Unlike in 2017, Russia is under no illusion Trump will rebuild ties

Eight years ago, as President Trump began his first term, Russian state media hailed the new American leader as an “alpha male”, while glasses were raised in his honour at inauguration parties in Moscow.

At one venue, which was decorated with a “Make America Great Again!” banner, Willi Tokarev, a well-known Russian singer, performed a song called Trumplissimo that contained the lyrics: “He’s our president!”

At another celebration, close to Red Square, guests were met by a portrait of Trump, President Putin and Marine Le Pen, the far-right French politician. The painting was described by the pro-Kremlin activists who organised the event as a “vision of the future”.

The euphoria in Moscow was easy to understand. Trump had promised on the 2016 election campaign trail to “look into” lifting economic sanctions against Russia and even recognising the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

Yet hopes in Moscow that Trump would become the Kremlin’s man in Washington were swiftly deflated as he approved new sanctions on Russia and became the first US president to send weaponry to Ukraine. A senior US official admitted in 2017 that the reality of Trump’s presidency was like a “cold shower” for Moscow.

This time around, although Trump has sympathised with Putin’s opposition to Nato membership for Ukraine and threatened to halt US military aid for Kyiv, there are no serious expectations in Moscow of an impending rapprochement with Washington.

“Russia is expecting changes but unlike eight years ago, there are no illusions about relations with the United States as a whole,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, the head of Russia’s Council for Foreign and Defence Policy, which advises the Kremlin.

Others were far blunter. “Trump is a predator, and the best signal for a predator is to have a sledgehammer ready to be used in case the predator loses its bearings,” said Igor Korotchenko, a military expert who is close to the Russian defence ministry.

Trump has backtracked on his election campaign pledge to resolve the conflict in Ukraine within 24 hours, saying now that it could take up to six months. On Wednesday, he threatened Russia with fresh sanctions, taxes and tariffs, unless Putin ended the war. The Kremlin dismissed the ultimatum as “nothing new”.

Putin has said there can be no peace in Ukraine, unless Kyiv surrenders four regions, as well as Crimea. He also wants Ukraine to become a “neutral” state and abandon its bid to join Nato.

However, while the war is seen mainly in the West as a battle for Ukrainian land, pro-Kremlin politicians and Russian analysts said that for Putin the conflict is primarily about installing a Moscow-friendly government in Kyiv.

“Russia is not fighting for territory,” said Sergey Mironov, the hawkish head of the Fair Russia nationalist party. “Ukraine cannot be a truly neutral state. The problem for the security of Russia … lies in the very fact of the existence of a state such as Ukraine.” His comments were echoed by Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s deputy envoy to the United Nations. “It’s not merely the question of ending the war,” he told Reuters. “It’s first and foremost the question of addressing root causes of Ukrainian crisis.”

Even if he wants to, Trump will be unable to deliver peace terms that will satisfy the Kremlin dictator, said Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russian political analyst who focuses on Putin and his inner circle.

“Of course, Putin wants to capture territory, but that’s not why he went to war. He went to war to make Ukraine into a friendly country. But he won’t be able to do this. And Trump will never be able to present Putin with what he is asking for,” she said.

President Zelensky said on Wednesday that during the early days of Russia’s all-out invasion, Putin had demanded that he resign in favour of Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch and politician who was Moscow’s closest ally in Kyiv.

Zelensky said the demand was delivered by unnamed people from Ukraine. “This was not a negotiation; it was an ultimatum,” he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Medvedchuk was arrested in Ukraine on treason charges in 2022 and later freed as part of a prisoner of war exchange deal with Moscow.

Putin said on Friday that the war in Ukraine could possibly have been avoided, if Trump’s “[election] victory hadn’t been stolen in 2020.” Zelensky warned that Putin was trying to “manipulate” the new American president by echoing his unproven claims that vote fraud was to blame for his defeat.

Despite the wariness in Moscow over Trump’s new term, hardliners believe that the inevitable shake-up of the international order during his tenure will be beneficial for Russia, said Stanovaya, who is the founder of the R.Politik political analysis group.

“They are impatient to see how the situation will develop. Because no matter what happens, even in the case of escalation, even in the case of Putin and Trump falling out, the world is changing in a direction that opens up new opportunities for Russia to advance its interests,” she said.

“It seems to them that now a new era is approaching, when Russia will be able to achieve more and have more influence because there will be chaos.”

Trump’s threats of military force to take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal, as well as economic pressure to deprive Canada of its independence, are already being seen by some Russian officials and pro-war figures as a justification of the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“This allows us to say that everything is possible, that the old rules no longer work. [To say] ‘look, even the United States, which sets these rules, is not ready to follow them,’” an unnamed Russian diplomat told The Moscow Times.

“There are no rules [now] and no commonly-accepted principles. Just grab [territory], however you can,” said Alexander Kots, a Russian war correspondent. “The United States has now legitimised the process of redrawing the world map,” wrote Zhivov Z, a pro-Kremlin Telegram channel.

Trump’s move to clamp down on “radical gender ideology” has also won applause in Moscow, which in 2023 banned the “international LGBT social movement” as an extremist and terrorist organisation. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order stating that the US government would only recognise two genders, male and female, and that they cannot be changed.

The Russian Orthodox Church, a powerful Kremlin ally, praised the order, while Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, said Trump had brought an end to America’s “inhumane” polices of equity, diversity and inclusion. “In one second, with a stroke of not a pen, but a felt-tip pen, all this flew into the rubbish bin,” she said.