View from Moscow: Russia tepidly welcomes Trump’s return

MOSCOW – Casual observers probably expected Moscow to celebrate Donald Trump’s return to the White House amid perceptions he was pro-Russia, or at least Russia-friendly, during his first term.

The Russiagate scandal and associated claims in recent months that Moscow was again meddling in a US election in Trump’s support, including through fake news websites and even funding the former conservative media supergroup Tenet, reinforced these perceptions. But those who anticipate Trump will give Russia kid gloves treatment will likely be disappointed.

The first official Russian reaction came from Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who reminded that “we are talking about an unfriendly country that is directly and indirectly involved in a war against our state” when asked whether President Vladimir Putin would congratulate Trump.

Peskov did leave open the possibility for improved ties if the Trump 2.0 administration had the political will to do so, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that Putin publicly backed Joe Biden and later Kamala Harris over Trump before the November 5 election.

That’s because Putin, ever the cautious pragmatist, preferred the proverbial devils he knows in Biden and Harris to the unpredictability of a second Trump term.

As for Putin’s reaction to Trump’s return, he congratulated him on his victory during his traditional Q&A session at the Valdai Club’s annual meeting on Thursday (November 7) evening.

“I have said already that we will be working with any head of state who would be trusted by the American people. Indeed, this is going to be like this in practice,” Putin said.  The leader added that he’s willing to talk with Trump, improve bilateral relations and bring about an end to the Ukrainian conflict.

On that, former President Dmitry Medvedev, who’s now the deputy chairman of the Security Council, earlier tweeted that the goals of Russia’s special operation in Ukraine “remain unchanged and will be achieved.” He also implied in a post on Telegram that Trump might curtail American aid to Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov seemed less optimistic than Putin or Medvedev when he assessed on the eve of the US election that “The anti-Russian and Russophobic orientation of US policy is based on internal political consensus which has a bipartisan nature. Ukraine is seen as a key element of the hybrid war unleashed against Russia.”

He apparently doesn’t expect any changes in the transition from Biden to Trump but later said that Russia is open to dialogue.

Therein lies the reason behind Russia’s tepid welcome of Trump’s return. In short, many here don’t believe that Trump will force Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to make the concessions that would meet most or all of Moscow’s previously stated war goals.

In short, these are demilitarizing and denazifying Ukraine (both of which were never clearly defined), and restoring the country’s military neutrality by removing 2019’s amendment to the constitution that makes NATO membership a strategic objective.

Putin told war correspondents in June 2023 that “If they (the US) genuinely want to end today’s conflict via negotiations, they only need to make one decision, which is to stop supplying weapons and equipment. That’s it.

“Ukraine itself does not manufacture anything. Tomorrow, they will want to hold talks that are not formal, but substantive, and not to confront us with ultimatums, but to return to what was agreed upon, say, in Istanbul.”

This circles back to what Medvedev implied in his recent Telegram post about Russia’s hopes that Trump will cut off, curtail or at least leverage arms shipments to Ukraine to coerce Zelensky into making concessions that could facilitate reciprocal ones from Russia for ending the conflict.

Trump might throw them a curveball, though, if he goes through with the plan reportedly handed to him by advisors in June calling for increasing arms deliveries to Ukraine if Russia doesn’t quickly accept a peace deal.

The problem, though, is that Putin has staked his reputation on delivering his previously stated goals, including denazification and demilitarization (which might have deliberately been left undefined to leave room for maneuver), and gaining control over the entirety of its new formerly Ukrainian regions’ administrative borders.

It’s already proven a challenge to do this in Donbass, so it’s unlikely that Russia can militarily achieve this with Kherson and Zaporizhia’s cross-Dnieper River areas.

At the same time, one of the constitutional amendments promulgated in 2020 prohibits the cession of Russian territory, so it can’t formally give up them up without changing the law.

A Constitutional Court ruling that those lands were never administered by Russia so they could thus be ceded might provide a loophole but either possibility would still reflect poorly on Putin. Russia already includes those territories in its official maps so they would also have to be changed.

Nevertheless, Russia could still agree to freeze the conflict along the Line of Contact (wherever it may be at the time this happens) without rescinding its claims, just like Ukraine could do the same.

That’s the most likely outcome for the reasons already explained, but Russia would have to spin it as a success before its people at home and among its supporters abroad to prevent them from becoming demoralized if the conflict ends without it achieving its maximum territorial goals.

There’s also the issue of demilitarization and denazifiction to consider. Ukraine is still armed to the teeth and won’t realistically give up its weapons to the West upon the end of hostilities. Nor would Trump likely demand a return of arms due to the perception it would weaken Ukraine and potentially embolden Russia to later resume the conflict.

Ukraine is also not going to voluntarily promulgate legislation that Russia considers to be in line with its denazification goals. Trump and his team don’t seem to care about the issue anyway.

The most that Russia can, therefore, expect from any potential peace deal that Trump helps broker is for Ukraine to formally forego accession to NATO.

But even that might not be the victory it seems since a raft of security guarantee agreements with the security alliance’s members inked throughout the year amount to Ukraine’s de facto membership, though without any implied Article 5-like obligation to dispatch troops in its support.

Ukraine is already receiving massive amounts of aid from NATO members in line with Article 5, which, contrary to popular perceptions, doesn’t obligate them to deploy troops but only to provide whatever support deemed as necessary to help an ally under attack.

So formally keeping Ukraine out of NATO at this point would arguably be a superficial concession. Trump could sweeten the deal and help Russia save face by creating a demilitarized buffer zone within Ukraine along the LOC and its borders with Russia.

If this extends far enough to prevent Ukrainian artillery from targeting its cities and military positions, then that would probably be considered an acceptable compromise by the Kremlin.

Russia’s global media machine could then start trumpeting the deal as a stunning success, despite failing to achieve its maximum objectives, while the West’s could do the same, even though the war failed to restore Ukraine’s 1991 borders.

In that event, a German- or Korean-like partition would become a fait accompli. None of the conflict’s participants, whether direct ones like Russia and Ukraine or indirect ones including various NATO members, would be altogether happy with the outcome – though they also tacitly know that a maximum victory is unachievable.

Both sides are fatigued, contrary to their official statements, and none want the escalation that would follow if Trump implements the reported plan he received over the summer to ramp up arms deliveries to Ukraine if Russia doesn’t accept a peace deal.

Therefore, the best that Russia can hope to achieve is a military breakthrough before Trump’s reinauguration that brings as much territory under its control as possible since the new US leader is unlikely to coerce Ukraine into surrendering the rest of its former regions that Russia claims in their entirety.

The rising realization that its maximum war objectives probably won’t be met explains Russia’s tepid welcoming of Trump’s return. Meanwhile, its media machine is likely already working overtime on how to spin an imperfect compromise as a full victory.