Analysts: Russia looks to exploit White House ‘turbulence’

Moscow continually testing U.S. military, sees Trump as ‘unstable,’ experts say

MOSCOW — The Kremlin, increasingly convinced that President Donald Trump will not fundamentally change relations with Russia, is instead seeking to bolster its global influence by exploiting what it considers weakness in Washington, according to political advisers, diplomats, journalists and other analysts.

Russia has continued to test the United States on the military front, with fighter jets flying close to an U.S. warship in the Black Sea this month and a Russian naval vessel steaming conspicuously in the Atlantic off the coast of Delaware.

“They think he is unstable, that he can be manipulated, that he is authoritarian and a person without a team,” Alexei A. Venediktov, the editor-in-chief of Echo of Moscow, a liberal radio station, said of Trump.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has long sought to crack the liberal Western order, both as a competitor and as a champion of an alternative, illiberal model. To that end, he did what he could to buttress the electoral chances of Trump, who seemed like a kindred spirit with his harsh denunciations of NATO and the European Union, his endorsement of the British withdrawal from the European Union and his repeated shrugs over Russia’s destabilizing Ukraine.

In this context, Trump’s election was an unexpected bonus, but the original giddiness has worn off and Moscow has returned to its tried and true formula of creating turmoil and exploiting the resulting opportunities.

“They are all telling each other that this is great, he created this turbulence inside, as we wanted, and now he is focused on his domestic problems and we have more freedom to maneuver,” Venediktov said. “Let them deal with their own problems. There, not in Ukraine. There, not in the Middle East. There, not in NATO. This is the state of mind right now.”

Sergei A. Markov, a leading analyst friendly to the Kremlin, made much the same point. “Right now the Kremlin is looking for ways that Russia can use the chaos in Washington to pursue its own interests,” said Markov, a member of the Civic Chamber, a Kremlin advisory group. “The main hope is that the U.S. will be preoccupied with itself and will stop pressuring Russia.”

Any turbulence that Russia foments also gives the Kremlin leverage that it can try to trade in the global arena at a time when it does not have much that others want.

Venediktov compared the Russian position to an intrusive neighbor who promises to be helpful by avoiding noisy restoration activity at night even though it breaks the apartment building rules in the first place.

Analysts say the Kremlin is keenly aware that the tactic of creating and exploiting disarray can become self-defeating, in that prolonged instability in the world order could allow threats like the extremist group Islamic State to flourish.

“It is important for Russia that America does its job in foreign policy,” said Alexey Chesnakov, a periodic Kremlin political adviser and the director of the Center for Current Politics, a trend analysis group in Moscow. “If there is nobody to do that job it might not be good for us, either.”

The Middle East provides examples of both vectors, analysts say, a moment of chaos to exploit and concerns about achieving stability for the long-term future.

Moscow has begun courting Libya, where Putin seems to want to prove that the Obama administration and other Western powers made a mistake by working to force Moammar Gadhafi from power in 2011. The Russian government invited various powerful figures to Moscow and sent the country’s lone aircraft carrier, the somewhat dilapidated Admiral Kuznetsov, on a port call to Libya on its way back from Syria last month. Khalifa Haftar, the military commander in eastern Libya, got a tour. The government invited veteran officials and analysts from around the Arab world this week to discuss the future of Libya and Yemen, among other topics.

Syria, on the other hand, underscores the limits to Russian power. In the two months since Russian-backed government forces took back the city of Aleppo, there has been little movement in forging peace.

Not least, Russia can ill afford the billions of dollars needed to rebuild the country. For that, it needs Washington to help persuade its allies like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, who all seek a political transition away from Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Like much of the world, nobody in Moscow can figure out who makes Trump’s foreign policy, never mind what it will be. Since the inauguration, it has become clear that Trump’s rosy view of Putin is not shared by the president’s top foreign policy advisers, with the possible exception of Stephen K. Bannon, his chief White House strategist.

“We cannot understand how they will work in concert,” said Igor Yurgens, a Russian economist who is prominent in business and development.

The Kremlin has adopted a wait-andsee attitude toward Trump, analysts said, expecting the first meeting with Putin in Europe sometime this summer to set the course for relations.

Dmitry K. Kiselyov, the anchor of the main state propaganda program “News of the Week,” recently pronounced what seemed to be the new party line on the air. “Let’s not judge too harshly, things are still unsettled in the White House,” he said. “Still not a word from there. Only little words, and that doesn’t amount to a policy.”

Just how unsettled was underscored Monday, when the White House announced plans to increase military spending by $54 billion, an amount just about equal to what Russia spends in total on its military annually.

While the appearance of such turmoil in the White House has probably been surprising, even gratifying, to the Kremlin, analysts say Russia’s government is worried about having too much of a good thing. “It would be better for us to have a predictable partner,” Markov said. “An unpredictable one is dangerous.”

The perception of weakness calls into question here in Moscow whether Trump can ever live up to the many statements he made during the campaign about forging closer ties with Putin and Russia. “The overwhelming view of the Kremlin is that Trump is not very strong,” said Valeriy Solovey, a professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. “He might have sympathy toward Russia, but he is contained within the political establishment.”