Putin finally expressed appreciation to Trump in an appearance at the Valdai discussion club on Thursday. However, it was far from the warm response in 2016. He was one of Trump’s first congratulators then. Vkremlin.ru/events/president/news/53221“>telegrams he expressed his hope to the newly elected head of the White House that they would work together to help “bring Russian-American relations out of their current state of crisis.”
Champagne corks were flying in Moscow eight years ago. The State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, greeted the declaration of Trump as the winner of the election with thunderous applause. And Margarita Simonian, the head of the state television station RT, announced on Twitter that she would drive around Moscow with the American flag flying out of her car window.
Today, a much more sober mood reigns in Moscow. Russian politicians and propagandists feign indifference to the American election. While before Trump’s first election they made no secret that he was their favorite, now they are quietly suggesting that it could have turned out worse from Moscow’s point of view.
Before November 5, the Kremlin publicly avoided seriously supporting either candidate. When Putin was asked directly at the Vladivostok economic forum in early autumn whether he preferred Trump or the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, he grinned mischievously. “Our favorite, if you can call him that, was the current president, Mr. Biden,” the newspaper quoted the head of the Kremlin as saying Kommersant. “But his candidacy was withdrawn, and he advised all his supporters to support Mrs. Harris. We will do the same – we will support her,” he added with undisguised irony in his voice, praising the deputy president Joe Biden for her “distinctive and infectious laugh” in front of an amused audience.
Political scientist Abbas Galliamov, a former writer of Putin’s speeches, immediately put this trolling on the part of his former boss into perspective. “It’s a traditional KGB cover operation to benefit Trump,” he explained.
Russian propagandists tried to stick to the instructions they received from the Kremlin. They repeated the platitude that these are two sides of the same coin of American global hegemony.
However, in the blurring, their tone clearly showed who they were betting on in Moscow in the American game. They disproportionately attacked Harris, recycling the insults hurled at her by far-right media in the United States. Trump was obviously spared.
State media mocked Harris’ signature giggle, spread misinformation about her alleged extramarital affairs and accused her of pushing a radical LGBTI+ agenda. The vice-president was often portrayed as not independent, even unruly.
“He feels at home in the kitchen. She is happy and harmonious, which cannot be said when it comes to serious politics. Even Lenin said that a cook can, of course, run the state, but for that she has to study a lot,” commented prominent presenter Dmitry Kiseľov in his weekly show Vesti week a clip of Harris from a TV cooking show.
Even more than attacking the Democratic candidate, the pro-Kremlin media devoted themselves to dramatizing the explosive antagonism between the camps of Trump and Harris. With undisguised mischief, they predicted that the election of the head of the White House would trigger a new civil war in America due to the questioning of the validity of the vote.
This is clearly how the Kremlin dreamed of the outcome of the fight for the White House. “Of course they want Trump – that’s clear – but the outcome of this election will not be a game-changer for Russia,” he told the newspaper Washington Post (WP) on condition of anonymity representative of Russian government circles. “The situation has reached a truly dire state. US-Russian relations are at a standstill. And everyone is a hostage to it – even Putin,” he added.
Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russian political scientist based in France, has a similar opinion: “Putin will not be satisfied until the United States agrees to rebuild relations with Russia in a way that makes concessions to Moscow’s security interests and redraws the map of global security.” Until then, Russia will continue to seek to foment chaos to weaken the United States.”
“The post-election chaos would greatly benefit Moscow,” a source from Russian government circles added to the Washington daily. “The worse it is in the US, the better,” he stated.
Although the Kremlin is far from fully satisfied, Trump’s triumph is the second best possible outcome of the American elections for the Russians.
“They clearly preferred a Trump victory. He is more open to forcing Ukraine to make some disadvantageous deal with Russia to end the war,” he told WP Eric Ciaramella, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “They see him as much more likely to cut off support for Ukraine and more likely to damage America’s image abroad.”
However, Putin’s predecessor from the Kremlin and his current representative in the State Security Council dampen exaggerated expectations. “The elections will not change anything for Russia, because the positions of the candidates fully reflect the consensus of the two parties that our country must be defeated,” Dmitry Medvedev wrote on telegrams on the eve of the American elections.
“Trump, spewing phrases like ‘I’ll offer a deal’ and ‘I have great relations with…’, will also be forced to follow all the system’s rules. He cannot stop the war. Not in a day, not in three days, not in three months. And if he really tries, he can become the new JFK,” Medvedev mentioned the risk that the 47th president of the USA will end up like the 35th in line, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was shot by an assassin.
However, the day after the election, Medvedev outlined the possibility that the newly elected US president could cut aid to Ukraine, which has been resisting Russian aggression for almost a thousand days. “Trump has one quality that is useful to us: as a businessman to the core, he hates to death to spend money on various sycophants and sycophants – on stupid allies, on bad charity projects and on greedy international organizations,” he wrote in a new status on telegrams.
Source: spravy.pravda.sk
