Vladimir Putin welcomes Trump’s win. Strangely, so do some of his opponents
RUSSIAN lawmakers burst into applause
when news of Donald Trump’s victory reached Moscow. The White House will be
home to a candidate whose chumminess with Russia provoked one former CIA
director to call him an “unwitting agent” of Vladimir Putin. Announcing Mr
Trump’s victory in the Kremlin’s gilded ceremonial hall, Mr Putin said he
welcomed the opportunity to “restore full-fledged relations with the United
States”.
Russia’s state-controlled media, which thrive on anti-American
propaganda, could hardly hide their glee. “I want to ride around Moscow with an
American flag in the window of the car,” wrote Margarita Simonyan, the head of
RT, the state-backed network that actively promoted Mr Trump’s candidacy.
Mr Trump’s victory has been portrayed
both inside and outside Russia as another example of Mr Putin’s luck. The
Russian leader views America’s liberal democratic order, which encourages
political and economic openness around the world, as a threat to his own system
of closed governing networks dominated by the security services. An
isolationist America bogged down in political infighting is much less of a
threat to Mr Putin. Russian liberals are in despair; hardliners are cheering.
Russia’s neighbours are fretting about the withdrawal of Western backing to
deter Russian aggression. Mr Putin is hoping for a deal with Mr Trump, similar
to the 1945 Yalta agreement, to carve out a Russian sphere of influence.
Yet Mr
Trump’s victory may prove more problematic for the Kremlin than it seems. Mr
Trump’s friendly campaign rhetoric about Russia is no guarantee of
co-operation. (Barack Obama also launched a reset of relations with Russia when
he came into office.) Whereas Hillary Clinton offered a predictable, albeit
hostile, line on Russia, Mr Trump is shrouded in uncertainty. “If America is
the devil, better the devil we know,” says Dmitri Trenin, director of the
Moscow Carnegie Center, a think-tank.
Anti-Americanism
is one of the pillars of the Kremlin’s propaganda strategy, which portrays
Russia as a besieged fortress. Mrs Clinton would have been an ideal enemy. With
a friendlier President Trump in office, state television may have to fall back
instead on lampooning American politics and Mr Trump himself. But while Mr
Obama largely ignored Russia’s often racist attacks on him, insulting Mr Trump
is riskier: he may take it personally. More importantly, Mr Trump’s
victory—part of a global populist backlash against the political status quo—is
an ominous sign for Mr Putin and his wealthy cronies, who have held power for
more than 16 years. If Russians grow angry at their corrupt elite, there is
only one target for their anger.
This may
explain why two of Mr Putin’s fiercest opponents are more sanguine about Mr
Trump’s victory. One is Mikheil Saakashvili, a former president of Georgia who
fought a short war with Russia in 2008. The other is Alexei Navalny, an
opposition leader and anti-corruption blogger who galvanised anti-Putin
protests in Moscow in 2011-2012.
As political
outsiders and proud nationalists who have campaigned against corruption and the
political establishment, both Mr Saakashvili and Mr Navalny feel they have more
in common with Mr Trump than Mr Putin does. “I don’t believe this is a crisis
of America or of Europe. It is simply a swing of the political pendulum, which
is what happens in a democracy,” says Mr Navalny. “I wish our politics could be
as dynamic.”
Mr
Saakashvili was brought in by the new Ukrainian government as governor of
Odessa in 2015, charged with stamping out corruption. He thinks Mr Trump’s
predecessors failed to stand up to Mr Putin and were repeatedly outmanoeuvred.
Hillary Clinton, he argues, pushed for a reset of Russian-American relations
after the war in Georgia in 2008, and opposed the Magnitsky Act, which punishes
Russian officials accused of involvement in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a
lawyer, in 2009. The Obama administration pressured Ukraine not to confront
Russia militarily in Crimea and refused to provide it with lethal weapons,
despite a 1994 pledge to uphold its territorial integrity.
Worse, says
Mr Saakashvili, America has propped up Ukraine’s oligarchic elite in the
misplaced belief that they are necessary to block Russian interference.
“[American officials] kept telling me, ‘don’t rock the boat’, but the boat was
sinking,” says Mr Saakashvili. Earlier this week he resigned as governor, accusing
his erstwhile ally, President Petro Poroshenko, of abetting corruption. He also
believes America’s policy of encouraging Ukraine to reintegrate its separatist
eastern provinces is ruinous. “The less America interferes in Ukraine at this
point, the better,” he says.
If Mr
Saakashvili’s and Mr Navalny’s views of a Trump presidency seem overly
optimistic, those of Russia’s establishment probably are, too. Many Russians
have been hoping for an American leader more like their own. They may regret it.
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