On November 17th Russian Federal News Agency informed Russians that then president Donald Trump is going to visit Russia that first thing after his inauguration. The statement was illustrated by the above picture.
Thanks to President Elect Trump’s earlier statements praising Russian President Vladimir Putin, the news of Trump’s election victory triggered a wave of extreme exaltation in Russia. Trump’s victory was considered Russia’s victory. The excitement was so big that it took even absurd forms.
For example, Russian media happily quoted the Russian newspaper Zavtra (Tomorrow), which, referring to “genealogical data”, claimed that Trump’s ancestor was Rurik, a Viking chieftain who founded the Russian state in the 9th century. Rurik started one of Europe’s oldest Dynasty, which ruled Kievan Russ and later the Grand Duchy of Moscow and Tsardom of Russia until the 17th century.
The newspaper said “there was nothing sensational” about the revelation of Trump’s is link to Russia via his mother Mary Anne MacLeod, who was born in Scotland in 1912 and moved to the US when she was 17. It also said that Trump was distantly related to Henry III of England and Joan Beaufort, Queen of Scots.
Even when Trump’s nominations to his cabinet showed that he is choosing politicians known as hard-liners towards Russia, the state-controlled Russian TV stations continue to present Trump’s victory as the victory by Putin.
But both Russian officials and serious newspapers and Internet commentators are now changing their tune. And the officials have begun to show their concern.
Ilya Rogachev, the director of the Department of Foreign Ministry on New Challenges and Threats, said that Moscow no longer believes that Trump would be a “friendly” US President in matters of “counter-terrorism. If Trump does not change his choice of Mitt Romney in conjunction with super-hawk Mattis as head of the Pentagon, he will form perhaps the most anti-Russian administration since the days of George W. Bush”.
The chairman of the Federation Council Commission on information policy Alexei Pushkov said in his Twitter that the newly elected head of the United States “will be discouraged” to cooperate with the Kremlin.
“It is already clear that Trump’s administration will be split on the question of cooperation with Russia in Syria, and that there will be attempts to dissuade Trump from the idea of joint action”.
Journalist Vladimir Varfolomeyev in his Twitter drew attention to the title of a publication on a pro-Kremlin website. Varfalomeyev asks: “Why has the US president fastened together the team of the enemies of Russia? The love was short-lived”.
The Russian democratic opposition is for the most part not optimistic about future of a relationship between Putin and Trump. Here is a typical comment of a popular journalist Vladimir Abarinov:
“President Trump, as he planned, will try to improve relations with Russia, but it is not a fact that getting his act together with Vladimir Putin will take place safely. Trump is a novice without any experience of diplomacy and with a vague notion of international affairs. Putin is a man hard and unyielding. It is unlikely that they will get along.”
Dmitri Gudkov, one of most prominent anti-Putin politicians, made a very interesting comments in his interview to the radio Echo of Moscow. He said: “The administration of our President, as did everybody else, was preparing for Clinton’s victory. They were confident.
“Trump suited the Russian authorities not as a president but as a presidential candidate who was supposed to lose and to discredit the American model of democracy. They would be able to say: ‘Look, our Trump had lost, because, in fact, there is no democracy over there’.
“But see what happened. Trump was saying all the time that the elections were falsified, and suddenly the entire Russia saw that the American democracy is working. And instead of Hillary, on which they could blame all our problems as they were blaming them on Obama, we’ve got Trump, who cannot be blamed. Why? Because he was ‘our candidate’.
“I think they were, of course, shocked by this result because it is clear (and it was revealed in the first actions of Trump) he put hawks into key positions on his team, those who always took a hard line against Russia… Those who lobbied and voted for the Magnitsky law, who supported sanctions against Russia.
“Firstly, our elites, our government got an unpredictable American president. And secondly, obviously, a tough president.
“Plus, it is clear that his energy reform could collapse oil prices to $35 per barrel. I read various experts’ assessments: this, by the way, will have much more impact on our economy than the sanctions have.”
On November 23, Putin’s press-representative Dmitri Peskov made an official statement:
“We know:now the level of our bilateral relations with US is poor, hardly anything can make it lower, it is quite at the bottom. Of course we expect that a challenging dialogue will resume, clearly not a quick process for redirecting our relationships into a constructive direction. “
