US elections: Putin congratulates Biden on electoral college victory

Russian President Vladimir Putin has become one of the latest world leaders to congratulate US President-elect Joe Biden on his victory.

The Kremlin had said it would wait for the official results of the November vote before recognizing the victory.

Biden was confirmed as the winner on Monday by the electoral college.

Most world leaders congratulated Biden just days after the November 3 election, when it became clear that he had defeated the incumbent President Donald Trump.

Biden and Putin had cold relations when the former served as vice president under Barack Obama.

Democrat Joe Biden won the November contest with 306 electoral college votes to Republican Donald Trump’s 232.

The electoral college confirmation, which took place on Monday, was one of the necessary steps for Biden to take office.

Last month, President Trump said he would step down in January if the electoral college claimed Biden was the winner of the election, but he has continued to make unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.

According to a Kremlin statement, Putin wished Biden much success and said he was “ready to collaborate and contact you.”

He “expressed confidence that Russia and the United States, who have a special responsibility for global security and stability, could, despite their differences, really help solve the many problems and challenges facing the world,” the statement added. .

But analysts say Biden, who describes Putin as an autocrat, is expected to take a tougher line on Russia than Trump.

Russia has faced allegations of interference in the 2016 U.S. election to help Trump get elected.

In US-Russian relations, personal chemistry is very important. Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan had it. Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton too. Putin and Biden? Don’t hold your breath.

On a trip to Moscow in his capacity as vice president, Biden concluded that Putin had no soul. More recently, he has called Russia the biggest threat to the United States. Doesn’t sound promising, does it?

It doesn’t help that Vladimir Putin waited so long to congratulate the new leader of the United States. The Kremlin claimed that it was doing things by the rules, just waiting for the official result. But the delay smells of bitter grapes.

There is little doubt that the Russian authorities would have preferred Donald Trump to be re-elected. Not that US-Russian relations flourished under his administration, but at least he avoided criticizing Russia and its leader. Furthermore, the weakening of the Western alliance under President Trump was viewed positively by Russian officials.

Moscow is preparing for a tougher US approach to Russia and possibly additional sanctions. But whatever political, ideological or personal differences they may have, Presidents Biden and Putin will need to develop some kind of working relationship. There are issues of global importance, such as arms control, where cooperation between Russia and the United States is vital.

While Putin waited almost a month and a half before congratulating Biden, in 2016 he congratulated Trump on his victory the day after the vote.

In a speech after the announcement, he said it was “time to turn the page.” American democracy has been “pushed, tested and threatened,” he said, but it has “proven resilient, true and strong.”

He condemned Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the result, referring to the president’s efforts to question the result and his legal challenges that have been rejected by courts across the country.

“Respecting the will of the people is at the heart of our democracy, even when we find those results difficult to accept,” Biden said, speaking in Delaware.

“The flame of democracy was lit in this nation long ago,” he added. “And we know that nothing, not even a pandemic or an abuse of power, can put out that flame.”

He also warned that, with the coronavirus pandemic continuing to devastate the US, there will be difficult months ahead.

“We have urgent work ahead of us,” he said. “Control this pandemic and vaccinate the nation against this virus.”

He spoke as the death toll from Covid in the US, the country hardest hit by the virus, rose above 300,000.

Voters don’t normally get as much attention, but this year, after the uncertainty generated by a series of challenges to the results in states won by Democrats by the Trump campaign, the state-by-state vote was in the spotlight.

Solidly Democratic California, with its 55 constituencies, was one of the last states to vote on Monday and pushed Biden across the 270-vote threshold required to win the presidency.

Increased security had been implemented in some states, including Michigan and Georgia, before the vote, which took place in the state capitals and Washington DC.

In Michigan, a key state in transition that Biden won, legislative offices in the state capital, Lansing, were closed due to “credible” threats of violence.

Voting in the capitol building took place peacefully, although a group of Republicans tried to enter the building to hold their own vote and were rejected.

In his speech, Biden described the post-election harassment of officials as “unconscionable” and said: “It is my sincere hope that we will never again see anyone subjected to the kind of threats and abuse that we saw in this election.”

He also noted that he had the same number of votes in the electoral college that Trump said was a “landslide” when the Republican won in 2016. Biden emphasized that he had also won the popular vote, something Trump did not achieve four years ago. .

Republican Senator Lamar Alexander said: “The presidential election is over. The states have certified the votes. The courts have resolved disputes. The voters have voted. I hope President Trump puts the country first, takes pride in its considerable accomplishments, and helps President-elect Biden get off to a good start. “

The quadrennial meeting of the United States electoral college is often a formality on the road to a presidential inauguration, a vestigial political event that has long since lost its power and relevance.

However, Donald Trump’s scorched earth strategy of contesting the 2020 election results gave new attention to procedure.

His legal team has had little success in challenging the results in multiple battle states, and the official registration of electoral college ballots effectively lowered the curtain on these far-reaching court maneuvers.

That doesn’t mean the Trump team is giving up, of course. They will continue with futile court challenges and eventually ask Congress to revoke the election results.

It’s an alternate reality that Donald Trump supporters may find more comforting than one in which Joe Biden is president-elect.

Since the House of Representatives is controlled by Democrats, the official electoral college tally has been duly certified by the states, and federal law is on Biden’s side, Trump’s chances of success in the real world, however, are from zero.

The results of the voting process will be sent to Washington DC and will be formally counted in a joint session of Congress on January 6 chaired by Vice President Mike Pence.

That will pave the way for Joe Biden to be sworn in as president on January 20.

Most Republicans have supported Trump in his efforts to reverse the result, but some have broken ranks in recent weeks.

A Michigan congressman, Paul Mitchell, announced that he would leave the party weeks before his retirement in protest at what he said was his inability to accept that the electoral process was over.