Russian political elites revel in new US dispensation

Russian officials and lawmakers lauded Donald Trump’s inauguration yesterday, hoping it will herald a period of better ties with the United States, while revellers in Moscow and elsewhere gathered for celebrations as bar and club owners sought to cash in on public excitement.

Trump’s promises to fix ravaged relations with Moscow have elated Russia’s political elite amid spiralling tensions with Washington over the Ukrainian crisis, the war in Syria and allegations of Russian meddling in the US elections.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said that while Trump’s policy toward Russia is unclear yet, “we are hoping that reason will prevail.”

“We are ready to do our share of the work in order to improve the relationship,” Medvedev said on Facebook.

Trump’s praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin has raised expectations that he could move to normalise ties, even though he hasn’t articulated a clear Russia policy and some of his Cabinet nominees have made hawkish statements on Russia.

Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, predicted that Moscow will face a pragmatic but very tough partner in Trump.

“Russia’s potential is incomparable to that of the United States,” he said, adding Moscow will have to apply a lot of skills “to play from the position of weakness and not lose.”

But despite the uncertainty, many Russians looked at Trump’s presidency with high hopes, and some nightclubs and bars called parties to celebrate the inauguration.

At one Moscow nightclub, several dozen people began toasting Trump late on Thursday.

Across from the US embassy compound in central Moscow, the Russian Army store put up a poster with Trump’s picture, offering inauguration day discounts of 10 per cent for Americans. There is a broad feeling in Russia’s political and business elites that relations with Washington just can’t get any worse.

“Russia hopes that under Trump there will be no ideology, no attempts to lecture about democracy, human rights and rights of smaller nations around its borders ... but primarily deal with economic issues in a businesslike way and even tacitly divide spheres of influence,” said Alexei Arbatov, a senior researcher with the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, a governmentfunded Moscow think tank. “Putin and Obama spoke different languages, they didn’t understand one another.”