There has been much speculation in recent weeks about the ties between Donald Trump and Russia. Did Moscow rigged the US elections? Does the Kremlin have a compromise against Trump? In the end, is the Republican even a president by Putin’s grace? When Trump was elected the 45th US president on November 8, numerous US media outlets wrote that his victory was greeted with a standing ovation in the Russian Duma. In fact, a few unsettled claps can hardly be called an ovation.
Even if veritable songs of praise were sung to Trump on state television, it remained increasingly quiet behind the scenes. On the day of the inauguration of the scandalous politician, Moscow seems to be looking to Washington just as unsurely as the rest of the world. It’s not just Trump himself who is causing uncertainty. “Given the behavior of the Kremlin, it is far from certain that an alliance with the US is what suits Russia’s interests,” deputy director of the US analytical center Atlantic Council, Alina Polyskova, told the independent Russian online newspaper “Gazeta.ru”.
“This does not correspond to Putin’s current policy, who is fighting for popular approval through a common image of the enemy,” said the political analyst. “The US has played this role for a long time. What should the Kremlin do if nobody can fill this role anymore?” she asked.
Sources close to the Russian government support this assumption. “Expectations have shifted noticeably in the Kremlin,” Kremlin adviser Alexei Chesnakov told the Bloomberg agency. “The government understands that rapprochement will not be easy and scandals worsen the chances.”
Nikolai Patrushev, a close confidant of Putin and secretary of the Security Council, also clearly dampened expectations of a possible improvement in relations between the two countries. “In this situation […] we cannot talk about fundamental changes in Russian-American relations. We have no illusions that the measures aimed at strategically repressing Russia could soon be relaxed,” he told the state newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta. .
In the meantime, there are also doubts in Moscow that the Trump administration will actually be well-disposed towards Russia. Above all, the statements made by the future Secretary of State Rex Tillerson make the Kremlin people prick up their ears. At a hearing in the Senate, he described Russia as a danger. “It was as if he had to sign his dislike of Putin in blood,” said Andrei Kortunov, director of the Russian Council for International Affairs, a working group set up by the Kremlin.
In the meantime, the state television stations have also backed off from their initial euphoria. The population is attuned not to have illusory expectations of the Trump administration.
The newspaper Kommersant, which is critical of the government, sums up the problem the Kremlin is now facing. “Barack Obama turned out to be a nominal figure for Russian state propaganda. You could blame a lot of things on him. […] Now Trump is taking over. And it’s not so easy to argue with him. Because no matter how you look at it : Trump is our project. Nobody but us believed in his victory. Now we cannot let him down. And if so, we will have to make concessions. […] In the end, hostility could be much more profitable than a friendship.”
