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MOSCOW – The morning after Joseph R. Biden Jr. became president-elect of the United States, the Kremlin released a congratulatory message from President Vladimir V. Putin.
It was a happy 60th birthday greeting to a Moscow theater director.
Unlike his Western European counterparts, who were quick to send congratulations on Saturday, Putin had not issued a statement about the president-elect even as night fell in Moscow on Sunday. Four years earlier, the Kremlin sent a message to President Trump within hours of the American television networks announcing the race on election night.
“Putin is a good soldier and does not wag his tail at his enemies,” said a prominent pro-Kremlin analyst Sergei A. Markov, explaining the difference.
Early signs indicate Putin is preparing for a deeply antagonistic relationship with the next US president. While Trump never lived up to Russian hopes for a rapprochement between Washington and Moscow, his early American foreign policy dovetailed with the Kremlin’s desire to weaken the Western alliance and expand Russian influence around the world.
Biden, by contrast, is a president-elect whom Putin already has many reasons to fear. Biden views Russia as one of the greatest threats to America’s security, vows to rebuild worn-out ties with European allies and, as vice president, actively worked to support pro-Western politicians in Ukraine, a country at war with Russia.
For Russia’s ruling class, the 77-year-old Biden was the preferred candidate for an American “deep state,” a huge network of spies and diplomats who, according to the Kremlin, worked to undermine Trump and his efforts to improve ties. with Russia. And Biden, unlike Trump, seems to many Russians the type of American politician they loathe most: someone willing to meddle around the world in the name of democratic ideals, rather than respecting spheres of influence and compromising with Moscow. in tough conversations.
“There you have it, the notorious deep state that Trump had promised to get rid of,” Mikhail V. Leontyev, a commentator, said on primetime news in Russia on Saturday, describing Biden. “We wouldn’t give a damn about this if these guys didn’t try to get involved in all of our businesses, and the likely winner has made it his mission to get involved in all of the businesses in the world.”
As swing states counted votes in recent days, Russian state television increasingly adopted Trump’s claim that the Democrats had stolen the election. A reporter in Washington for Russia’s state Channel 1 ridiculed the street celebrations of Biden’s victory as people “crying, jumping, and getting drunk.” On a Sunday night news program, host Dmitri Kiselyov said the elections showed that the United States “is not a country, but a huge and chaotic communal apartment, with a criminal style.”
The vitriol on Kremlin-controlled television, and the lack of quick congratulations for Biden, was notable given that Putin seemed to be trying to distance himself from Trump as Biden emerged as the clear favorite in recent months. . Some Russian analysts and politicians had even speculated that a new leadership in Washington could be a good thing for Moscow.
“There are increasingly few within the Russian elite who see Trump as a target in himself,” wrote Tatiana Stanovaya, a political commentator, in an essay titled “Goodbye Trump?” He added that “there was also a sense of Trump fatigue,” even in the Kremlin.
In fact, Putin chose this fall not to give Trump what would have been a prized foreign policy victory: a renegotiated New Start nuclear weapons deal, the last major arms control deal left between the countries.
Trump’s chief negotiator, Marshall Billingslea, even announced that the two leaders had a “gentlemen’s agreement” for a renegotiation. agreement. Yet within hours, a Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei A. Ryabkov called the Trump administration delusional. “Washington is describing what is desired, not what is real,” he said.
Instead, in a television interview last month, Putin praised Biden for being prepared to extend the treaty. And in what may have been an ambiguous compliment, he praised Democrats for sharing leftist ideals with a party Putin was once a member: the Communists.
“We will work with any future president of the United States, to whom the American people give their vote of confidence,” Putin said.
The CIA said earlier this year that Putin appeared to be interfering in the election on Trump’s behalf. The Kremlin has denied meddling in American politics, and many analysts in Moscow noted that no new substantiated allegations of Russian interference in the United States had surfaced since Election Day.
In fact, the notion that Trump’s departure from the White House could reduce American anger over Russian interference in the 2016 election appeared to be the silver lining of Biden’s victory, some politicians and analysts said.
“It is not that we believe in a recovery in Washington, but the key irritant could disappear,” Konstantin Kosachev, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the upper house of the Russian Parliament, wrote on Facebook. “Wouldn’t that be a reason to resume gun control talks, for example? We are definitely ready. “
Biden could also benefit Russia by bringing the United States back to the nuclear deal with Iran, an agreement Moscow is a party to, said another Russian lawmaker, Leonid E. Slutsky. In 2018, Trump withdrew the United States from the deal, which President Barack Obama had helped negotiate among world powers to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Even as the Kremlin fell silent on Sunday, Putin’s most staunch domestic opponent, opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, offered good wishes on Twitter to Mr. Biden and Kamala Harris, the vice president-elect. He also congratulated Americans for holding “free and fair elections,” an indirect blow to the Putin government.
“This is a privilege that is not available to all countries,” wrote Navalny, who is recovering after being attacked with a nerve agent in Siberia. “We look forward to the new level of cooperation between Russia and the United States.”
The Kremlin and its supporters have long claimed, without evidence, that opposition activists like Mr. Navalny are the instruments by which America’s “deep state” implements its anti-Russian agenda. The Russian media often say that the United States has engineered “color revolutions” in the former Soviet Union.
Markov, the pro-Kremlin analyst, said he expected Biden to increase support for Putin’s internal opponents, perhaps heralding a message from Russian state media during Biden’s presidency.
“Funding for a color revolution against Putin, I think, will increase dramatically,” Markov said.
Putin presents himself as a defender of Russia against an invading West. A tougher Russian policy in the United States could work in their favor, said Sam Greene, director of the Russia Institute at King’s College London.
“The conflict with the West and the United States in particular forms an important part of Putin’s legitimacy,” Greene said.
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