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MOSCOW – November 4 in Russia is Unity Day, a state holiday filled with official events that celebrate the multi-ethnic makeup of the country. This year, it coincides with the resounding vote recount in a highly contested US presidential election that has highlighted American political divisions.
Russian state television and government officials have made the most of the tension surrounding the race, using it to bring home a Kremlin narrative that describes American democracy as a deeply flawed, chaotic and potentially explosive process.
“We wish our American friends a little bit of the same national unity that we are celebrating in Russia today,” joked a host of the flagship state news channel Rossia-24 in the morning, as results from various US states continued to pour in. and the outcome of the elections remained uncertain.
Four years ago, channels like Rossia-24 published reports praising Donald Trump, then a presidential candidate who vowed to improve relations with Russia and spoke critically about the sanctions imposed by Moscow’s military interference in neighboring Ukraine.
This year, with a longer-than-usual vote count and the prospect of court battles adding to the anxiety over an election already complicated by the coronavirus pandemic, the focus of the media and pro-Kremlin public commentators focused on another topic familiar to Russian audiences: the uncertainty, turned into chaos by some experts and presenters, that accompanies American democracy.
After riots earlier this year that were sparked in part by anger over police killings of unarmed black Americans, and businesses in some American cities bracing for the possibility of election-related violence, television shows Russian state governments seemed to accentuate the possibility that things could turn out. of control – in several cases he even seems to delight in the idea.
“I don’t know who doesn’t like this. For me, it’s wonderful!” Russian lawmaker Aleksei Zhuravlev said on the popular talk show 60 Minutes on November 3, citing past incidents of actual looting on the streets of the United States, as well as imaginary violence while video clips were played on a big screen behind him. “I love!”
On November 1, a reporter for Russia’s state First Channel passed the bricked-up entrance to a department store in New York City. “The big question in Manhattan right now is not ‘Trump or Biden?'” He said. “It’s: ‘Will they start looting?'”
And on Election Day in the United States, a Kremlin-friendly headline in the mass-circulation tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda asked: “Is an American Civil War Likely After November 3?”
Throughout Vladimir Putin’s more than two decades as president or prime minister, the Kremlin’s message to Russians has been that he restored political stability after a turbulent decade started by the 1991 Soviet collapse. Comparisons with the United States, where the realistic perspective of the presidency The change of power occurs every four years, has for years been a central issue for television channels that reinforce Putin’s position in Russia.
That hasn’t changed this year, after Putin secured constitutional amendments that will allow him to seek two presidential terms more than six years after his current term in the Kremlin ends in 2024.
But there are two sides to the narrative. Critics of the Russian government and opponents of the Kremlin point to the uncertainties locked into the American system as a potential strength, not an inherent responsibility. A popular joke has one Russian telling another: “The American elections are tomorrow, and their system is so flawed they don’t even know who will win.”
When the results came in after the polls closed in the United States, a Russian comedian captured the whip effect of watching the counting process unfold and contrasted it with a glimpse of how future Russian elections might unfold.
“United States: 8 pm Biden, 9 pm Trump, 10 pm Biden, 11 pm Trump, 12 am Biden, 6 am ???” said a post on Alexander Thorn’s Twitter account. “Russia: Putin 2000, Putin 2030”.
However, not all Russians were watching that closely, nor did they look at all.
In 2016, Trump’s praise for Putin and his promises to improve ties with Russia made him the Kremlin’s favorite over Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state whom Putin accused of helping fuel anti-government protests in Moscow in 2011. Some Russians held elections. night parties in his honor in the Russian capital, celebrating his unexpected victory.
But Trump’s efforts to strengthen ties with Russia were hampered early on, after US intelligence agencies announced their determination that Moscow meddled in the 2016 election and amid concerns over other Russian activities in abroad. And the picture was more cloudy this time, both for the Kremlin and for many ordinary citizens, the polls suggest.
Analysts say the prospects for a substantial improvement in ties with Trump or Biden are slim, and a recent poll found that nearly two-thirds of Russians believe that US policies will not change regardless of who wins.
Still, as the vote count continued on November 4, some politicians and experts supporting Putin made it clear that they were targeting Trump.
“There is no ‘best candidate’ for Russia in the United States,” Aleksei Pushkov, political analyst and frequent critic of the West who is also a member of the upper house of parliament, wrote on Twitter.
But Biden, he said, had “shown anti-Russian reflexes more than once. His administration would be ideologized and obsessed with ‘values’. Trump has avoided conflict with Russia. Biden is more dangerous. “
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