Kremlin in limbo after Trump's victory

Between irony and skepticism, the Russian elites preferred to make a joke out of it: “Donald Trump or Kamala Harris? In Moscow we know who the Americans really want to vote for… Vladimir Putin!” However, in the Kremlin leader's circle, the Republican candidate's victory on Wednesday, November 6th does not spark the same enthusiasm as in 2016, when the billionaire was elected for the first time . “It doesn’t matter who is elected. In the end, Washington is against us. Nothing has changed. Nothing will change,” a senior Russian diplomat confided on the eve of the US presidential election.

As Russian politicians and businesspeople alike point out, the hopes they had pinned on Trump's entry into the White House in 2017 were quickly dashed, and his supposedly privileged ties with Putin did not lead to any improvement in bilateral relations. The first US sanctions against Moscow, imposed after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, have not been lifted. On the contrary, they actually expanded under the first Trump presidency.

The Kremlin was quick to point out on Wednesday that it would judge Trump based on specific actions. Putin did not plan to call to congratulate him, said his spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “Let us not forget that we are talking about an unfriendly country that is engaged in a war against our nation, both directly and indirectly,” he stressed.

Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president who has become one of the most nationalist voices in Moscow, has already warned: “We have no reason to have high expectations. The elections will not change anything for Russia, as the positions of the candidates fully reflect the bipartisan consensus that our country must be defeated.”

“Anti-Russian bias”

The man who, as Russian head of state from 2008 to 2012, was an accomplice of American presidents and European heads of state and government, today makes no secret of his distrust of Trump, who is all too quickly seen as an ally of the Kremlin: “A Trump who is tired of platitudes like “I will propose an agreement” and “I have excellent relations with” will be forced to abide by all the rules of the system. He can't stop the war in one day, in three days, not in three months. And if he really tries, he could be the new JFK.

Beyond the personality of the American president, it is the power establishment in Washington that worries Moscow. “No matter who wins the elections, we do not believe that the anti-Russian stance of the United States can change,” criticized Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister since 2004, on November 1st.

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