 "Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with US President Donald Trump during a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Reuters file")
The Kremlin reacted cautiously on Wednesday after Donald Trump declared victory in the US presidential election, saying the US was still a hostile state and that time would tell if Trump rhetoric on ending the Ukraine war translated into reality.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 triggered the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when the Soviet Union and the US came close to nuclear war.
Trump, a Republican, claimed victory in the 2024 presidential contest after Fox News projected that he had defeated Democrat Kamala Harris, which would cap a stunning political comeback four years after he left the White House.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Trump had made some important statements about wanting to end the Ukraine war during his campaign, but only time would tell if they lead to action.
“Let us not forget that we are talking about an unfriendly country, which is both directly and indirectly involved in a war against our state” (in Ukraine)," Peskov told reporters.
Peskov said he was not aware of any plans by President Vladimir Putin to congratulate Trump on his victory and that relations with Washington were at an historic low.
“We have repeatedly said that the US is able to contribute to the end of this conflict. This cannot be done overnight, but… the US is capable of changing the trajectory of its foreign policy. Will this happen, and if so, how … we will see after (the US president’s inauguration in) January”.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsRussian and US diplomats say relations between the world’s two largest nuclear powers have only been worse during the depths of the Cold War. Russian officials from Putin down said ahead of the election that it made no difference to Moscow who won the White House, even as Kremlin-guided state media coverage showed a preference for Trump.
Kirill Dmitriev, the influential head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, said a Trump victory could be a chance to repair ties.
“This opens up new opportunities for resetting relations between Russia and the United States,” added Dmitriev, a former Goldman Sachs banker who has previously had contacts with the Trump team.
In 2009, then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proposed a “reset” with Moscow, but due to an apparent translation error presented Moscow with a symbolic button labelled “overload” in Russian instead of “reset”.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Firstpost staff.)